Last week we talked about motivation and how we tend to lose it as our thoughts about reaching our goals change.
If you have a goal you really want to reach, knowing how to keep moving forward when you feel overwhelmed, burnt out, and confused is the key to reaching it. So many people make progress, but quit because they don’t know how to keep going without it feeling like a grind and wearing them down until it’s no longer a goal they even want.
For example, if you really want to start a side gig, but you’ve hit a few bumps in the road, work has gotten extra crazy, and you are just tired, most people will stop working on it until they are feeling better.
But that time never comes. There’s never enough time. There’s never the right time. There’s never the perfect situation. Waiting for all of that is just an easy excuse out.
Learning how to feel the stress and overwhelm and fatigue is what you need to do, but chances are no one taught you how.
How many times do you think about how stressed and anxious you are?
Now tell me, what does stress and anxiety feel like? Physically in your body, how do they feel? If you had to explain these feelings to an alien that had no concept of physical feelings, how would you describe them?
Where in your body do you feel it? Does it have a color? Does it move? Is it a mass or shape? What does it make you feel like doing? How do stress and anxiety feel the same? How do they feel different?
If you are like most people, you are probably struggling to describe the physical feelings of these emotions. How crazy is that! We all tell people how stressed and anxious we are, but we don’t even really know what they feel like. We just know we don’t like it.
To keep moving forward when you lack motivation is learning how to feel your emotions. By describing it, you are actually feeling them. Emotions are chemicals in your body and the more you “feel” them, the faster your body processes them and releases them.
When we have a negative emotion, our primitive brain wants us to run away and do something that feels better, but if you turn into that negative feeling, take a deep breath, and start becoming familiar with it, you will no longer live at its effect. When you are good at feeling your emotions, you are able to keep moving forward because you are not wasting time try to feel better. You just feel the negative and keep focused on what you want to spend your time on.
So the next time you are not moving forward and doing the things you want to be doing, stop resisting those negative emotions and practice feeling them. It will take some time and you will want to distract yourself with food, the internet, or other things on your to do list, but practice feeling the negative and start taking back control. You can’t die from a feeling, but you can learn to live an amazing life no matter how you feel.
Chat soon,
LB
P.S. Want help learning how to feel better and stop living at their effect of your emotions? I offer a limited number of free coaching sessions so let’s jump on the phone and get you there. Sign up HERE.
