95: Masterclass Sneak Peak
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[00:00:00] Hello, my friends! And welcome to another episode of Radiant You. I am excited to share with you some of a little bit of a sneak peek of a masterclass that we just did. It was super powerful! We jumped in and navigated our feelings and learned some cool tools and tricks to know how to do that. But at the beginning of the masterclass, I laid the foundation of some of the really important things you need to know before you can move forward and really know how to navigate your feelings.
[00:00:30] So I took that section and added it as today's podcast, because it's a really important reminder. Whether you've heard it in the past or it's new information for you, take some time to listen to this episode and really think about what it means in your life.
[00:00:45] Enjoy.
[00:00:47] First, we're going to do a little visualization exercise. I want you to visualize that you are at a park and you are playing with one of your favorite kiddos. It could be one of your kids. It could [00:01:00] be a niece or nephew or a friend or whoever it is, but just one of those kids that when you see them, it just lights up your smile and your life because they just have so much joy. Picture hanging at the park with them, having someone on one time and really enjoying that. Think about how you'd feel. Then you have somebody that comes that is a friend of yours. They just showed up at the park and they have some friends too that they've brought to play. So you turn and you're talking to your friend and getting to catch up with them.
[00:01:32] Then you turn around and you can't find that child you came with. And you're looking around and you're asking people, "Have you seen the kid that I was playing with?" and you just can't find them. And you look up and you see a van that looks super sketchy driving away from the park.
[00:01:48] And your heart just drops and you want to do anything you can to protect that child and to use all of your energy, your natural instinct to go and save them.[00:02:00] But then you hear something behind you. And you turn around and feel so relieved because that sweet child is right behind you. You didn't lose them.
[00:02:15] They are safe.
[00:02:17] Now, I apologize for making you go on that emotional rollercoaster, but I want you to take a deep breath and think about something.
[00:02:27] You just went on an emotional experience. Most likely. But you actually didn't experience it. There's no danger right now. Why then did you have a physical response in your body as if the child you love was actually in danger? Think about how powerful that is. You just thought of something, of a possibility, but it changes your emotional [00:03:00] experience.
[00:03:00] Why is that true? Because your thoughts create your feelings. You thought about playing with the child and you had that warm, happy, loving feeling inside of you when you thought that. But then you ended up shifting and you felt scared. It changed your feelings, changed your breath, changed your mind, changed where you were at.
[00:03:28] And that's important to understand. When we understand this, we know how the brain works. We have more power to create our own feelings and our experience. So if your thoughts create your feelings and you need to know how your brain works. Let's take a minute to understand the part of your brain that generates a lot of that.
[00:03:49] So first, your brain has three main objectives: to avoid pain, to seek pleasure, and to conserve energy. This is what your [00:04:00] brain will naturally do. You want to eat and do and experience things that bring pleasure, and you're going to push away anything that creates pain, whether that's physical or emotional.
[00:04:09] This is automatic brain. Helpful to know that this is what's going on in your subconscious because sometimes we want to beat ourselves up for our brain doing this automatically. And that's not useful.
[00:04:21] When we need to protect ourselves, this part of our brain is really important. If someone truly was taking that child from you, you would want this brain to kick in. We need to avoid pain. We need to make sure we take care of that thing that we care about. We need to use our energy wisely and go after that and figure that out. But, when we're not in danger, this preservative part of your brain really isn't the one that should be driving. We should be taking notes from it and recognizing it, but not letting it be in charge.
[00:04:53] I wanted to make sure you had this background understanding of what your brain is doing naturally before we moved on to [00:05:00] understand how to navigate your feelings because they start with your thoughts. Okay? So we don't need to be mad at the brain. The brain is amazing and we're so grateful for all the things that it does for us.
[00:05:12] But it's kind of like a toddler with a knife. If any of you have hung out with a toddler, you know how this goes. The toddler comes in the kitchen and they're like, "I want to help!" And they'll go to pick up the knife. You're like, "No way! That's going to hurt you and all the other people."
[00:05:23] But it has good intentions, right? That toddler wants to be useful, so you have to teach it, help it, guide it, so that it's going to be a positive experience instead of a painful experience. So knowing that this is what your automatic brain does helps you be more purposeful.
[00:05:41] Okay, so why is it even important?
[00:05:44] *Your brain doesn't know when you're actually in danger, so you have to pay attention and help it feel safe. *
[00:05:53] So I want you to take a moment and think about your feelings, that they drive everything you do.[00:06:00] Whatever you do in your day, whether you woke up this morning, you put clothes on, you said something to a friend. Everything you do is to create a feeling or to avoid a feeling.
[00:06:11] So, what feelings do you want more of? Do you want more joy? Do you want more patience? Do you want more connection and fulfillment?
[00:06:25] These feelings are all totally possible. Whatever it is that you want more of. Especially when you're aware of how to create your feelings, where they come from, and how to not let automatic brain take over and create automatic feelings.
[00:06:42] That's our foundation for what we're going to do to move forward. Because if we don't pay attention to our brain and our auto feelings and actions, Then you're not in charge of your life. And I want you to be able to make choices that are supporting your more radiant life and create feelings on purpose.[00:07:00]
[00:07:00] Okay. So here are some examples of how we actually experienced this. If we're not paying attention and we have our automatic brain go on, how do we experience things like exercise or scheduling or social media? Think about avoid pain, seek pleasure, and conserve energy.
[00:07:20] Does your brain want you to exercise?Um, let's see, painful during and after, yes, pleasurable, maybe a little bit, but I'm not going to remember that if I'm automatic brain until afterwards. Conserving energy: takes way more energy than I want to put in. So, nope, we're going to pass on that. Right? And then we sit and beat ourselves up because we're like, "I don't want to exercise. I don't have any motivation to exercise." I'll give you a hack on that in a minute.
[00:07:47] So how about scheduling? This is one of the things with time management, right? We're like, "Oh, I'm going to do this." And then we don't, or we don't follow through. And then we get upset because that's what's happening. Well, when [00:08:00] we understand what's going on with our brains, Our brain is thinking "this is too hard or it's not fun" or "I'd much rather be watching a show" or it does do some sort of planning, but it always looks for all the easy check boxes because those are pleasurable.
[00:08:15] Like "Oh, if we just do these simple things, if we check emails, if we go and, and schedule those things that are really easy to schedule," but we don't actually work on the project we need to work on. Your brain's like, "That's definitely a better use of our time because it is conserving energy and it's way more pleasurable and it's not uncomfortable.
[00:08:34] How about social media? That's going to be a really easy check all the boxes for your brain. The auto brain loves social media. But unfortunately, when we let our auto brain avoid exercise, don't have good time management, and just check out on things like social media, how do we feel afterwards?
[00:08:54] Afterwards, we feel awful. We don't feel good about letting our auto brain[00:09:00] do whatever it thinks is the easiest route with less resistance. So we want to make sure that we are not letting our auto brain say, 'This is what we're going to be doing.' We want to do it on purpose.
[00:09:14] So what feelings are you allowing to drive your actions? The automatic ones or the ones on purpose?
[00:09:24] Navigating your feelings, understanding what you're feeling and why it's driving you is the money that makes the difference in changing and creating your life.
[00:09:34] Here's the good news. Good news number one: your experience with struggling through some of the examples I shared or anything else in your life, it's totally normal. So it's not something you need to beat yourself up for and understanding that part of your brain helps you have more self-compassion when you have those pulls, because we all do. That we can see it for what it is. "Oh, that's just my [00:10:00] natural brain. It's doing its job. It's trying to be useful. I don't need to beat myself up." And that's only part of your brain. The other part of your brain honors your values, knows what you want, has more connection to your spirit, is proactive. And when we connect those two pieces of your brain, you become you. It's who you are, not the automatic part of you. That's not who you are. That's the good news is that that's only one part of your brain. And then when you clean it up, you're able to have more access to you.
[00:10:34] *When you understand how thoughts and feelings work, then you can stop trying to change all of your actions and recognize that you can break those cycles and lead to what you actually want to create.*
[00:10:49] Okay, so now that you have the good news, let's do a visual of what this looks like.
[00:10:54] This is the cycle. You have your thoughts that create your feelings, [00:11:00] that create your actions. And then you have thoughts about those actions that then go through to create more feelings and more actions. And we have this cycle that goes on and on and on thought, feeling, action, thought, feeling, action.
[00:11:16] And we get stuck here sometimes, right? But when you want to break your cycles, you need to first be aware of them, recognizing your current cycle will allow you to create a new cycle.
[00:11:32] So where's the easiest place to recognize that? Your feelings! We have 60,000 thoughts a day on average, and we cannot recognize all those thoughts, but those thoughts, like I said, will create feelings.
[00:11:44] And when you see the feeling that you have and you catch it and you pay attention and you recognize it, then you have power to change it. So this is what the rest of our session is going to be about today: how to recognize your feelings [00:12:00] and use them to navigate the next phases of your life.
[00:12:04] Alright, my friends. I hope you enjoyed that recap from our masterclass that laid that important foundation with some vital truths about your thoughts, your feelings, how they affect you, what your brains naturally doing. All of those really important things to help increase your self awareness.
[00:12:22] The full masterclass was about 40 minutes long and so I can't squeeze it all into this episode. But if you want to get the replay with those tools and tricks on how to navigate your feelings (as well as a powerful worksheet that helps you practice) then click the link in the show notes or go to www.thelightcoach.com/join and come be a part of the Radiant Women Group where we go through these masterclasses and group coaching calls. Plus extra hours for us to connect and lift and support each other every single week of the month. So go check it out if you're interested in learning more!
[00:12:57] Whatever you do, take time [00:13:00] today to remember how powerful your thoughts are. And how important it is that you're paying attention to your feelings.
[00:13:07] Create your life on purpose today, my friend. Have a blessed day.
[00:13:12] You are radiant! But some days it's hard to remember that truth. If you're ready to live lighter and shine brighter, then head over to www.thelightcoach.com and book a free session to discover what's possible. The radiant you is within your reach. Let's find her together.