Welcome to the Anything but Average Podcast, where I, life coach and mindset expert Lindsey Mango will teach you how to master your mind, yourself, and take massive action to create a life that blows your mind. Let’s get started.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Anything but Average. I am so excited for today’s topic and I’m just as excited as the first time because this actually is the second time I’m recording it. We had a little bit of an audio issue on the first one.
But I feel like it all happened in perfect time. I wanted to nail this episode even more for you guys, so it’s perfect. But here’s what I will tell you. It’s morning because yesterday, when I went to record it, we live in a brand-new neighborhood and they’re building houses of course, and there’s a perpetual beeping of a giant truck backing up literally the whole day.
So I was like, okay, that’s not going to work, let’s try something else. So it is 7am and I actually just died laughing because hopefully you can’t hear it, but a truck already got started. Luckily, it’s not the beeping noise, but it’s the dragging and crumbling dirt noise, but we’re just going to have to roll with it because it’s 7am and they’ve already started and I have got to get this episode out for you guys.
So I apologize for any extra noise ahead of time, but I’m guessing my amazing producer will be able to knock it out, especially since it’s not a beeping noise. So let’s jump into today’s topic. I wrote a post last week that talked about me eating brownies out of the garbage can.
Like no joke, I threw brownies, homemade brownies that I made away because I was like, stop eating them. And then I proceeded later in the day to literally dig them out of the garbage can, which it’s not a moment I’m proud of, but it’s something that is so important that kind of – well, is the reason why I’m teaching you today’s topic.
Because it wasn’t actually about the brownies in the garbage can. It was about why I was eating the brownies out of the garbage can that matter. And it was so interesting because so many of you guys who follow me on social media, if you don’t already, go do that now on Instagram, @lindseymango_, you said, “Oh my gosh, I’ve done this. I’ve done this with pizza, I’ve done this with cookies, I’ve totally done this before.”
And so I think in a way, it gave us all an opportunity to kind of laugh about this and recognize we’re all human and we’ve all done things like this. But what I wanted to offer you guys, and what I want to teach you today is what’s called buffering.
And this is actually a Brooke Castillo concept and a personal growth concept, but Brooke Castillo named it buffering. And buffering is something that steals our dreams every day. All the time. So today, we’re going to talk about what is buffering and how to be aware of it and how to notice when it’s happening, and why it is actually stealing our dreams.
And I want to actually use this episode as an opportunity to inspire you to be courageous to work through this. Of course, I want to do that on every episode, but you’ll understand it more when we get into this episode why I want to create some excitement and motivation around moving through this topic.
So let’s get started. What is buffering? Buffering is the act of doing something to avoid a negative emotion. So it’s something we do when we distract ourselves from feeling something that we don’t want to feel. Now, it can look like so many different things.
It can look like eating brownies out of the garbage can, it can look like overeating, it can look like overdrinking or just drinking. It can look like exercise. So sometimes it can actually kind of look good on the surface. It can look like partying, going out with guys that you don’t want to go out with. It can really be anything.
But if you didn’t notice from that kind of list of things, it’s typically an overdoing of something. You’re overdoing it to an extreme. Now, it’s not the actual act of having a cocktail, your girl loves a good cocktail. There’s nothing wrong with that. I love desserts. I love all of the things. I love amazing food.
But what makes it buffering is when you do something to avoid a negative emotion. Now, you might be hearing this and you might be thinking like, okay, what’s the big deal? Who really wants to feel a negative emotion? I literally have thought that for most of my life. I was taught like, let’s avoid all of that. There’s no reason. We should all just pretend that we’re happy.
And I promise, even though you guys follow me and see me on the highlight reel, I do generally have an optimistic, positive kind of demeanor. I of course experience negative emotion because I’m a human having a human experience.
But when we’re doing things to avoid our negative emotion, what we’re not doing is experiencing our negative emotion. And what we’re usually doing is perpetuating some sort of cycle that’s not serving us, like overeating is not serving us. It’s usually what causes us to gain weight and keep it on for years and years and years. Or overdrinking usually leads to decisions that don’t align with our higher self and the life that we want to create.
So it’s like, it’s a double whammy because we’re avoiding the negative emotion but then we’re typically perpetuating some sort of cycle that’s not helping us live the life that we really want to live. But why is buffering stealing our dreams? How does that even make sense?
Of course, I’m going to explain it to you. So the reason why buffering is keeping us from our dreams is because the negative emotion that is happening within us is usually happening for a reason. Our bodies, our inner guidance, our minds are trying to tell us something.
They’re trying to show us something, and our negative emotion is actually like a doorway to growth. It doesn’t mean something’s gone wrong necessarily. It’s an opportunity. So just to give you the example with my brownie example, explain it through my brownie example.
I, at that time in my life, felt totally lost. I felt like I wasn’t good enough. I felt like deep down, I knew I had so much more potential than the life that I was living, and that pain, that hole I felt was something that I didn’t want to feel.
And so when I was distracted all day with brownies that were sitting in the garbage can and thinking about them and wanting to eat them, and then digging them out and going ham on the rest of them, I wasn’t feeling the negative emotion that was trying to tell me, hey, your life is not what you expected, your life is not what you wanted and you deep down don’t think that you’re enough.
And that was the gateway to my growth. That was the opportunity to be like, hey, I’m ready to do something about this. Now, it all happened in perfect time. But the reason why I’m sharing this with you guys is that when you buffer, you also steal your opportunity to be aware of where you need to grow or the things that your inner guidance is trying to tell you or that your emotions are trying to tell you.
So you do something to avoid it. But I want to offer you guys the courage and the inspiration to lean into that. Because when I finally felt that pain, when I finally felt that gap, I was just so willing to do whatever it took. Like for me, it was a rock bottom moment when I finally just had that awakening of, I’m living my life way below my potential.
And that’s when I finally was like, nothing is going to stop me from doing that, and that was the catalyst for my creating the life that I want. The life that I have today. So I want to offer you guys this just opportunity to lean into your negative emotion, to allow it to be there.
Now, there’s a previous episode on feeling your negative emotions, so that will be very helpful with this as well. But I want you guys to see that your negative emotion is trying to tell you something. Your negative emotion is there for a reason.
And if you keep buffering over it, you might be avoiding your moment where you finally decide that you are going to change your life. That this is it, that this is a problem and you are willing to do whatever it takes to change your life.
Now, here’s the other thing it will also do is it will help you build emotional resilience. When you avoid negative emotion, you avoid your opportunity to build emotional resilience, which is the ability to manage and handle and work through and be resilient through negative emotion.
Every time negative emotion comes up, if you avoid it, you aren’t giving yourself, your body, your mind, the opportunity to realize like, hey, I’m okay, I didn’t die from this negative emotion. And if you really think about it, anything we’re trying to avoid in our life is just because we’re trying to avoid a negative emotion.
Like really think about that. Failure, doubt, debt, rejection, heartbreak, death. The truth is all we actually want to do is avoid the negative emotion that will come as a byproduct of that.
So if you can feel the emotion, if you can see how resilient you are and grow that muscle and grow your emotional resilience, you are going to be willing to do the things that it takes to live a meaningful life, to stretch yourself and grow, to fail forward and to keep going because now you can handle it and you realize you can handle it.
But when you buffer, you don’t know if you can handle it. And that is also what is required for growth. That is another reason why buffering is stealing our dreams.
So what I want to offer you guys today is to pay attention first to what are your buffers. What’s your go-to thing to help you avoid a negative emotion? And negative emotion could just be like, boredom. I can’t tell you guys how many things I’ve tried to do to avoid boredom.
That just never felt like a good or productive emotion for me. I want you to pay attention. What are your buffers? What do you do when you want to avoid your negative emotion?
Then I want you to start practicing recognizing when you’re about to do it and asking yourself why. What negative emotion do I need to feel right now? What do I need to allow myself to experience right now? And then eventually, practice experiencing it. Practice pausing and not executing or following through on the buffer.
When you do that, you are going to grow so much. And the last thing I will tell you guys is that the human experience, being human on this planet isn’t just about feeling good emotions. I know that sounds crazy. And it used to sound crazy to me.
But part of the human experience is negative emotion. The reason why you feel sadness when you lose somebody you love is because you loved them. And love is such a beautiful thing, but it also comes at the potential of heartbreak. But we’re willing to do it anyway because we want to feel sad when we lose somebody we love.
So I want you guys to think about the fact that feeling negative emotion and not buffering over your negative emotion will actually add more to your human experience. Because when you are capable of feeling negative emotion, you are also capable of feeling a higher level of positive emotion.
So what are your buffers? What feelings are you trying to avoid? Why do you want to be courageous to feel them? And what opportunity lies on the other side of you doing this work? That’s what this work is about. You’re courageous enough to do it. You’re courageous enough to handle it.
And when you do, when you realize that you are not living your life up to your potential and you are willing to do whatever it takes to make a change, that’s when I will be waiting for you on the inside of Anything but Average. That’s when the community of women who are all changing their life every single day is waiting for you.
Because that’s when you’re going to finally be all in and decide and then I can help you walk through all of the processes, all of the tools that you need to change your freaking life. Because you only get one. Why buffer your way through it? Be here, be all in for the whole human experience.
When you are ready to jump into Anything but Average, go to lindseymangocoaching.com/anythingbutaverage and I will see you on the inside and I will talk to you guys next week. Bye.
If you want to take this work even deeper and coach with me in my signature program, go to lindseymangocoaching.com/anythingbutaverage. In this program, I will teach you how to take this work and create results so you can have a life that blows your mind in the areas of money, purpose, health, lifestyle, and romance. I can’t wait to see you on the inside.
