Tag: emotions

040: April Q&A

Posted on by jplatt27

 

This month’s Q&A questions come from a friend and from one of my coaching clients. In this episode of Love Always, Jo I’ll be answering questions about resources on people pleasing and worrying thoughts and anxiety.

 

Links:

Recommended Books:

Quotes:

  • Start setting boundaries in your life
  • Empaths have people-pleasing tendencies because they can feel other people’s energy like it’s their own
  • Allow yourself time to process your day

Journal Prompts:

  • Where might you need stronger boundaries?
  • If you were to give your inner worrier a name, what would she be called?

 

Do you have any book recommendations about people pleasing?

 

A friend texted me this question recently and I thought it might be helpful for you too.

 

I replied: “You mean like this?” With a wink emoji and a picture of the book “The Disease to Please, Curing the People Pleasing Syndrome”

 

And then, for good measure, I added “Boundaries” by Henry Cloud.

 

People pleasing is an inner critic thing, and often people with an inner critic who wants them to focus on other people before themselves lack boundaries and it’s good to be reminded what boundaries are and how they can serve you.

 

I also added “Become the most important person in the room” by Rose Rosetree. This is a book for empaths. Empaths are people who can feel other people’s energy like it’s their own.

 

These three topics, people-pleasing, boundaries, and empaths are very closely related. Empaths have people-pleasing tendencies because they can feel other people’s energy like it’s their own. So, if they can make the people around them happy, they’ll feel happy, because the other person’s energy is merged with their own and it’s hard to tell the difference. But, after too much of this, you will get exhausted. Because even though it doesn’t feel like you have needs, you do. And you can only give so much, you can only take on so much of other people’s energy before your energetic bubble is ready to burst.

 

One way you can prevent this is by having boundaries. Both energetic boundaries where you keep your energy unmerged from other people’s and by having other boundaries…by stating what you need, what is and is not OK with you.

 

As empaths, our energies are outside ourselves, whereas non-empaths energies are focused more on themselves.

 

What small things can I do to just stop my brain from overthinking?

 

The second question came in an email from a coaching client who asked:

 

I’m visiting my parents for the next few days and my anxiety has been high. I went to bed thinking bad thoughts and woke up thinking bad thoughts. I think being home just makes things real for me and all the worries I can push away in D.C. come back when I’m home.

What small things can I do to just stop my brain from overthinking?

 

It’s very very common for anxiety and worry to come in when we slow down. When we’re busy we feel like we can outrun it (that’s why we stay addicted to busyness) and when we slow down, the worried thoughts come in big time. Some of my worst cases of anxiety have come on vacation. This doesn’t seem to make sense because we “should” be relaxed and enjoying ourselves.

 

I so get this. Some of my worst anxiety comes when I should be relaxing or having fun.

 

The worst anxiety I’ve had in my life…and I’ve had a LOT…came when my husband and I went on our first vacation after our honeymoon. We went to Nashville for a week and I could hardly enjoy myself I was so anxious. I remember we were riding bikes through a park and I literally had to stop and put my headphones in so I could listen to a podcast to distract myself. My inner critic was SO loud. It was like a broken record going through all the parts of my life where I was failing as a person, as a friend, as a sister. It felt awful. I was so embarrassed. I should’ve been having fun with my husband. I was miserable when I should’ve been enjoying riding a bike outside, feeling the wind in my hair and pedaling with joy. But I couldn’t.

 

Sometimes we use busyness to avoid being alone with our inner critic and anxiety. We tend to put so much on our plate so we don’t have to deal with our worries, which is why when we do slow down we get an onslaught of anxiety and inner critic thoughts.

 

I heard a great episode on the Daring to Rest podcast about dream deprivation and sleep, and he gave a great analogy. Planes fly above the weather. When they come down to land, they go through the weather and through the turbulence. Similarly, we fly above the weather as we’re going about our day and when we come down at night, relaxing/resting/watching tv/before bed, we go through the turbulence as our brain tries to digest and process all of the things we experienced that day. But we often don’t want to go through the turbulence. And that’s when things build up.

 

What you can do to avoid the onslaught of anxiety/worry when you’re trying to have fun

  1. Can you name your worrier? I like the term the article used “hyper-vigilant brain.” If you give the voice/thoughts a name it’s easier to identify and detach from the voice. You are not the voice, you are hearing the voice.
  2. Recognize that this is the normal process of your brain and it’s gotta run through this process to get back to its baseline. Try to detach from the thoughts. You don’t have to indulge the thoughts but you don’t have to push them away either. Fighting them will only make it worse/louder. Try imagining placing your thoughts on a cloud and let them float by, letting them go.
  3. Give your brain more time to process and rest. Try scheduling in time more regularly throughout the day for your brain to run through this process to make it a little more manageable. You can start with something as little as two minutes between meetings, 20 minutes at lunch to walk around the block, 3 minutes in the afternoon. Set a timer on your phone, like “OK brain…go ahead.” Work on doing this processing before you get in bed, that way when you go to bed you can actually go to bed without staying up going through these processes.
  4. Download the Calm app and do short meditations throughout the day. Here’s a podcast called Mini-Meditations that looks good.

 

Here are two podcast episodes I did about the inner critic that might be helpful too:

 

If you want to discuss how to prevent people pleasing or push past overthinking and anxiety or your inner critic, book a free discovery call with me at joannaplattcoaching.acuityscheduling.com.

 

Do you know someone who would appreciate this episode, or another Love Always, Jo episode? Send it her way.

 

Have a question for a future Q&A session? Follow me on Instagram and send me a DM or leave a comment on my next post when I put the call out for questions.

 

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038: The Magic of the Menstrual Cycle

Posted on by jplatt27

The Magic of the Menstrual Cycle - Love Always, Jo Podcast

 

In this episode of Love Always, Jo, I’m talking about one of my favorite topics: the power of the menstrual cycle. I’ll outline the four phases of the menstrual cycle, how you may feel during each of them, and things to focus on during each phase to optimize your energy, productivity, and self-love and understanding. Listen to this episode to hear more about The Magic of the Menstrual Cycle.

I first got interested in the menstrual cycle when I noticed that my creativity and flow of ideas changed in frequency and I wondered “does this have anything to do with my menstrual cycle?” After some googling, I learned that yes, it absolutely does. And I’ve been fascinated by and preaching about, the menstrual cycle ever since.

 

In this episode, I’ll outline…

  • The 4 phases of the menstrual cycle
  • How you may feel during each phase
  • Things to focus on during each phase
  • Self-love and understanding

Quotes:

  • We compare every other version of ourselves to how we are at ovulation. Don’t do that to yourself.
  • You are just as powerful during your period as you are during ovulation.

Journal Prompts:

  • What things change for you during your cycle?
  • How can you give yourself more grace during your cycle?
  • How can you go with your flow more? What would that look like? What would that feel like?
  • What would it feel like to go with your flow more?
  • What do you like about yourself during each phase of your cycle?

 

The Magic of the Menstrual Cycle - Love Always, Jo Podcast

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037: March Q&A

Posted on by jplatt27

This month’s Q+A questions are super similar and bring up something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: the monotony of the grind and the beige-ness that adult life can bring.

In my course for couples, Engaged, I talk about how people say that marriage kills your sex life and how I think that statement is false. It’s not marriage that kills your sex life…it’s adulting. It’s the grind. The ho-hum of the normal routine. Get up, go to work, come home. Get up, go to work, come home. Get up, go to work, come home. We’re in survival mode during the week. We’re not turned on in life and if we’re not turned on in life, not feeling alive and excited and excitable, how can we possibly be turned on in bed?

Today we’ll talk about how we can add a little more joy and excitement to our every day. Listen to this episode to hear more about the monotony of the grind adult life can bring.

Links:

Quotes:

  • If your life feels beige, ask yourself,“what would a technicolor life look like?”
  • Life isn’t a destination, it’s a journey; there’s always going to be more things you want to feel, do, have, etc. in life
  • Life isn’t a set it and forget it journey, you can pick and choose new paths when you want to
  • Stop playing the comparison game with yourself; enjoy where you’re at in life right now
  • New things can only go in open hands

How do you stay positive and energetic within mundane weeks??

(Question from @chaneydoyle)

Don’t put pressure on yourself to be happy, peppy, the best version of yourself every single day. Taking that pressure off will give you a lot of your energy back. Just like saying “I have my cranky pants on today” brings a smile to your face and releases some energy around it. Acknowledging the feeling helps release the power it has over you.

Remember that it will pick up. Work comes in seasons and waves and sometimes there’s a lot going on and sometimes there’s a lull. That’s totally normal but the work culture of our society hasn’t caught up with that and mandates that we are at our desks for a certain number of hours, regardless of how much work we have going on.

During the mundane times when you feel like you don’t have much to do, give yourself permission to enjoy the quiet and the slow. You can also give yourself little projects to do—clean your desk, do research for another project, think about something you have going on in your personal life, doodle or journal, allow space for new ideas to come and don’t put pressure on yourself to be do, do, doing all the time. That white space is a really good thing and can fuel you for the next wave.

The more I think about this, the more I think this comes down to movement and shaking the energy up. It’s like a law of physics: a body at rest stays at rest and a body in motion stays in motion until it’s met with an external force. It’s inertia. So, if the day/week is beige and your energy and body are going along with it, they’ll stay that way until you do something different.

So, how can you move your body, how can you move your energy?

  1. Five minutes of fun. You could play a quick game, do a dance party, watch a Jimmy Fallon clip on youtube (check out the playlist here)
  2. Add some color to your lunch. Bring a real plate and bowl from home and take your lunch out of the carrying container and onto the plate.
  3. Take your lunch and do something with it. Sit outside and read a book. Run an errand. Call a friend.
  4. Play happy music. Listen to podcasts. Play music or podcasts that are light and make you feel the way you want to be feeling. Listening to music in the background can help quiet your inner critic and lets you feel more positive and energetic about the work you’re doing. One that I’ve been listening to and loving lately is the How I Built This podcast.
  5. Find ways to move every hour or so. Take a lap around the office, go up and down the stairs a few times. Take a nice long walk at lunch and listen to a podcast or call a friend. Find an empty office and put a song on in your headphones and DANCE.

What might add more joy to your day? What might add more color and energy to your day?

What do you have going on before and after work? Go back to the Episode 34 about how to enjoy mornings — if your mornings bring you joy, that can help carry you throughout your day.

How to find the joy in your job and where you are in life?

(Question submitted by @tammymorin)

The first thing that comes to my mind is to focus on what’s good in this season.

At the end of the day, or the beginning of the day, ask “what made me smile today? What did I enjoy today?” Think about what’s good today, this week, this month, what’s going well?

We have a tendency to focus on the future and the gap between where we are and where we want to be. That brings a mindset of scarcity and a lack mentality and energy and doesn’t attract the things you want to be attracting.

We put so much pressure on ourselves to have it all figured out and to be exactly where we want to be/end up in life right. now. But even when you get to the place you think you want to be, there will likely be a next step. That’s the cool thing about life. We think life is like the people mover at the airport. We just have to find the right one and we’ll cruise to the end. But, life isn’t like that. It’s not that linear. And honestly, this is a good thing. Because if you pass Dunkin’ Donuts on the people mover, you can’t get off. If you’re not on the people mover you’re free to move as you please, as slow or as fast as you want, and you have the freedom to stop where you want along the way.

It’s also hard when you find yourself comparing your life and where you are on the checklist of life to where your best friends, coworkers, people from high school who you follow on Facebook are, where society thinks you should be, where your parents were when they were your age, and where a younger version of you thought you’d be.

Try not to do this to yourself. It doesn’t help anything. You are where you are. And while you have your eye on the next step in the journey, and are moving toward that, try to be where your feet are now.

The most pleasant way to get where you want to go is to focus on all that’s good now, be grateful for where you are and what you enjoy in this season so that you can move toward the next thing from a place of abundance and joy, and not scarcity and “not-good-enough.” When we’re in scarcity and not good enough, there’s this gripping fear feeling, like a closed hand. When we’re in abundance and joy, there’s an open, light hopeful feeling, like an open hand, open arms, open heart. And new things can only go in open hands.

Questions for you:

  • What is good about this season of your life?
  • What makes you smile on a daily basis?
  • What are you grateful for in your life right now?
  • What can you do to stop comparing, stop judging, stop hating the things in your life and start loving and appreciating yourself and the things in your life?

 

If you want to discuss how you can find a little more joy in YOUR day-to-day life, book a free discovery call with me at joannaplattcoaching.acuityscheduling.com

Do you know someone who would appreciate this episode, or another Love Always, Jo episode? Send it her way.

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036: The Nine Enneagram Types

Posted on by jplatt27

In this episode of Love Always, Jo, I interview Courtney Pinkerton, a certified holistic life coach and creator of the Flourish Coaching Program. She has helped hundreds of women wake up from the fog of busyness to contribute their most dynamic professional and creative gifts and enjoy their personal lives. Listen to this episode to hear more about The Nine Enneagram Types.

Courtney Pinkerton, M.Div & M.PP is a certified holistic life coach and the founder of Bird in Hand Coaching. She has helped hundreds of women wake up from the fog of busyness to contribute their most dynamic professional and creative gifts and enjoy their personal lives. She holds dual master’s degrees from Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Kennedy School and is the creator of the eight-step Flourish Coaching Program. Courtney holds coaching certificates from Martha Beck International and the Spencer Institute and teaches regular international retreats for women. Courtney lives in Granada, Nicaragua with her husband Richard Amory and their three children. Together they are exploring volcanic islands, colonial cities, and beaches and are being tutored by their neighbors in the art of slowing down and living more.

 

In this episode Courtney Pinkerton and I discuss…

  • What life looks like in Nicaragua and the effect it’s having on her family
  • How to connect to your gut, your heart, and your head
  • What are the 9 Enneagram types
  • Top tip for figuring out your type
  • Taking a tour of The Nine Enneagram Types

 

Follow Courtney online:

Links:

Recommended Books:

Quotes:

  • It’s about honoring and addressing the moment
  • How you move through your days and how you address the people in your life is important
  • Your type can be influenced by your country, city, parents etc.
  • Use the Enneagram as a tool to cultivate compassion
  • We tend to flip to different types based on when we’re stressed when we’re secure and our normal type.
  • Give yourself permission to be and to pause, don’t feel like you have to look smart, know the next thing.
  • Let yourself to be in the pause.

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What I learned over LDW

Posted on by Kelsey Leetzow

I had a realization over Labor Day weekend.

I am much better, feel much better, when my life is in motion.

I unintentionally pulled the joy and delight out of my life in the name of growing my business. I started to feel like I couldn’t prioritize friendships or my health because I needed to focus all of my energy and my free time on my business. I’m realizing, though well-meaning, it’s not serving me well.

We had this thing at my high school called Gym Night. My sister always said that she had the best grades during Gym Night season. She attributed this to having less time to focus on homework and things so she didn’t mess around and simply buckled down to get her homework done in the limited time she had.

I’ve gone the exact opposite of that. I’ve stripped my weekly calendar of all the fun things: cooking, seeing friends, working out. My life has become a big go to work, come home, sit on the couch and watch TV loop. And you can bet that I was NOT working on my business in all this free time.

I banged out more content for an upcoming e-course in one plane ride to California than I have in the entire month since I had the idea.

I always feel like I’m super focused on trips to PA too. Probably because we’ve got a lot of people to see and there’s only limited time to spend by myself.

I’ve gained weight. I had a breakdown in the doctor’s office recently about how beige my life is and how many things I’ve got going on in the fall.

Then Labor Day weekend happened. I went to happy hour on Thursday night and then Friday afternoon when work got out early and then had a girlfriend over Friday night. Saturday I got a massage and then later in the day Mike and I tried a new-to-us BBQ place in Georgetown and I stopped at the Gap on my way home. Sunday I had brunch with girlfriends and then Mike and I made dinner at home. Monday morning I made breakfast at home, kneading dough for these breakfast buns by hand for eight minutes. I also made rice krispie treats. Then we drove 45 mins to a furniture place in Virginia and then spent the afternoon and evening with friends at their house. That’s about what I typically do in a whole month, let alone a weekend!

I wrote a blog post over the weekend and I’m writing this at 7am the day after Labor Day.

I haven’t been on a roll like this in a very very long time. I feel like I’ve uncovered a secret I should’ve known about myself:

I am at my best when I’ve got a lot going on.

Note: this is very different and I’m very cognizant about numbing with busyness. That is a completely different thing and needs to be monitored. Busyness is an addiction like any other and I’ve definitely used it in the past.

So, I’m going to add the color back into my life. Cooking (which I love), happy hour, exercise. Because not only do I want a full life, it seems like I need one too.

Yelling about carrots

Posted on by jplatt27

My husband threw my carrots away yesterday.

Yes, my carrots. We’ve been doing “his-and-hers” meal plan since the beginning of the year where we’re each responsible for our own meals. It’s awesome actually and I should probably write an essay about how great it’s been. But yes, my carrots.

Anyway, those were the carrots that I’d planned to use in my “what-I’ve-got-in-the-fridge” mason jar salads for lunch this week and when I went in the drawer and they weren’t there, I was not pleased.

“Did you throw my carrots away?” I said to my husband, knowing the answer is yes. He was sitting on the couch facing the kitchen and had this “ooo, yep, oops, sorry” look on his face.

I was pissed. And I let him have it. I raised my voice, yelling about the carrots and why did you have to throw away my carrots, they were good, I just bought them last week and you left the old carrots in there and why didn’t you throw away YOUR leftovers. You’ve got old turkey and green beans in there. I pulled out said turkey and green beans and put them on the counter. I was huffing and puffing and banging things.

It. felt. awesome. As the words were coming out of my mouth I felt so powerful. Slightly bad that I was yelling over carrots but also so good and so powerful because I was honoring my anger. Allowing it to be ok. My. anger. I felt super grounded in this booming voice that was coming out of me. I was cognizant of it and what I was doing, I was not at the affect of it.

Shortly into the banging Mike went into the bedroom and closed the door. I didn’t care. I could tell he wasn’t getting triggered, wasn’t taking it personally. He was simply getting away from my yelling. Good for him. He doesn’t need to sit there and listen to me scream and bang things around. I felt kind of bad that I let him have it but also not.

After a few minutes I went in the bedroom and got in bed next to him as a “I still love you, rant over” peace offering and it was all fine.

This whole thing lasted for about 10 minutes but it’s left a lasting impression on me. What I take away most from this experience was how good my anger felt and how cathartic it was to own it and let it be. Also, that I was angry, expressed that, and it wasn’t damaging or scary. I should note here that I’m really lucky that this crazy yelling didn’t trigger my husband. Things may have gone very differently if it did.

So this begs two questions:

1) how can I continue to own my anger and express it in the future?

2) how can I react similar to how Mike reacted? Not scared by anger and not taking it personally.

 

Something to note: In my yelling, I didn’t make any accusations about Mike as a person. I was simply yelling about the action of the carrots being thrown away. We’ve learned in our marriage not to use absolutes like “you always” or “you never” in arguments and we don’t attack the person’s character.

 

Here’s another post about things a significant other might do and how to handle them.

Feelings, a manifesto

Posted on by jplatt27

I am a feeler. I feel all the things, all the time.

One of my first deeply emotional memories was a mix of happy and sad. My family was on vacation and we, all seven of us, were riding in a surry, a golfcart size thing that is peddled like a bike, happily peddling and riding along all together. I remember being so happy and then an instant later really really sad. A voice popped into my head “it won’t always be this way.” I wondered if my intuition knew that my parents would get divorced at some point, but now I realize that I was just having a very normal reaction to deep joy.

I’m a crier too. Happy tears, mad tears, sad tears. I’ve cried them all.

I recently got teary in a staff meeting at work when I was presenting to our division on the success of a big project I led.

When I was a teacher, I cried in front of my class one day because my kids were working in groups and it was just so great and special.

Last month, I started bawling at a Carrie Underwood concert when she sang a song that always gets me. When she sang the lyrics “with your daddy’s eye, what a sweet surprise” I started sobbing, head in my hands, leaned over and my friend started rubbing my back in comfort and then pulled me into her arms and told me people were staring.

I’ve cried during yoga classes and during the street-brawl punch move in Body Combat.

I almost lost my shit about a project at work in the fall. I was ranting and raving to a colleague when we took a walk to get coffee and was so distracted by my anger about how stupid this project was and how frustrated I was that I didn’t know how to make the changes to the art in Photoshop that I almost left the coffee shop without paying.

I cried in church all the time as a kid. If I didn’t cry during mass, I likely cried in the car on the way home.

When my family dropped me off at college, oh my god, there were so. many. tears.

To be honest, I love all of this. I love feeling so deeply and I love crying. I wasn’t always comfortable with my very intense feelings, and honestly, I’m still working on owning some of the more negative ones.

Overall though, I’ve learned that my emotions can be a gift to the world. I hope they are. I hope that in sharing my experiences and my feelings that others feel permission to feel theirs as well.

What I learned from a headache

Posted on by jplatt27

A couple weeks ago, I was in a funk. For three days, I woke up tired and throughout the day had no motivation. “I don’t feel like doing anything” kept running through my head. And each afternoon, I got a headache. On my way to CVS to get some Advil, I thought “I just want to take a nap right now. I want to go home and go to bed.” And then I thought “I’m just going to empower myself to do that. I’m going to use some sick time and go home and rest. My body obviously needs that.”

I got home and climbed into bed for a nap. I thought about turning on the TV while I fell asleep but something told me not to. That I didn’t need the mental clutter and noise. That I just needed to be.

Within two minutes of my head hitting the pillow, I had a realization. There was something at work that was really frustrating me. It had been bothering me since earlier in the week but I didn’t know that consciously. It wasn’t until I started telling Mike about it that I realized how much this was affecting me — and my performance. The next day, I woke up like my usual self, energetic and ready to take on the day. And I had a conversation with my boss about what was bothering me and I felt so much better.

I share this story for two reasons:

1. You’ve got to listen to your body. You are the only one that can feel your body and hear your intuition. It’s up to you act on those messages. You can discern when it’s a “take-some-Advil-and-go-through-your day” kind of thing or  it’s a “stop, listen, or this will just continue” kind of thing. But only you can discern that. So you’ve got to listen and you’ve got to act. Which brings me to my next point…

2. Sometimes you’ve got to empower yourself and give yourself what you need.  Your boss isn’t going to say “I can tell your head hurts and that you’re in a funk” go home and take a nap. No. You need to decide that for yourself and give yourself permission to do what you need to do.

If I wouldn’t have taken that three hours off, I could’ve been stuck in that negative energy (and the corresponding physical symptoms) for a while — impacting both myself, my team, and my work.

now things

Posted on by jplatt27

There are so many things we want to do in life: jobs we want to have, vacations to take, relationships to have, things to own. And we tend to want all of the things. Right. Now.

Pressure to have and do all of things makes life so much less fun. Takes away from the joy of right now.

Learning to decide what’s a now thing, an idea or a goal that you want to pursue in this season, and which are visions for the future is one of the most powerful and freeing things we can learn.

Often things we want from a well-meaning, genuine place become “shoulds” and we beat ourselves up for not having enough or doing enough. When our desires become our self judgements, they lose something. Their power becomes evil. When this happens it drains our mental, emotional, creative energy that we could be using to fuel our now things.

So tell me, what are your now things and what are your future things?

For me, my now things are living fully in DC, learning to take really good care of myself, and paying off my student loans. My future things are being a mom and a full-time coach.

P.S. You don’t deserve to feel shitty.

 

it’s ok to want what you want

Posted on by jplatt27

Deep down you know what you want.

It’s OK to want that.

In fact, it’s more than ok. It’s amazing. It’s necessary. There will be less tension and stress in the world if you do.

Give yourself permission to want that.

When you want what you want and own it, you give the universe permission to bring it to you. And when you get it, everybody wins. Because you’ll add a little more joy to the world.

Can you imagine if we all did that? If we all gave ourselves permission to want what we want? That little bit of peace from each of us would change the world.