Embracing The Contrast of Emotions In Life and Business

But when I arrived home I found that sweet Gussie had passed away, likely moments before I arrived home. He was in his favorite spot, the glass door through which he looked out over the pond and kept watch over his domain.

I called my husband, Matt, sobbing. He traveled 2 hours back home from his hunting lease where he had planned to spend the weekend. Together, we grieved as we buried Gus on the hill under the ancient giant oak tree with our other dogs who went before him.

The Costs of Not Processing Emotions

God has made us able to feel all of the feels.

But the world teaches us that we should “power through”, “handle up on” and ignore our emotions.

And many entrepreneurs think of emotions as “touchy feeling” stuff that has no place in running a business.

Resisting Emotions Leads To Overwhelm and Exhaustion

That mindset of resistance leads us to:

• judge ourselves negatively when we experience negative emotions.

• rush to escape the heavy feelings.

• shove the hard feelings down and use willpower to take action over the top of those emotions.

This approach leaves us exhausted and overwhelmed. And, the results we produce when we are fighting our emotions while doing our work are, typically, less than stellar.

Avoiding Emotions Leads To Procrastination And Eroded Self-Trust

The other approach is to turn to distractions that temporarily numb out the emotions. That might look like:

• scrolling social,

• having a cocktail (or three),

• binging the latest season of Emily in Paris on Netflix

• Doing “busy work” that feels safe instead of tackling the project that moves the needle on our goals.

This approach gives a brief reprieve from feeling the emotion fully, but the nagging sensation stays just under the surface of our awareness which tempers the pleasure of the activities we engage in.

And, most importantly, it leaves us with negative outcomes.

We don’t accomplish the goal-related tasks we consciously want to be completing, and we may also create negative by-products from our buffering activities (hangovers, disconnected relationships, and guilt about procrastinating what is truly important to us).

Distracting and procrastinating erode our ability to trust ourselves to do what we say is most important to us.

The Benefits of Knowing How to Process Emotions

When we feel our feelings, instead of shoving them down or distracting ourselves from them, we get to fully experience all of life.

When we can be present with our emotions we can:

• Gain awareness of the thoughts creating those feelings.

• Decide, consciously instead of reactively, whether we want to be thinking and feeling the feelings or if there is an alternate perspective that would serve us better.

• Be present with the emotions and move through the experience so we can finish feeling the feeling and truly get on to a new experience.

This approach creates long-term well-being, higher productivity, and a lot less overwhelm, stress and exhaustion!

I am so grateful to have learned the skills for processing my emotions and my physical pain.

I’m here for it. I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Coaching isn’t only about achieving your goals, it is about being able to be fully present for your life.

Instead of numbing out with food, drink, scrolling social or overworking/over busyness, we learn to be fully present for all of the joy and all of the pain. And to do so in a way that empowers us to be aware of God’s presence and gifts in all of it.

That is the kind of contentment in all circumstances that Paul wrote about in Philippians 4.