00:00 

Well, hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 358, "Feelings are Information and Information is Power." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:24 

Well, hello there, my sweet friends. So glad to have you here today. Before we jump in today, I want to remind you that Talk with Tanya is the second Tuesday of every month at 2 Eastern, 12 Mountain. The next one of those is on May 13th and that is just a free webinar where you can show up. We talk about whatever y'all bring to the show. If you want coaching, if you want to dive deeper into a topic, if you have questions about my divorce, about my dating, about my marriage, happy to go there and share information with you. We've had some great, great topics going on there. We'd love to see you there. If you want to participate in that, you can go to my website, tanyahale.com. Go to the "group coaching tab" and from there you will be able to find the Talk with Tanya where you can get the Zoom link for that. 

01:18 

Alright, also just a quick reminder that I've started in the show notes of your, wherever you listen to your podcast, you can scroll down to the show notes and I have several podcasts around the same topic that I have done that you can listen to. So if you want to learn more about it, if you want to go a little bit broader, a little bit deeper, that's a great place to find some more information. And also, I want to start doing some question and answer podcast episodes. So if you have questions for me, you again can just go to my website. You can go to the "contact me" tab at the top and just send me a note and ask me some questions and we will answer those on the podcast. Alright, I think that's all I wanna chat about before we jump into today's topic. 

02:09 

Today we're talking about feelings are information and information is power. So I don't know about you, but I grew up in a home where we didn't talk about emotions ever, except to be told that if I was going to cry, that I'd be given something to cry about. Our parents' generation didn't generally do difficult emotions, so we were taught to shove them down, to ignore them, and move into eternal optimism with a can-do attitude. And I have done this like a pro for the vast majority of my life. In fact, I've done it so well that even now, after six years of focusing intently on my emotions, I still have to intentionally focus on allowing myself to feel the more difficult emotions that come up. And often I still don't even notice when I'm shoving them aside. And I don't think I'm alone in struggling to feel these more difficult emotions. And this is actually a problem. 

03:04 

For a lot of years, I thought it was a superpower, something that made me more strong and more capable and even better than other people. That was my one-up tendency showing up, right? I saw my natural tendency to avoid and dismiss difficult emotions as something that kept me from a lot of pain and heartache and drama. And I mean, actually that might be true. 

03:27 

It probably did keep me from pain and heartache and drama. But the flip side of this is that it also kept me from a lot of deep love and intimate interactions with people I loved. It kept me from the vulnerability necessary to create deep connection and intimacy. And my relationships defaulted to shallow and often insignificant because of it. And I still struggle with this. And I'm constantly working to keep difficult emotions on my radar so I can connect with others in more meaningful ways. And sometimes I'm successful and other times I'm not. And even more significant for me, it has kept me from truly knowing myself over the years. It kept me at arm's distance from who I really was and am and who I was and am capable of becoming. It kept me unaware of struggles and challenges that I was experiencing. It kept me unaware of thoughts that were creating outcomes I didn't really want. And it kept me in a perpetual place of judging others for their inability to also rise above the difficult emotions to what I considered a higher plane. 

04:36 

Now I understand that this is not a superpower, but a super inhibitor when it comes to living a deep and meaningful life full of intimate relationships. This disempowers me from being able to create the types of relationships that I value. I also know that there are a lot of people who feel difficult emotions and tend to get swallowed up in them, sort of the opposite the end of the spectrum from me. And these people tend to get stuck wallowing in their difficult emotions, feeling like a victim to whatever circumstance caused the emotion, or whatever person created the circumstance. And they spin and spin and spin, unable to see a way out or a way forward. And this is a difficult position to put ourselves in as well because it also disempowers us. It creates a feeling of helplessness and it keeps us stuck in the problem. And neither of these responses on either end of the spectrum moves us into the healthier response, which is stepping into our power and taking responsibility for what is actually going on inside of us, learning what these emotions have to teach us and nudging our trajectory onto a healthier path. 

05:47 

So recently I came across some content on Instagram that talked about the powerful information in our difficult emotions. And it was such an important reminder to me about why I do this work for myself and for others around trying to experience more of these emotions. Because there is some incredible information for me in my difficult emotions around my thoughts that create them. And the more intimately I get to know and connect with myself, the greater my capacity to step into connection with others. The biggest piece of information can come when we ask the question, what thought creates this emotion? When we can go inside ourselves to find that answer, we get a clear understanding of who we are and what we value. And from this place, we can decide whether this emotional response is one that feels in alignment with who we want to be or whether it doesn't. And from this place of better information, we are more empowered to be who we really want to be. 

06:56 

So I wish that I had the Instagram site that I got this information from, but unfortunately when I screenshotted these posts, I didn't screenshot who said it, but they're brilliant. So I'll read to you what the original post said, and then I'm gonna just chat about it for just a little bit. And I think you're going to find these super insightful. So the first difficult emotion that they talked about was anger. And they said, "anger is energy with a purpose. It builds when something challenges your values, disrespects your boundaries, or disrupts your sense of justice. Instead of letting it take over, turn it into change." 

07:39 

So anger is an emotion that I have really resisted over the years because I felt like it made me a bad person. And I didn't want to be someone who would yell and scream and hurt others. And I absolutely didn't want to be someone who threw things, or broke things, or physically hurt others. And working with my own coach a few years ago, we were talking about my resistance to feeling anger for these reasons, and she reminded me that just because I feel anger doesn't mean I have to act in hurtful ways. It's putting that space between the feeling and the action line. I can put a pause in there and choose how to respond to that. I could use that anger to better understand myself and my values, actually. I can also use my understanding of that anger to move into behaviors that I feel will make the world and my world a better place. I can begin to understand how other people crossing boundaries disrupts my values when I look at the anger over people crossing boundaries. 

08:43 

For example, when a family member shows up super late to a family event that I planned, and I feel some anger. Learning to address my anger by figuring out what the thoughts are that caused my anger is a fabulous place to start. My thought might be, "they should be on time." And then digging a little deeper to the thought under that would ask, "well, why should they be on time?" To which I might answer, "because that's how people show others that they respect and love them." So notice that that's tapping into my values of respect and love. And from there I can ask, "well, is that true? Is that how other people show respect and love?" Well, maybe it's true for me that that's a way that I can show love and respect for others. But even stepping just a few steps back, I can see that it's probably not true for everyone. 

09:35 

So I can go from a place of feeling angry because I feel like they're letting me know that they don't love and respect me, to being able to offer more grace for the different ways that people see and approach life. Some people don't associate being on time with love and respect at all. And it's not right or wrong. It's just different. For me, that would help me to show them more love and respect for their different viewpoint. That is me using the difficult emotion of anger to create a change to a more compassionate me. 

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10:12 

But let's take a little bit more serious of an issue. Maybe I watch a documentary about child sex trafficking and I get really angry. Again, I want to look at the thought that creates this anger. And for me, it would be something like children need to be protected from predators like this. Following up with the question, why? Starts to tap into my values because human life is precious and these children are being victimized by selfish and evil motives. So I see in my values a desire to protect those who can't protect themselves. Do I want to be angry about child sex trafficking? Okay, yes, I do. That that would be a topic that I would say, "yeah, I want to be angry about that." And when used in a constructive way, a way that creates change, that anger might move me to be part of the solution. So I might make a monetary donation to a reputable institution that fights child sex trafficking, or I might even choose to volunteer time to a local institution, or even get certified to help in a more hands-on type of way. 

11:18 

Again, the original thought was, "anger is energy with a purpose. It builds when something challenges your values, disrespects your boundaries, or disrupts your sense of justice. Instead of letting it take over, turn it into change." So when we choose to understand where the anger is coming from, and then use that information to create change, the anger empowers us to act in closer alignment with our values. Okay, so see how the feeling is information, the feeling of anger is information about my values and that information I can then turn in to change. I can then use that information to make a change in myself or in situations that I'm involved in. 

12:07 

Okay, so the next difficulty motion I want to talk about is guilt. So this is what, this is the quote that I received. "Guilt is a sign that your actions don't align with your values. Let it guide you, not punish you." Okay, so I love that Brene Brown talks about how guilt is focusing on the behaviors rather than on our character. When we attack our character, "I am bad. I shouldn't feel this way or do this." When we do that, we move into shame. And this is a place that says that we are bad. When we can instead focus on our behaviors, "what I did was bad," we feel more guilt and guilt can be productive in that it lets us know that something we are doing is out of alignment. When we can slow down and find the thought behind the guilt, that will help us to understand how we can move into responsibility. "I feel guilt because I'm thinking that I hurt my friend when I dismissed her comment and I don't want to hurt others." Why don't I want to hurt others? Because I value kindness and being a builder of people rather than a wrecker of people. And so then how do I get back in alignment? How do I take responsibility? I choose to circle back around, to apologize, to acknowledge my behavior. So this place of responsibility is powerful for us. It makes us the hero of our own stories rather than the victim who is at the mercy of others. 

13:43 

Okay, third one, frustration. "Frustration is the feeling of being being stuck between effort and outcome. It's a sign that something isn't working. Either shift your approach or your expectations." Again, start with this thought behind the frustration, which might be something like, "what is wrong with me that I can't figure this out?" Here, the follow-up would be, "why do I think there's something wrong with me?" To which I might answer, "because I always get stuck." Okay, and then we can follow that up with, "well, is that true? Do I always get stuck? Is it true that I'm not capable of figuring it out?" And this can lead us to realizing that, you know, honestly, I really do figure things out most of the time. And realizing that maybe I have unrealistic expectations and that I shouldn't have to try so hard or that I shouldn't fail along the way. This is another path to walk down to see why we might be thinking those things. Are these negative self-talk patterns that I can clean up or we might even feel frustration with someone else. "I always have to be the one to initiate getting dinner started." Again asking if that's true or why that's a problem can help us understand ourselves more clearly. Maybe we determine it's a problem because we don't feel like we're being treated like an equal. 

15:07 

Okay, so taking responsibility we get to decide how can I step into equality here or how can I ask for different behavior? We can have a discussion with our partner about what we would like to change and why. We can set a plan for who is in charge of dinner or we could even decide that we actually don't mind being in charge of dinner because then we get to eat what sounds good that night. So a lot of options, but looking deeper into the frustration to what's behind it, what are the thoughts behind the frustration, empowers us to find a resolution for our frustration rather than just spinning. 

15:47 

Alright, next difficult emotion: jealousy. "Jealousy isn't about wanting what someone else has; it's about feeling like you can't have it. Instead of comparing, ask yourself what's actually stopping you." Now jealousy really gets a bad rap because it is associated with not wanting the other person to have the great things that they have but maybe that's not actually it. For many of us maybe it's actually a way of determining what our hearts really desire. We get to turn that jealousy outward and blame or attack the other person and compare ourselves with them, or we can turn it inward and realize that we have unfulfilled desires and then choose to step into figuring out how can I move my life toward fulfilling those desires. Let's not be so afraid of feelings like jealousy that we think because we think that they're inherently evil that we don't find the amazing information about desires of our hearts in the emotion. Jealousy isn't inherently evil, rather it helps us to understand ourselves at a deeper level. And understanding ourselves at that deeper level is empowering because then we can step into creating the change that we want. 

17:07 

Okay, here's another difficult emotion: overthinking. Here's the quote, "overthinking is your brain searching for control in uncertainty. Trust that you can handle what comes instead of exhausting yourself trying to control it." So overthinking is really a fear-based emotion. It's a place where we are doubting our strength and our capacity to move our lives forward. Question those thoughts. Are you really incapable or do you just not know the way forward yet? Your answer to this question is powerful information to understanding your sense of self better and it is really powerful to starting to understand what can I control and what can I not control. If you trusted yourself that you will figure it out, what value does that align with for you? What would you need to believe about yourself to move into a space of certainty? These are the types of follow-up questions that will empower you to be a creator in your life and not just an experiencer. 

18:15 

Alright, next one: grief. "Grief is love with nowhere to go. Let yourself feel it. Trying to push it away only makes it heavier." The value behind grief is generally something like love. What a blessing that you have loved someone or something deeply enough to feel grief when they are gone. Grief is an emotion that can be really difficult to feel and yet it's one of the easier ones to connect to powerful values. We grieve, we mourn, because we have lost something valuable and significant in our lives. Allowing the grief to sit in our soul can be healing and empowering if we don't resist it. 

19:00 

Another difficult emotion: fear. "Fear is a sign that your mind is trying to protect you and not everything unfamiliar is dangerous. Learn to tell the difference between a real threat and discomfort that leads to growth." So all of us feel fear and many of us have learned to protect ourselves from it by giving into it, by catastrophizing the outcome, by resisting it, or by morphing it into something else like anger. And often we just don't even question the fear; we just move into these protective measures. And yet as with the other difficult emotions there is great information if we will slow down and ask some questions. What are you really afraid of? And if that happens, then what? And if that happens, then what? And keep following that line of questioning, if that happens, then what, until you get to the point that your brain creates a place of responsibility. 

19:58 

Remember your primitive brain is conditioned to see everything that is unfamiliar as something you need protection from, and it will create fear. Fear will show up in avoidance, procrastination, and buffering. Just pay attention and realize that often we really aren't in danger. Our brain is just perceiving things as dangerous. For example, if you need to speak in front of a large group of people, you may feel a lot of fear. When you dig down, you realize you're really just afraid of being rejected by your peers, because what if they don't like what you have to say? We really aren't in danger when we're speaking in front of that group of people. It's our thoughts being rejected. That help us feel so out of control. So though in caveman days being rejected by your peers really was a life or death situation, nowadays it just isn't. It doesn't feel pleasant, it's a difficult emotion, but we're not really in danger. 

21:04 

Learning to question your fear, digging until you can see it for what it is. That's your foundation of power in being able to take responsibility. There was a time when Sione and I were dating that he was like "I'm just a little bit scared here...what if we don't work out? Like when we were getting more serious," and I said "well you know what, what if I decide that I don't want to be with you?" And he says "well then this would happen." I said "and then what?" And he answered that and then what? And we dug down and, I mean, when we got about four or five layers down he was like "oh, then I guess I would just pick up the pieces and move on. I think I would be okay." Like that fear, when we dug down to it, he realized that "oh I would be capable of managing the discomfort, of managing the disappointment." And we can do that. We just have to really we just have to see the fear, acknowledge it, and address it. And then take responsibility for what's going on. 

22:08 

Okay another difficult emotion: sadness. "Sadness is your mind slowing down to catch up with what's happened. Letting yourself feel it isn't weakness, it's processing." Okay, so I love this idea that sadness is our brain processing. We haven't gotten the outcome we desired. We had expectations that didn't play out and we wanted something different than what we're getting. The information behind sadness is understanding what we wanted and why not having it makes us sad. For 

example if one of your adult children decides to cut you off, of course you would be sad. You love your children more than life, it seems, and being emotionally distanced from them hurts and you feel sad. The sad is letting you know how much you love them. 

22:56 

That's the information. It's letting you know that the desire of your heart is to have a close relationship with them, and that's a beautiful thing. It would be more challenging in such a situation to not feel sad and to instead feel, I don't know, indifferent. Our value is to love our children cleanly and unconditionally and to have a meaningful relationship with them and when they don't want the same thing, of course we're sad. Learning to allow the sad and to show up for the sad, giving it an honored space in our heart, helps us to process it and empower ourselves to show up in alignment with our values rather than lashing out in hurtful ways. 

23:38 

In the example we talked about, if when an adult child distances themselves from you, it can be easy to go into passive aggressive behaviors, saying manipulative things, being manipulative. And yet that is not in alignment with our values. As we learn to accept instead the sadness and say, "listen, this makes me sad because I love them and my power comes from treating them in loving ways, not from digressing into petty and passive aggressive ways," that's how we become empowered. 

24:15 

Okay, another difficult emotion is loneliness. "Loneliness is a craving for connection, a nudge to reconnect with those who make you feel seen and understood." So many of us will want to make feeling lonely mean that we are weak and pathetic, right? We have the thought that, "oh, I just shouldn't need other people." But when we can see that it is really telling us that we value connection and that we desire connection, it can be easier to move into stepping into the responsibility of figuring out how to find people to be connected to. 

24:53 

And that's where we become empowered by taking the responsibility. When we avoid or dismiss our loneliness, it sits underneath the surface and the thoughts of us being weak and pathetic that nobody values us, that nobody sees us or wants us, those continue to play in our mind and make us feel like a victim. Choosing to move into solving the problem of the lack of connection feels empowering and possible. So again, learning to dig into what's under the emotion empowers us to take responsibility and respond appropriately and in empowering ways. 

25:31 

Another difficult emotion is disappointment. "Disappointment is a sign that something didn't meet your expectations. Adjust, don't shut down." So we talked about disappointment a few months ago with the "Entitled Expectations" podcast. You'll find that in the show notes if you want to go back and refer to that. When we have unexpressed expectations, we are bound to feel disappointment. When you feel disappointed, take the time to figure out what your expectations were and decide whether they were expressed or not so you can know how to move forward. If your expectations were unexpressed, do you then ask for what you want? Or do you need to change your expectations if the other person is not interested in addressing your desires? Or is a relationship where your want matches don't align? Or do we just need to drop our expectations altogether? Any one of those helps us to feel more empowered because we are choosing what to do with that difficulty motion. We're taking responsibility for how to move forward. 

26:40 

Okay, and the last one we're gonna talk about today is boredom. "Boredom is unused creative energy. It's not that there is nothing to do. It's that your brain wants something meaningful." This is one of my favorite quotes from this section that I found. So it can be easy when we feel boredom to buffer with food or scrolling social media or binge watching things that distract us from the boredom, but that leave us still feeling empty. When we can understand that our brain is actually craving meaning and purpose, it changes the whole view of what's going on. Of course your primitive brain wants the thing that uses the least amount of energy, that avoids pain and that creates the greatest amount of pleasure. But things that do that for us are rarely things with meaning and purpose. That's the mindful eating or snacking. That's the scrolling on social media. That's the binge watching until we just feel so lethargic and icky that we can't do anything. It's those types of behaviors where we avoid the feeling of of boredom. 

27:54 

But meaningful and purposeful things require prefrontal cortex engagement rather than just letting our primitive brain run rampant. But we find so much more fulfillment and satisfaction in doing things that feel significant and important to us, those prefrontal cortex things. So when we feel boredom, choosing instead to say, "what can I do that feels meaningful and purposeful" puts us in a place of responsibility, a place of empowerment, rather than feeling like we are at the whim of our primitive brain wanting to do something to just quickly cover up the feeling of boredom. 

28:35 

OK, so here's a summary. I saw this idea once that said that "feelings are like children. You don't want them driving the car, but you shouldn't stuff them in the trunk either." Isn't that great? Okay, so difficult feelings are important because of the information they give us about how to live a life that is more in alignment with our values and that feels authentic and meaningful. With this information we can change the trajectory, we can problem solve, we can make necessary adjustments to live more in alignment with who are and how we really want to be. Our instinctual reaction and our societal trained reaction is often to be dismissive, to ignore, to resist the difficult emotions, but learning to slow down, to become aware of the emotion, to ask the questions, to find the thought behind the emotion, to dig deeper into what these emotions are telling us about ourselves and about our desires and about our values is insightful and important work. Because when we understand what they are telling us, we become empowered to move forward in a way that will create the life we really want. And living this more intentional life is one of the best parts of growing up. 

30:01 

Okay, my friend, that's going to do it for me today. If you would love some personal help for me to learn how to find, to work through any of these things we talk about in your relationships, you can go to tanyahale.com. You can go to the "free consultation" tab. You can sign up for a free 90 minute coaching and consultation session. And this is where I will coach you and we will also talk about coaching and how it could work for you and why it might just be a really good fit and you can make that decision. I do individual coaching. I also do couples coaching, which has been a new thing that I've added this last year and it has been amazing and fun and super engaging. And I've loved that. I do anywhere from divorce coaching, any stage of divorce to dating coaching to also, "I don't want to get divorced, but this relationship is making me insane" coaching. And it all is so valuable when we can learn to slow down, move into finding the thoughts, find what's going on, see our own dysfunctional patterns of behavior. This is so, so important for us. Okay. 

31:15 

And the last thing I would just like to ask a favor of you. If you have not left me a review, will you please, if you have Apple or Spotify, go on and leave me a review. That really helps other people to find this. And also, if you would share this with people who you feel would benefit from the content that I put out. I just love being able to share information that has changed my life and my world. And I hope to be able to just really help people and make the impact in helping relationships be better, helping us to find our balance and to move forward in a way that just feels amazing. So if you can leave a review, if you can share this with people, you can share it on social media, you can just copy the link and email it to people, all those things are great options. 

32:06 

Okay, that's gonna do it for us today. I wish you the best of weeks. Have an awesome one and I will see you next time, bye. 

32:16 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.