Ep #189: Getting Intimate with Negative Emotion with Paige Bowman

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey, coaches, so today I have a very special podcast episode planned for you. I have been following along in several of my coaches journeys in the 200K Mastermind and the Two Million Dollar Group. And some of them have very inspiring work that they have done on themselves, gaps that they have bridged to get to where they are, things that they have worked through that I think are highly valuable for you to hear from them. So, they didn’t reach out and say, “Hey, I want to teach on the podcast.”

They weren’t doing this work for anything other than themselves. But I wanted to feature their work because I felt like it would be so useful for you. So, over the next couple of months, I am going to play some of these episodes that they have recorded for you. You’re going to get to hear them throughout the next three or four months here and there. And I encourage you to take these episodes as seriously as you would take hearing from me. They are so inspiring, I’ve been following their work in my pages and it’s just in the Facebook pages and our calls.

And it’s really stood out for me so it will be extraordinarily valuable for you. It’s one of my favorite things about masterminds is you get to learn from other people’s ideas and their work. It might not be your work at the time, but it will be your work either in the future or it is your work, and you didn’t know it was your work. They’re going to present ideas to you and how they have worked through things in a way that will be so applicable to you and your own growth in your journey.

So, I hope you enjoy this as much as I have enjoyed hearing these and watching their journey, and learning from them myself in my own self-coaching, learning how they show up in the world has been deeply impactful for me. So, without further ado please enjoy one of our guest podcasts from one of my star 200K Mastermind or Two Million Dollar Group students.

                                                                                                                  

Hello. Welcome to today’s episode. My name is Paige Bowman, Master Certified Life and Weight Loss Coach. And I will be guest hosting the Make Money as a Life Coach podcast today. I am so excited. I have been working with Stacey in 2K for years now since 2019 I think. What’s funny is I found Stacey’s first podcast, The Diva Business School podcast and I fell absolutely in love. And I had my favorite episode numbers memorized and then when Stacey started her new podcast, this one she took the Diva one off the air. And I remember being devastated.

And when she announced it would be a bonus in 2K for 2K I thought, alright, I’m in. Little did I know how amazing this podcast would be one of my all time favorites and how amazing 2K for 2K would be. So, if you’re not in there yet, get in there. I am also in my third round of the 200K Mastermind, and I just got accepted into my fourth round of the 200K Mastermind starting in August. So, when I say I could not be more excited and proud to be here with you all on today’s episode I mean it.

And if you’re listening to this and you’re just dying to get into 200K but haven’t yet, don’t stop going for it. Don’t give up. I remember round after round passing me by and I remember feeling so disappointed every time I didn’t apply, or I didn’t get in, but not letting that stop me. And here I am, so I just want to say just keep going and get yourself in there. Today we’re talking about getting intimate with negative emotions. This is a core part of the work Stacey teaches but for me it felt like it snuck up on me.

I figured this out slowly over time. I’ve done work on feeling my emotions ever since I learned what that was when I worked with my first life coach. Bu the way we talk about emotions in 200K is it’s just on another level. If you’ve been listening to the Make Money as a Life Coach podcast for any amount of time you know how important emotions are as a coach, growing your business, helping people, serving people, making offers, all of it. And let me tell you, what we’re going to talk about today on this episode could help you make 200K and beyond.

With the work I’ve done with Stacey in 2K and 200K, and getting truly intimate with my negative emotions I have officially crossed the 200K mark. I have made $200,000 in my business in less than three years doing one-on-one coaching and half that time working a full-time job. And of course, this will 100% benefit your work with your clients as well. I work with life coaches helping them lose weight while they build their business. I have my simple weight loss program where we do all the emotion work, so that for them weight loss gets to be simple and inevitable.

We’re going to talk about emotions today. We’re going to do a deep dive on them. We’re going to take a look at what keeps us from truly getting intimate with our negative emotions, what it means to get intimate with your emotions and have a relationship with them. And a little bit about safety and how that’s involved. I love emotion work. I am the perfect person to be guest hosting this podcast episode so let’s get into it. Let’s get intimate.

Let’s start right off the bat with being clear about our emotions. They are why we do anything or don’t do anything. They are feelings, vibrations in your body, chemicals in the body, all created by your thoughts. And I like to think of them as little messengers, the messengers letting us know what’s going on in the brain and what we’re supposed to do next. So, say you’re feeling compelled because you’re thinking about your next client and how they’re out there waiting for you to help them, for you to let her know you can help her.

You can feel that vibration of compelled in your body, that emotion is letting you know you’ve got some powerful thoughts going on in your brain. And now that little messenger, that emotion of compelled in your body is telling you what to do next. Go talk to someone, write something with an offer and post it or send it. Go live. Write that follow-up email. Don’t skip out on work. Don’t skip your coaching calls. These actions are what you do from this emotion.

Now, this happens with an emotion like fear as well. So, when you’re feeling fear in your body and you feel that vibration, that chemical speed up your heart rate maybe, or maybe for you it slows down your breathing. However, it shows up for you to have fear in your body it’s letting you know, hey, there’s something going on in the brain and that messenger will have you either stop doing what you’re doing, hide or buffer from it. What you do with that emotion in your body depends on your relationship with your negative emotions.

Let me say that again, what you do when a negative emotion is in your body depends on your relationship with that emotion. And when I say negative emotion I mean those that you might consider, well, not positive. So maybe fear, anxiety, scarcity, doubt, disappointment, that’s been a big one for me in the last year, shame. And really there’s no rule here but the point is what’s your relationship with those emotions? And if you’re not sure, take a look at what you do when they’re in your body.

Do you resist them? Do you stop what you’re doing so that they go away? Do you judge yourself for them being in your body? Do you buffer from them? Basically, do you go sit on the couch and eat cookies so that the emotion goes away? Your response to having that emotion in your body is the most telling. And I like to say it’s good to know because awareness is always the first step.

I remember when I first started doing work with emotions like we’re talking about today and the first emotion that I really worked on getting intimate with was frustration. And I remember that being the one that I disliked the most, I did not feel safe to experience frustration in my body. I would react, maybe I would snap at my husband, or snap at my dog, or slam something down, or just leave the house. And my response to that emotion was because I didn’t like how it felt to feel that frustrated feeling in my body.

And I remember thinking, if I could just figure out how to feel this in my body I wouldn’t respond in this way. And no one had really taught me that, but it felt very intuitive for me to be able to tell myself, hey, let’s just figure out how to feel this emotion and not make it go away by reacting to it or running from it basically, or maybe eating something to make it go away. When you don’t feel safe with fear, anxiety, disappointment, or any emotions you would put in the negative emotions pile you’ll either resist the emotion, hide so that it goes away.

Like I said, I would leave the house when I was frustrated, or buffer from it. And for you that might look like eating, for you that might look like drinking, or watching TV, anything that makes you no longer feel that emotion. And you can see this in action on a consult where you might be feeling fear or anxiety when that person on the other side of the screen tells you they don’t have the money, or they’ll have to speak to their partner about it. And the next thing you know you find yourself saying, “Alright, well, it was nice talking to you, see you later,” and hanging up.

You didn’t feel safe in that moment to experience that fear or that anxiety that started to come into your body in that moment. So, you ran from it, you made it go away as fast as possible by ending that conversation. Remember, I like to say, okay, good to know, put that in your evaluation and then come back and relisten to this episode to work on the skill of getting intimate with those emotions.

Now, when you create safety for yourself to feel your negative emotions, to let them be in your body, your response to them, changes. I love this quote form the fantastic Kristen Boss. She’s said it a few times in 200K and most recently at the Life Coach School Mastermind. She said, “It’s safe for me to be successful.” And I just love that thought especially when applied here. It’s safe for me to feel my negative emotions. It’s safe for me to get intimate with my negative emotions.

Think about this, when you feel safe to feel your negative emotions your response to those emotions changes. The message they’re sending you, changes. Depending on your relationship with that emotion the thing you do next will be either pausing, breathing, checking in with your body or cutting off the situation, stopping what you’re doing or even distracting yourself. So, when you’re on a consult and you start to feel fear and anxiety come up when that person has a money objection you can just be.

When you’re feeling safe to experience that emotion, keep silent, take a few breaths, and let that emotion be there. And then you start doing what you know how to do from the overcoming objections model in 2K for 2K. That emotion is safe to be in your body so the response to it is to let it be there and then continue doing what you know how to do. That’s what it’s like to feel safe to experience an emotion, to be intimate with your negative emotions.

You allow yourself to slide into curiosity and understanding, and just holding the space for this conversation on the consult because you’ve created safety to feel your emotions. Okay, so if getting intimate with our emotions makes all the difference, what keeps us from doing so? What keeps us from getting intimate with our emotions and feeling safe to feel them? I want to offer to you it’s one of two things, fear of what might happen if you go there, if you feel the emotion, if you allow it to be in your body.

Or shame that you have that emotion, maybe you’ll be thinking I shouldn’t be feeling this. So, remember, emotions are messengers letting you know there’s stuff going on in the brain. I like thinking about it like this because sometimes you’ll find that you’re better in tune with your emotions and what’s happening in your body. And sometimes you’ll find that you’ll catch the thought and then see what’s going on in your body.

So, to bring it all together. I like to think of my emotions as messengers letting me know that there’s stuff going on in my brain. And I have an idea of what it might be because of what the emotion feels like in my body. Anxiety to me feels like a tightness in my chest. It’s really the main emotion that feels like that. So, when I’m more in tune with my body I feel a heaviness and tightness in my chest, I know there is some worrying going on in my brain. And now it’s time to check in with myself.

And then vice versa, you can check how a certain thought or maybe a thought pattern feels by, well, thinking the thought and then going into your body and seeing how it feels. So again, your willingness to see what your thoughts are creating in your body will be dependent on your relationship with negative emotions. That’s why this getting intimate with negative emotions idea is so important, so you can see how a thought feels for you. A thought is going to feel different for everyone because of the way our lives have been, our past experiences, just our personalities.

And everyone will be different and maybe you might think that I failed feels bad for most people but maybe not everyone. Maybe I failed could lead to a good feeling like I put myself out there and I failed and that is amazing because fails mean I’m going in the right direction. Or for you it might be I failed, and it feels like there’s a tightness in your chest because for you, I failed is a way of thinking that you’re never going to get to your goal. And so, when you have this trust with yourself to experience all emotions then you can see how thoughts might feel and you can try thoughts on.

And this is very powerful work when you think about using the self-coaching model on yourself, with your clients and as you build your business and go after your goals.

Okay, so if fear is usually meant as a messenger that something is dangerous, something dangerous is happening it might feel wrong to let it be there, to get intimate with it, to not make it go away immediately. So, you might not be willing to go to that worse case scenario in your brain and really feel it in your body. I remember when it hit me how strongly I didn’t want to go there myself.

I had a big goal in my first round of 200K, the big 25K in 30 days challenge and after overcoming my frustration at Stacey for having us do this challenge and what I thought was basically setting me up for failure and devastation. I then went into not wanting to think about the goal. I was self-sabotaging, avoiding looking at the 200K Facebook page, avoiding self-coaching. But I was still stressing about doing things in my business. I was avoiding fear and definitely avoiding what that fear might be covering up or coming from.

I didn’t feel safe to feel it and I definitely didn’t want to get intimate with it. And finally, I got peer coached by someone in 200K and she asked me, “Okay, in this coaching session here, would you be willing to sit with the fear for even just a few minutes?” She really helped me see that I could trust myself to feel that emotion and to get intimate with it on the call. She helped me see that I could let fear come into my body and I could see what thoughts were creating the fear, but also what thoughts came up in reaction to the fear.

She helped me go there. She asked me or helped me ask myself, what was I afraid of. And it turns out I was afraid of, get this, feeling disappointment if I didn’t hit the goal. Does that sound familiar? I know this is a big one in 2K and 200K or if you’re a human with goals, because I didn’t feel safe to feel either fear or disappointment I pushed them away. I ignored that part of myself and I self-sabotaged. I got in my own way. I stopped doing the things that were working so well for me in my business.

And yet when I created safety to get intimate with those negative emotions in that call and then afterwards I realized I didn’t have much to fear. What’s the worst that was going to happen if I didn’t hit the goal? I would have some thoughts and feel some feelings which wasn’t very different from what was happening in that very moment. I just want to offer to you that getting intimate with your emotions doesn’t mean explaining them off or trying to make them go away.

It’s really showing yourself that it’s safe to feel these emotions in your body. And that you can really trust yourself to be a human with that emotion and with those thoughts, period. And here’s a bonus. When you create safety for yourself to get intimate with your negative emotions, you open up your ability to feel all of your emotions. You’re really expanding what I like to call your emotional space.

A friend was just telling me recently, The Life Coach School Mastermind that she noticed that I tend to feel all of my emotions really strongly. And that she could tell that I felt the rainbow of emotions. And she was telling me that and from what I understand, and this is something I’m still exploring myself. But when you allow yourself to really feel your negative emotions you’re really allowing yourself to feel all your emotions. You’re creating this trust in yourself to feel any emotion that your brain creates by thinking thoughts in your body.

That really there’s no emotion that your body can’t experience, that you can’t trust yourself to feel. And I thought that was so cool. So, think about it like this, the more intimate you get with your negative emotions. The more intimate you get with all of your emotions, the more willing you’ll be able to feel any emotion that comes up. The less likely you will be to resist yourself, and your emotions, and your thoughts, to self-sabotage, to numb thinking things, to numb feeling things with eating or drinking, or watching something, or just your business for a week.

So, then what does it mean to get intimate with your emotions? I want you to imagine you’re in your coaching office and little Timmy, five year old Timmy comes in and he’s crying but not the dangerous worry that he’s been hurt kind of crying, but the sad kind of crying. He comes in and you just open your arms, and you welcome him in. And you say, “Hey, tell me what’s going on?” And he’s crying and he tells you that his friend called him a mean name. And you just give him a hug and you tell him, “It’s okay, it’s okay to cry. It’s okay, put your head on my shoulder, I’ve got you.”

That bubble of space of safety for little Timmy that you showed them, hey, it’s okay to feel this emotion, come here, just cry it out, feel it, that’s that kind of that bubble of space, that intimacy that we’re talking about with you and your emotions. So, for example it’s 9:00am on a Tuesday and you’re doing your self-coaching. You look at your model and maybe you’re coaching on your current business goal. And then maybe you look at the day of the month.

It’s closer to the end of the month and you have a monthly goal and you’re not there yet. And you start to feel a tightness in your chest as you look at your self-coaching model. And then you pause, and you put your hand on your chest. And you go into your body, and you feel what this tightness feels like, and you say to yourself, “It’s safe for me to experience this emotion.” Maybe you identify it, maybe you identify the emotion, you identify the thought. That’s what we’re doing. We’re interrupting the coaching when you have that emotion in your body.

We’re building this relationship with that emotion, we’re naming it because that’s what this relationship is like. It’s not hiding from the emotion or the thoughts, or from yourself, it’s being there, radically accepting that this is what it’s like to be a human, to think thoughts and feel this negative emotion sometimes. That’s what getting intimate with your negative emotions is like when it comes into your body in that moment. You’ve thought a thought that’s created that emotion in your body.

Maybe you’re thinking I’m not on track for my goal, or I’m not going to figure this out, there is no way, I’m going to fail. Maybe it’s one of those and then you’ve got some anxiety, or some overwhelm in your body. For me overwhelm feels different than anxiety. I have a foggy brain, my shoulders are slumped over. I maybe have a tightness of breath, it just, it feels different but that’s what it feels like. So, when it pops up I pause, and I take a few deep breaths and I remind myself that it’s safe to experience this emotion and then I move forward with my self-coaching in that morning.

Imagine being able to self-coach on your goal, let this emotion pop up, let it sit there, remind yourself that it’s safe, to breathe it out, to process that emotion, and then continue with your coaching, not because it’s a problem to have that emotion, but because your response is to notice it and let it be there or breathe it out because you’re intimate with that emotion. Because you have a very trusting relationship with yourself and that emotion, it’s a very different experience.

This very morning, I am telling you, I found myself lying in bed making my mental list of all the things I needed to get done. And I could feel a heaviness start to pop up in my chest. It was like a person was laying a bag of – you know those netted bags of oranges you get at the grocery store? It was like they were laying this bag of oranges on my chest. And I just really became an observer of what was going on. I realized, whoa, and I know this emotion I’m intimate with it, so I knew what it was, it was anxiety.

I said, “Whoa, I am really feeling anxious right now.” Oh, yeah, it’s because I am telling myself I have 100 things to do today, they all need to get done immediately or else everything is going to fall apart. And so, I said, of course, this is what I’m feeling. And then I started to breathe, and my intimacy with anxiety, with this negative emotion is like no other. I can really let it be there and keep doing what I’m doing or in that case, I switched up what I was doing. I was like, “Paige, stop it, not everything is going to fall apart. It’s fine.”

I’ve created safety and trust with myself in my body and this emotion and every time – think about it, I like this, every time I respond like this to this emotion, to anxiety I am just building up more and more safety to feel that emotion, to feel anxiety.

On our latest 200K coaching call one of my peers was getting coached on how to stay in massive action when she’s feeling emotions like overwhelm, and pressure, and disappointment. This is an example, have you had this question come up for you? You probably have. You have these emotions come up for you and you’re freaked out because you’re like, “I need to take action, I need to get going in my business, but this feels terrible.” This is the difference between being intimate with these emotions and being afraid of them, dismissive or resistant to the emotions.

Remember, they’re messengers, so when you have a rocky relationship with disappointment for example, you’re going to respond differently, basically push it away and stop working on your business than if you have a trusting intimate relationship with it. It comes up because you’re thinking about your goal and the day of the month. You recognize it just like I did this morning and then you jump right into curiosity, understanding, even kindness, of course I’m feeling disappointed. I’m telling myself it’s never going to work.

Of course, I’m feeling anxious this morning. I was going through a running list of 100 things that I was telling myself I needed to do. I’m not mad at the anxiety. I’m thinking, of course. I’m not mad at the disappointment. I’m like, “Of course I’m feeling disappointed when I am thinking I’m failing and I’m never going to hit my goals, I’m going to feel that way.” I don’t need to make it a problem to have this emotion enter my body. So, remember, your response to the emotion in your body will be dependent on your relationship with that emotion.

When you allow yourself to get intimate with your negative emotions you’re allowing yourself to hold space, that safety bubble just like you would if your kiddo walked into the office and was crying, and was sad that their friend said something mean to them. The way you would pause and hold this little bubble for them to come and give you a hug, and tell you what happened, and just cry, and for you to tell them it’s okay. In that same way we’re creating a safety bubble around our body no matter what emotion comes up.

That’s the kind of space you want to give yourself so you can get practice getting intimate with your negative emotions. Another thought I want to offer to you was one I’ve been using in my own self-coaching this year. I have been guilty this year for some reason and I’m working on it, telling myself often that I’m behind. Just recently I was getting coached, and I told her that yet again I’m behind. I can get existential with it, I’m behind in my life and I can get into the minute details like I was supposed to send a Mother’s Day card earlier than I did. I’m behind.

And instead of saying that, “Hey, this is where I’m at and here’s what I need to do moving forward,” I was straight up wishing that my reality was different and telling myself I’m behind. And the thought this coach helped me find was I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. And I thought this is a beautiful way to think about you and your experience when you have a negative emotion in your body. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be with this emotion, with how I’m feeling right now. It goes back to your response to that emotion.

When you’re thinking those thoughts, I’m a failure, I’m behind, whatever it might be, whether you realize it or not you will feel it in your body. And that’s where the awareness pieces comes in, and it’s so important on this journey, understanding what’s going on when you feel a negative emotion because it’s your thoughts. And understanding that your response is dependent on your relationship with the emotion, on if you feel safe to feel that emotion or not.

So, you start to feel it in your body. Maybe it’s disappointment because you’re looking at how many consults are on your books and it’s the last week of the month. Maybe it’s anxiety because like me you have this belief that you’re behind. You’ve got some negative emotions in your body. If you’re on the path of getting intimate with your negative emotions it can be as simple as reminding yourself, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be right now with this emotion in my body.

Very similar, and a beautiful partner to the thought, it’s safe for me to experience this emotion because we’re humans. We’re going to experience the full array of emotions. You were created to feel. You have a body that produces these chemicals, these vibrations. So, when you allow yourself to then actually feel them and not shut them down, not numb them away, not buffer from them, not run from them, or make them go away by stopping what you’re doing, or ignoring your goals, or not setting goals.

When you allow yourself to be where you are in that moment with that emotion you are experiencing your humanness. You’re not only getting intimate with your negative emotions, you’re getting intimate with your humanity. That’s it, getting intimate with your emotions is just you letting yourself be a human in that very moment. This is the kind of relationship I want you to start building with your negative emotions, a trusting, safe and intimate relationship. And then notice how this opens up your emotional space to feel all of your emotions, even more of the positive ones as well.

Now, at the end of each episode of my podcast I always offer my audience powerful questions to ponder on as they go about their day or their week. So here are a few powerful questions to consider for yourself. What would it look like to have an intimate relationship with my negative emotions? What’s one thought I can start thinking about my negative emotions that will start creating safety for me to experience them? How could having an intimate relationship with my negative emotions affect myself, my coaching, and my business?

What if an intimate relationship with negative emotions was available to me right now, what would I do next? Take some time to think about those powerful questions and make it personal. What would it be like for you to let yourself feel safe to feel all of your negative emotions? And maybe like I did when I first started out with frustration, pick one at a time to start practicing building an intimate relationship with a negative emotion and then pick the next one. For me it was anxiety and now it’s disappointment.

And I’m really teaching myself how to experience disappointment in my body and how to feel safe to experience it. And I’m watching my brain and how my brain’s reaction to feeling that emotion in my body so then I am really creating this intimacy to feel this emotion and disappointment and to even hear what my thoughts are when that emotion is in my body. And it’s such a relationship with myself building exercise. So, take these questions, think about them, pick an emotion to start getting intimate with, come back and listen to this and then pick another one and keep going.

Okay, that’s it for my guest host episode of the Make Money as a Life Coach podcast. Oh my gosh, thank you for being here with me and letting me share all my love for emotions with you on this episode. If you want to follow along on my journey as I continue to get intimate with my emotions in my life or you’re interested in what I do and how I help coaches lose weight by experiencing their emotions. You can find me on Instagram @lifecoachpaigeb or join my email list where I send out weekly emails by going to paigebowman.com/services.

And I also have a podcast, it’s called Weight Loss For Life Coaches, so if you’re a podcast listener, go check it out. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast and if you’re in 2K or 200K I will see you there.

                                                                                                                  

Hey, if you’re ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2k for 2k program where you’re going to make your first $2,000 the hardest part using my simple 5 step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.