It's not all about joy.

Click here to watch the video instead.

I come across as a pretty cheerful person, and I am. But that's not the whole truth. I can also be deeply moody. I used to think that was a problem, but now I don't. 

What my first year as a life coach (and my experience of coaching as a client) has taught me is that there's nothing at all wrong with "negative emotions." We all have negative feelings sometimes. And being able to feel and process those emotions is actually essential to being able to have and enjoy our positive emotions, too.  

It's all part of being a human, y'all. 

I really love this. Because, as I said, I can be pretty moody. But I also get to choose how I think about that. I even get to choose if I call it "moody" or not. (Turns out, I don't mind the word moody. I actually kind of enjoy it. It makes me feel like a movie character with a lot of eye makeup.) 

Even though I am always, always inviting y'all to look around and notice what *is* working, I don't want you to think that means that your negative feelings are bad. They aren't. They're just feelings. Totally normal human feelings that everyone feels sometimes.

And when we see them as part of life for us to navigate (and, ahem, choose our thoughts about), then they also don't seem so bad. Part of why negative feelings feel so hard is because we generally try not to feel them. We often resist them and/or try to make them stop. 

But that doesn't work. And the resistance actually makes the feelings feel a lot worse. (I would know. I used to be a mega resister. I also spent some time at the other end of the spectrum, where I would identify so strongly with the feelings that I wasn't able to process them and let them go.)

The ability to allow a negative feeling is kind of a superpower really. Because a lot of what we want in life is on the other side of a feeling we would prefer not to feel. Yes, I do teach that our thoughts determine how we feel about things. And they do. But sometimes, even choosing our thoughts on purpose, we still feel negative feelings. 

Like deciding to launch this business. I knew why I was doing it. I liked my reasons. I chose my thoughts and I felt excited and empowered. But I also definitely felt afraid. There is something to that old advice, "feel the fear and do it anyways." Most of us focus on the "do it anyways" part, and that's important. 

But the first part, the "feel the fear" part, that's important, too. The saying isn't pretend you're not afraid and do it anyways. It's not identify super strongly with your fear until you pass out and then try to do it anyways. It's FEEL it. 

That's how you actually process a feeling. You allow it to be there and you feel it. That's all. Yes, it's easier said than done. But that's because most of us don't have much practice at allowing and feeling feelings. (Many of us even struggle to do this with positive feelings. We chase them all the time, but when they show up, we're like OH NO how do I keep this, what if it ends soon??? And then we often do the same things we do when we're trying to avoid a negative feeling - have a glass of wine, scroll insta, watch some netflix, scream into the abyss, etc etc)

Feelings end. And that's actually great news. You can feel the fear and the shame and the disappointment and they actually won't kill you. You can start small and just practice feeling them for a few seconds or a minute. And you can also practice feeling joy and delight and love, and being ok with the fact that, yes, they will end, but that's ok, because you can also create them again. (This is where noticing what *is* working comes back in - you can use that to create these feelings and then practice feeling them and then to access them again later.)

While I like to teach about enjoying what is working, I want to be clear. This work is not all about feeling good. It's not about positive thinking. It's not about brightsiding. It's about noticing and enjoying what is working because all of our brain's have a natural bias to focus on the negative. Focusing on the positive is actually helping us see the world more clearly, not less. 

But we don't do it because bad feelings suck. We do it because good feelings feel good and they help us get shit done in life. 

And y'all, if you want to learn more about creating positive feelings on purpose and using them to fuel massive productivity, that shit works and I can help you with it. Schedule a consult and let's talk about it.

Wishing you all the best, always, 

Kori 

PS If you have a friend who's suffering from burnout, send them my quiz! It will make them laugh. It will make them cry. It will give them actual steps they can take to start feeling better TODAY.