Welcome to the Anything But Average podcast where I will teach you how to create a coaching business one step at a time. I’m Lindsey Mango, a life coach passionate about helping you create the life of your wildest dreams by creating a coaching business. Let’s get started.
Hello, and welcome back to another week and another episode of Anything But Average. Guys, how are you? I hope you’re having an amazing week. I have to tell you, I was listening to some very old podcast episodes this morning and I was cracking up. So, if you’re new here, my podcast used to be called Soul CEO, it was when my brand and what I offered was a little bit different than what I offer now.
And we are doing something very fun during my maternity leave, we’re doing a greatest hits. Not for the entire time, but for I believe it’s in June, we’re doing the greatest hits of this podcast including those episodes as well because there’s some really good ones on there. And we’re going to feature the best podcast episode, the most highly downloaded podcast episodes.
So for those of you who never listened to any of them you’re going to be getting some really new, fun content from back in the day. But what was so funny was the first episode, I listened to it and I literally had the thought, “This is so bad.” And I know it wasn’t, I know so many people got value out of it. But it was just so fun to hear how I’ve changed and my demeanor has changed and how I show up today versus then. There’s, of course, some consistencies, like my enthusiasm.
But I was just laughing and I was texting my business manager and I was like, “These are bad.” We found the best five that we’re going to use for the greatest hits and I just wanted to share with you guys that if your first version of something isn’t bad, like if you don’t look back on it and think it’s bad, you started too late.
I feel so much pride listening to those even though I’m so much better and my podcast is so much better now, because it took me starting that and doing that, I think I’ve been doing this for two or three years now, to get here today. So the first version of whatever you put out is not going to be great.
And it’s still going to impact people, it’s still going to change their lives. I know I have some listeners who have been here from the beginning. And that’ okay. And I just wanted to share that because I just thought it was so funny. And if you’ve been with me since Soul CEO, thanks for coming along on the ride.
All right, so today what I wanted to talk about is negative emotion. And I recently put up a story, and Instagram story, if you’re not following me go to lindseymango_, @lindseymango_. And I was talking about how negative emotion and your ability to feel it is one of your greatest assets in creating a highly successful business and creating the life that you really want.
And I find it funny to hear myself saying this because I feel like I was born an optimist. I tend to just be one of those people who leans towards the glass half full, a little bit more of the positive mentality. And when I first heard of negative emotion and feeling it, like I knew what it was but the idea in the coaching world of experiencing it, I was like, “What? Why? Why would I do that? Why would I choose to feel that when I could feel amazing all of the time?”
And over my journey and over my growth in life and business what I’ve realized is the value of negative emotion. And I never really knew what that was before. So if you’re hearing this and you’re kind of having resistance to it or you’re like, “Oh God, here we go.” I want to offer to lean in. And for those of you who lean the other direction on the spectrum, maybe you’re a little bit more negative, I hope that this episode gives you some more compassion for yourself and the ability to see that there is value in that.
So today what we’re going to talk about is why negative emotion is important and why it’s valuable. We’re going to talk about how to know when to feel it versus when to coach. I see that distinction, like the water is getting very muddy with that.
We’ve got these tools to change our thinking, to change how we’re feeling, so people can get very confused around am I indulging in negative emotion? Am I swimming around in it in an unuseful way, or do I need to feel it and experience it? We’re going to talk about the difference and how to know when to feel it versus when to coach on it.
We’re going to talk about how to practice sitting with your negative emotion. As well as how to use this, how to use negative emotion to help you grow your business and grow your life.
So, first up, why is negative emotion important? I forget who said this quote, but if there is no emotion you’re unwilling to feel, there is no thing that you will be unwilling to do. If you really think about it, anything that you’re afraid to do is because you’re afraid to feel the negative emotion that comes with it. That’s it.
Just sit with that for a second. That really blew my mind when I first heard that. It’s like investing, putting yourself out there, someone telling you that your idea to start a coaching business is dumb, someone saying no one a consult, a client getting mad at you and wanting a refund. Really, the worst thing that will happen, even if you lose all your money, which isn’t going to happen.
But if you lose all your money, it’s the worst day of your life, you have to give all of your clients their money back, the worst thing that will happen is that you will feel a negative emotion. And so if you learn how to experience negative emotions and build resilience and the ability to feel them and recognize that they literally aren’t going to kill you, even though your brain sometimes thinks that they will, you will be willing to do anything, and grow through anything.
And when you do that, your coaching business, your life will grow leaps and bounds. I also have found that the more I’m willing to experience my negative emotion, I actually feel negative a lot less often. Usually, the reason why we feel negative is because we resist it.
It’s because we don’t want to experience it. It’s because we keep it below the surface and what it does is it just sits there silently, but not actually silently. It impacts our everyday, it impacts our happiest moments because we don’t allow it. So I’ve found that the more I allow negative emotion, the happier I feel because I’m not afraid of my emotions. And I feel so free.
The other reason negative emotion is so valuable is because it creates a distinction between positive emotion. Really think about that, people who numb themselves out of their negative emotion actually numb themselves out of their positive emotion as well. You can only feel so positive and so good if you’re only capable of feeling so bad.
I think about it with an example of like loving someone. And with the upcoming birth of our daughter, I can’t imagine, I already love her so much and feel so much love for her. I can’t imagine what it’s going to feel like when she gets here. And the worst thing that could ever happen to me in my life is something happening to her.
And so I always think of negative emotion is the flip side of the coin. It’s the flip side of loving something so deeply and being able to experience such deep happiness and emotion. That’s always on the other side of it. So it gives your life such a fuller experience.
Now, when it comes to starting your coaching business, when it comes to creating the success in the coaching business you want, the more you can experience your negative emotions, the more you can allow them to be there, the more you build resilience. And again, the more you’ll be willing to do all the things you need to do in order to create the outcomes you want to create.
So I think of your ability to feel negative emotion like a muscle you build. And what’s so cool is, I forget the exact statistic, but they say that allowing a negative emotion in your body means the emotion will only last for 90 seconds. Like fully allowing it. Resisting it will make it last years. But allowing it, if you really allow it in your body, it will only last 90 seconds. You’ll see this as you implement what we talked about at the end of this episode.
So if you like to utilize this, if you want to go after your dream, if you want to start your coaching business and be willing to grow to new levels, the pathway through is being willing to face the negative emotions. Being willing to get curious about what negative emotion am I afraid to feel?
And when you can recognize it like that, you can see like I’m willing to feel shame. I’m willing to feel embarrassment. I’m willing to feel sad, disappointment. And when you’re willing to feel those things, you’ll be willing to do the things that are necessary for your growth.
So how do you know when to feel negative emotion versus when you’re indulging in it and need to coach yourself? Actually I think I’ve talked about this before and I teach this concept in Anything But Average, in the change your life section, I believe. Where you’re developing your skills as a coach because understanding this for yourself as well as your clients is really important.
I talk about the difference between dirty and clean pain. I actually learned this from one of my very good friends. And she was one of my coaches at one point, Danielle Savory. And she explained the difference between clean and dirty pain being, clean pain is the emotion you feel from a thought that is just like a normal response to something. It’s a thought you’re choosing, but it’s just like the natural thought.
I’ll give you guys examples because I know that’s kind of elusive and confusing. So let’s just say for example my dog died, I would have the thought, “I’m never going to see her again.” And the feeling I would have is sadness. That’s clean. That is a normal emotion I feel as a byproduct of something happening.
Dirty pain is what you make the emotion mean or what you make the circumstance mean. So let me give you another example of clean pain, it would be let’s just say you went all in for a launch or a goal in your coaching business and you didn’t hit it. And your thought is, “I didn’t hit my goal.” And the feeling you have is immense disappointment. That’s clean, right?
You have a circumstance, you have a thought about it, and you have a negative emotion. And when you see it, it’s not like, “Oh, this is a problem, this is something I need to work on.” It’s like, yeah, of course, I’m disappointed. I went all in for something, and I didn’t get it. It’s a normal thing.
Now, dirty pain is what you make it mean. So in that scenario, let’s just say you go all in for a goal, you don’t hit it, you feel the disappointment. And then you start to make not hitting the goal mean that you’re never going to be successful, or that nobody wants what you have to offer, that you’re an idiot, or you’re not good enough. That’s dirty pain. That’s taking the original thought and feeling and circumstance and piling on new thoughts and feelings to it.
We dig really deep into this in the program to identify and we coach on this a lot. Like I will point out I think you really need to feel your feelings versus I think you need to coach yourself on this and help you identify the difference. But dirty pain is what you want to get coaching on, it’s what you want to coach yourself on. Clean pain is about allowing the emotion.
The other thing you want to pay attention to when to feel it versus when to coach on it is are you resisting the emotion? Are you trying to coach yourself to get out of the emotion? Which means you need to feel it. Or have you felt it and then you find yourself getting stuck in the pattern of just going back to digging up the same well, digging up the same thoughts and emotions over and over and over again? That’s when you need to coach on it. That’s how you can identify the difference.
Now, the other thing with this that I actually didn’t even write down in my notes is that your ability to experience negative emotion is also going to be your ability to hold space for your clients’ negative emotion. Even your kids negative emotion.
I think one of the best thing we can do best things we can do for our kids and our clients, and I know I’m not a mom yet, like she’s not here yet, but is let them experience negative emotion. That’s how they build resilience. That’s how they build the ability to handle shit that life throws at you. It’s how they’ll be able and willing to go after their dream.
Now it’s the hardest thing ever. I feel like it’s hard for me to watch my clients fail and feel bad. It’s easy to want to save them from it. But it is very valuable. And so the resilience you build with it will also be reflected in your ability to coach your clients and hold space for your clients in that way. Which is so powerful and so important and help you identify when do you need to coach them on it? When do you need to let them feel it?
So if you’re you haven’t practiced feeling negative emotion, if you’re kind of like me and I feel like I’ve been taught my whole life, with sports especially it’s like it doesn’t matter how you feel you get in the game. So I’ve always been good at just kind of bouncing over my negative emotion as well as I’ve always thought I should just feel good all the time. And so I had to really practice feeling negative emotion. And so the next thing I want to talk about is how to practice feeling it.
And a simple way to do that is when you’re experiencing a negative emotion is to name it, and notice it in your body, and welcome it. I forget there’s this Rumi quote, I don’t know that I’m going to butcher it but it’s about like every emotion that comes to your door, welcome it in and sit and have tea with it. That’s how I want you to imagine feeling your negative emotion. Welcoming it in, letting it be there, noticing how it feels in your body.
And a practice you can do is describe it in your head or out loud the way you would if you were describing it to an alien. Like I feel tightness in my chest. I feel tightness like a knot in my stomach. I feel like hotness in my eyes. Whatever it is that really brings you into your body and teaches you how to be there with it.
What you will find is the more you do this, the more you will know exactly the emotion you’re feeling, the faster you’ll allow it, the quicker it will go out of your body. And again, we’re not trying to get it out of your body from a place of resisting it, we’re getting it out of your body from a place of allowing it and being there for the full human experience. So that’s how you can practice this.
And start practicing now, start practicing with the negative emotion that you feel every day. We are humans, living a human experience, we’re going to have bad things happen, we’re going to have bad days. So start right now, and the better you get at doing it now in your day to day life, the more you’ll be willing to take risks and do the thing that might bring up some of that negative emotion.
The last thing I want to share with you guys is how to use this to grow your coaching business, which I’ve kind of talked about throughout this entire episode. But the biggest thing I want to bring you back to is whatever your next step is, whatever your next goal is, wherever your next growth is, I want you to ask yourself and get really curious about what negative emotion you are avoiding the most.
Like if the worst case scenario happens with this next step that you’re going to take, what emotion are you most resistant to? I think everybody has their own kind of unique cocktail of emotions that they’re avoiding, what’s yours? Recognize what it is and ask yourself, am I willing to feel that? Am I capable of feeling it? Am I going to be okay if I feel it? Our brain makes mountains out of molehills.
When you bring this to the surface you’re going to be like, shame, yeah, I can feel that. It’s going to suck if that happens, but I’m capable of handling it. And again, you build that muscle, you build that capability by starting small. By starting in your everyday life. I will tell you guys your life is going to be so much richer when you allow yourself to feel negative emotion and you are going to be unstoppable.
Again, I feel so much more positive, full, deep emotion because of this. And I feel willing to do whatever it takes in my business because I am not afraid of the emotion that will come with it. I love you guys, negative emotion is the way through, and I will talk to you next week.
Make sure if you want to take this work deeper Anything But Average is not open for enrollment right now, but join the wait list at lindseymangocoaching.com/anythingbutaverage. We also have the mastermind opening up the last week of February. So stay tuned, I’ll be announcing open dates on the next couple episodes as well as where to go to apply to be a part of that mastermind.
I love you guys I will talk to you soon. Bye.
If you’re ready to take this work deeper and create your own coaching business, join us in Anything But Average where I will walk you through the step-by-step process to become a coach, start your coaching business, and start signing clients. Go to lindseymangocoaching.com/anythingbutaverage and I will see you on the inside.
