Friday Reflections - When feeling bad, feels good. 🙃

Earlier this week, I woke up in a down mood. 

The night before, my son had gotten mad at me and said some unkind things (e.g., I hate you and wish you were never my mom 🥺) because I took away TV privileges as a consequence of his choices. I know he’s only 5 and doesn't really mean those things, but they stung anyway and that feeling lingered into the next morning.

I went to the gym that morning and was looking forward to time by myself to literally and figuratively work it out.

So when approximately one minute into my workout, someone took the treadmill directly next to me despite there being many empty treadmills all around me, I felt extremely irritated 😡. Didn’t she know the unspoken rule to always leave one empty machine between you and another person if there’s the option to do that?(!)

As I felt my temperature rising, more from my limbic system taking over than any physical effort I was exerting, I had a brief moment of lucidity wherein I remembered I was still at choice:

1. I could choose anger and stay on that specific treadmill, stewing in my self-righteous outrage at how inconsiderate she was.

2. I could choose to remain irritated but take personal responsibility and simply move to another machine.

3. I could choose non-judgement, release my irritation, and stay where I was, since the treadmill she chose was, in fact, available and she had every right to take it.

4. I could choose non-judgement, release my irritation, and move to another machine anyway to honor my need for my own space.

To be honest, I chose #2 because that’s what I had capacity for at the moment. 

We can’t always control what happens to us. But we can always choose whether we react or respond.

One of the most helpful ways to use the “space” Frankl refers to and increase our likelihood of responding instead of reacting is to consider our desired outcome(s) for the situation at hand. 

When we know where we’re trying to end up, we can work backwards to consider what choice(s) will be most likely to get us there.

In my gym scenario, my initial desired outcome was to workout by myself.

Recognizing that, choice #1 in the list above obviously wouldn’t have resulted in my desired outcome. Choice #3, while at face value may seem like a “good” choice, also would not have resulted in my desired outcome.

When we lose sight of our desired outcomes, it can be tempting to succumb to our emotions or make choices that appear “good” or “right” but don’t actually get us to where we’re trying to go.

Choices #2 and 4 would both enable me to work out by myself, albeit with different emotional experiences. Some might be tempted to again label different emotional experiences as “good” or “bad”.

But here’s the thing. 

There are no good or bad emotional experience. Sometimes it actually feels good to feel bad. 

Sometimes we just need to feel our feelings so that they can move in, through, and out of us. Emotions are neutral and it’s up to us to choose whether those emotions serve us or not (and by the way, when we refuse to acknowledge our emotions, then they tend to get stuck inside us and leak out in unproductive ways 😬).

In choosing choice #2, I honored my first-level desired outcome of working out by myself and my second-level desired outcome to continue feeling irritated. And then I had another choice: feel the irritation in a way that served me or feel it in a way that limited me.

I could use the irritation to fuel my workout or I could use it as an excuse to be lazy. Which brought me back to the original question: what is my desired outcome here?

My desired outcome was to have a productive workout, so I blasted my music and channeled all my catabolic energy into physical exertion.

When we ground ourselves in our desired outcomes, we increase our capacity to make aligned choices from a place of responsiveness versus reactivity.

So my invitation to curiosity for you today is:

• Next time you’re feeling irritated, slighted, inconvenienced, etc, ask yourself:

  • What are some choices I could make in this moment?

  • What is my desired outcome for this situation?

  • Which choice would be most aligned with that desired outcome?

  • Which choice would be least aligned with that desired outcome?

  • How can I channel whatever I choose to feel in a way that serves me instead of limiting me?

Need help looking at your situation from a different perspective so you can make different choices? Let's chat. 

Stay curious,

Jessica

Click here to subscribe and receive future emails directly and here to read past editions