Ep 160: Out of Negativity

We love the romantic idea of inspiration striking.
The muse arrives. The energy shifts. We suddenly feel like creating, reaching out, working out, having the hard conversation, writing the email, going on the date, taking the leap.

But real artists, real writers, real leaders, real change-makers, and the people who actually achieve the big dreams they’re cooking up know the truth:
 You don’t wait to feel like doing the thing.
 You get yourself to the place where you can do the thing by shifting your emotional state.

Painters go to the studio even after brutal critiques.
 Writers sit down and write even when the page feels dead.
 We don’t wait to “feel like” exercising, sending the email, or putting ourselves out there. We move first, and the feeling follows.

In this episode, we apply that same principle to something even more powerful: your emotional state.

So many of us unconsciously believe we’re supposed to feel good naturally—and that something has gone wrong if we don’t. But the human experience is 50/50. Half joy, half struggle. Add in our brain’s negativity bias and environmental stressors, and it makes perfect sense that we don’t wake up in a great emotional place every day.

The problem isn’t feeling negative.
The problem is waiting for it to change on its own.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why waiting to feel motivated, confident, connected, or calm keeps us stuck
• How emotions become habitual neural patterns that replay automatically
• Why unshifted emotions run our behavior and leak into our relationships
• How negativity becomes contagious through tone, body language, and energy
• How small emotional states snowball into full-blown emotional climates (the “rings of a tree” effect)
• Real examples from coaching: body image, relationships, anxiety, self-doubt, and morning emotional states

The Core Skill: Emotional Shifting

Instead of letting your emotional state dictate your actions, you learn to:

• Notice and accept what you’re feeling
• Observe the thoughts creating the feeling
• Let the emotion move through your body without judging it
• Intentionally shift into a state that better supports how you want to live and lead

We explore tools like:

• Thought trading
• Environmental shifts
• Movement and nervous system resets
• In-the-moment “thought prophecies”
• Looking for what you like instead of what you fear
• Asking, “How could the opposite be true?” (Byron Katie style)
• Building a daily “emotional warm-up” practice that trains your brain like a muscle

Because when you learn to shift your emotional state, three powerful things happen:
 You stop repeating old patterns.
 You stop acting from emotions you didn’t choose.
 You stop unconsciously spreading the very energy you don’t want to live in.

You don’t wait for the clouds to part.
 You learn how to move the weather.

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Transcript

From Art School Critique To Resilience

Action Over Inspiration: Daily Examples

The 50-50 Human Experience

Why Waiting To Feel Different Fails

Three Costs Of Unshifted Emotions

Annoyance At Home: A Case Study

Body Image And Layered Negativity

The Four-Step Shift Method

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to the Blue in Your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonough. Let's get into it. Hello everybody, and welcome to episode number 160 of the Blue in Your Mind Podcast. Oh my gosh, today was so exciting. I've told you a little bit about how I had an angel investor come to me and say, hey, I've been through all your programs and they changed my life, and I want to invest a bunch of money in your work because I want to get it out to as many people as I can get it out to. And so part of that process of exploring this taking on an investor and taking on some help with getting my work out into the world has been to valuate my company. And today it came back as my company being valuated at$1.5 million, which is wild to think of all of the course material that I've built, all of the thought leadership and content that I've put out there, all of the groups that I've run and formatted. And I built this company in the last five years, which is just so awesome to think about, to think about five years ago where I was and how this was just this dream of mine. And now how I'm sitting and choosing places to have retreats at in Wyoming and ranch houses and in New York, and then going abroad for retreats and just really talking about how to reach the most amount of people to bring out people's best and bring out their moxie and make their ideas real and just help people get to a place where they're loving their life and they're loving who they're being. We have tons of new people rolling into different programs, and it's just been such a beautiful time in the work. So I'm so grateful for all of you being here with me in it. Well, today we're gonna talk about getting out of negativity spirals by emotionally shifting, by shifting our emotional state. So I want to start by just talking about how when I was back in art school, I was um studying art history and conceptual art theory and I was doing studio art. And one of the cardinal rules of making art is that you can't wait to be inspired to make art in order to get into the studio and pick up the brush because it's just not gonna happen. It's like a job, right? So you have to go into the studio, and sometimes we would feel connected to the work in front of us, and sometimes we would feel like, I don't know what I'm doing yet. I don't know where this piece is going. And I remember specifically, I had this one review halfway through my graduate program where this one woman got up and was like, I don't even know what your paintings are about. I don't get it. I don't care what you're talking about. Your body's small and wiry, and you talk too fast, and you have too many ideas, and I don't even know what this is. I don't get it. And it was a bad review of my work. And so getting myself into the studio after that fail was not easy. I was not about to like wait until I felt inspired and motivated to get in and make work because that was not gonna happen. I had to pick myself up and get my ass back in that studio and make the work, whether I felt like it or not. And what happened in the next three months of working in my studio? It happened over summer. I totally blew up my work into this whole nether level, into this incredible body work that I was like so proud of because I picked myself back up. I got myself in the studio when I was feeling low and kind of embarrassed and I had just failed. And I put myself in there to do it. Because I didn't wait until I felt better. I just got in there and did it. The same happens with writers. You hear writers all the time say you have to make yourself sit down at the desk and write for a couple hours a day. It's not when inspiration strikes. It's not when you feel like it, you sit down and you write. Maybe you can relate. We've all had, whether it's work or personal or something else, an email we've had to write, right? And if we wait until we feel like writing it, we're just never gonna do it. We got to sit down and start doing it. And when we get in the flow, there's all of these different habitual sort of tricks you can use that are like just sit down and do it 30 seconds into it, you'll be in the flow. You'll be like more inspired to do it, or at least you'll be engaged in it. The same is true for many for working out. If we feel like if we wait until we feel like waking up early and getting up and going out the door and working out, we're just not gonna do it because that bed is cozy. We gotta take the first few steps and shift ourselves. Or going on a first date, getting on a dating app. We gotta go be committed to the vision that we have for whatever we're doing and take the next step. So, in all of these instances, we have to get ourselves to the place where we can just get into action and do the thing. We can't wait until we feel like doing it or it will never happen. And now, while this concept relates to so many things that I could make an episode about, including habit change and time management and relationships and putting yourself out there by taking scary leaps toward your goals. It could apply to so many things. Today, we're gonna talk about applying it to your emotional state, to how you feel, because this is coming up with my clients all the time and with my students. I coach people every day around this. We forget the truth of this and we need to be reminded over and over again because of our human brains. All of our brains forget this thing, and we need to be reminded. We make the assumption that we're supposed to be in a good place, just naturally, organically. We're supposed to feel good things, that there's something wrong with us if we feel negativity about things, or there's something wrong with the thing that we feel negativity about. When in reality, the human experience is 50-50. It's 50% positive, 50% negative emotions, and sometimes it's more tipped in one direction or the other, positive or negative, depending on our environment and the circumstances of our life. We do also have a negativity bias that tips that scale and a lot of environmental impacts or socialization that also tip that scale into negative thinking. So just like the examples we talked about at the beginning of working out or writing an email or dating or getting in the art studio, we can't wait until we feel inspired to do those things, right? And the same applies here. We often think we have to wait to feel differently about things. Wait for that feeling to change on its own. When in reality, it's our job to shift our emotional states. Examples of things that come up for my students all the time related to this is that they think that they need to feel differently about their body image, about how they feel about their body. Maybe they want to change their body in order to feel different. Or maybe they think that their emotions about how they feel about their body will just change. Or in relationships with our partners, our marriages, our parents, our friends. We think we need to wait to feel differently. Or that the person needs to change in order for us to feel differently. Waking up in the morning, we think there's something wrong with us when we don't feel good right away, waking up in the morning. Or when we have anxiety, we think, oh wait, I can't do that thing yet because I have anxiety. I've never spent that much money on myself, so I feel uncomfortable with it. I've never invested in myself that much. I gotta wait till I feel differently. Or I feel anxiety about speaking up, so I need to wait till I don't feel the anxiety. Or self-doubt that comes up before doing something a little risky or new or putting ourselves out there. We think we have to wait till we feel better in order to act. And all of these examples will actually be more effectually changed if we change our emotional state first. When we wait to feel differently about something, we're letting our emotional state drive how we act. And instead, we can take that emotional state as information, allow it to move through us, and then shift to an emotional state that we want that will create the results that we want in our life. It's up to us to put ourselves in a good place. It's up to us to practice the skill of shifting our emotions. And here's why. When we don't, three main things happen. Number one, we stay stuck in old patterns that repeat themselves because our emotions are habitual. I've been reading a lot about this. We have bundles of neurons that fire together in relation to or in reaction to external stimuli. So something happens in the world, and these bundles of nerves fire together and create habituated emotional responses. So we've defaulted to having these emotions for years when stuff happens in the world. And so we do it again and again. So for some, we might be in the habit of feeling imposter syndrome or shame or guilt or being left out, like loneliness or annoyance or blame. And we're gonna keep firing those same neural bundles. Those neural bundles are gonna fire and go off and be ignited. Again and again, if we don't shift them, we're gonna play out our old patterns again and again, feeling the same emotional responses that we're kind of addicted to. So that's number one, we're gonna keep playing those out again and again. Number two, if we don't shift them, we're gonna act them out. Our thoughts lead to our emotions and our emotions create our behavior. So when we wait for them to change and in the meantime let them run the show, we're literally letting them dictate how we act. So you can think for yourself of an example of how you might act, how you have acted when you're angry or guilty or resentful. If you don't shift that state, you're gonna act angry and guilty and resentful and create that in the world and between you and other people. That's number two. And the third thing that happens is that it's contagious. We impact the people around us with our energetic state. So when I say energetic state, you can think of your emotional state that impacts how you behave, the tone of your voice, your body language, your facial expression, your word choice, your actions. And other people take that on, it impacts them. So let me give you some examples. And then I'm gonna give you some quick hacks to shift your emotional state. So, first, let's take the example of being annoyed with our partner or someone we live with. Let's say we're doing the dishes all the time and the house is just a mess. When we think, ah, they're just such a wreck, they're such a mess, and we're annoyed and we're mad. First, our confirmation bias is gonna kick in. If we don't shift that state and we just roll with it, we're gonna act annoyed. We're gonna stomp around, we're gonna wash dishes all grumpy, have a grumpy facial expression, and our confirmation bias is gonna kick in to show us how that is so true. They're such a mess. And we're gonna think of all the other ways they're such a mess, looking for all the evidence of what a mess they are. We're gonna give off that vibe because of how we're acting, because of our facial expression. We're gonna have it be contagious because other people are gonna see how annoyed we look. And they might have their mirror neurons kick in and start matching that. Kids especially will just soak that up. And they also will create their own thoughts about why we're so annoyed based on how their habitual ways of thinking and acting are. So they're gonna think, oh, I did something wrong, or they're gonna, whatever their habitual ways of thinking and and feeling are are gonna kick in in response to us, and it will not be pretty. Then we'll think things about why they're acting that way in response to how we're acting that way. We're acting all grumpy, it's gonna make them act grumpy or shameful or whatever it is, and then we're gonna pick up on that and respond to it. Then we're gonna be frustrated with ourselves for being annoyed in the first place and causing this whole cycle and not handling it well, and then we might even be frustrated with ourselves for being frustrated with ourselves instead of just accepting where we were at in the first place. So we just layer on layers of negativity, one after another after another after another, when we just allow our emotional state to lead us. Like the rings around a tree. We layer them on. So we just turn this little sapling of annoyance into like a giant redwood of negativity that's contagious to the people around us. Another example of this is body image. So I have a client that was talking about how frustrated she is at her body because it's getting older, and then how frustrated she is that she feels frustrated with her body for getting older because she can't just accept it how it is, and how frustrated she is at being frustrated that she's frustrated because she can't just accept the frustration. And so it's these circles of negativity instead of just being where she's at and then shifting her emotional state. So the skill is to shift the emotion and I'm gonna give you the four steps to taking back that moment from the very beginning when you first feel annoyed because the house is such a mess, or you first feel that feeling of frustration at a change in your body or whatever it is. There are four steps to shifting an emotional state. And then I'm gonna give you a few different modalities that you can do it before we wrap up. Number one, the first step of shifting an emotional state is accepting the emotional state that exists right now. So if it's frustration, feel frustration. Frustration's here. Here's frustration. Step number two, notice what you're thinking that's causing the frustration. Oh, the house is such a mess. It's making me frustrated. Accept it fully and decide to shift perspective. The third step is to shift to a different emotion. I'm gonna decide to think and feel a different way that gives me patience and allows me to ask for what I need in the messy house and then notice the payoff is step number four. So help your brain collect the evidence of how much more effective it was to shift your emotional state than to just stay in the frustration. Those are the four steps. Accept where you are first, allow the feeling. Number two, notice the thoughts you're having. Number three, shift your thoughts and your emotions to a more helpful state. And number four, notice the payoff. So, how do we shift that emotional state? Here are a few different practices that you can use, all of which I share in more depth in different episodes on this podcast. Number one, do a morning workout for your brain. I teach a process called the moxie morning, where you get yourself into the emotional zone that you want to be in to start your day. I teach this as a part of a morning ritual where you sit in the silence, feel just tap into your emotions and allow whatever emotion is there, and then use vivid visualization to create an alternative emotional state. Ending with gratitude and staying in that gratitude for as long as you can. If you practice this every single day, it will absolutely change your life. Okay, number two, a quick hack is to shift your physical environment. You can do some jumping jacks, do something physical, yeah, jump up and down, but you can also just shift to a different space. Getting yourself outside, getting yourself into a different room, taking a shower, getting in your car, moving spaces is a quick way to help shift an emotional state before you go into changing your thoughts. So after you do one of those, you can shake, you can jump up and down, you can go to a different environment. Then shift the actual things that you're thinking to help shift your emotional state. Number one, look for what you like. I was cracking up with another mom yesterday because we were talking about how when our kids get in a fight with each other, what do we do? And she said, I make them compliment each other. I make them give each other five compliments. And sometimes they're like, you're a really fast runner. You're a good sister most of the time. But it really helps to make the brain look for things that we like. For me, if I'm frustrated and I start looking around for what I like, it really shifts things for me. It shifts my brain from looking at things I don't like and noticing them to asking my brain the question, what do I actually like around me right now? What am I grateful for? That could be the things I like about a person that shifts me from annoyance to gratitude. The things I like about a physical environment, about myself, just look for what you like. You can do thought swapping or thought trades, and you can listen to the episode about that, where you literally write down all the negative thoughts on one column on a piece of paper that you're having, and then on the second column, swap them out for a little bit better feeling thoughts. The last two are just remembering that whatever you're thinking is going to become a prophecy. So if we think this house is such a mess, I'm so frustrated, they need to be more thoughtful. We're going to have that thought create an emotional state that has us act at how we're acting. It's going to impact our behavior. And that behavior will then prove the thought true. You can listen to regenerative thoughts or the tool that changed anything, either those episodes to learn more about that regenerative thought model that has us prove our thoughts true in how we act. So the shortcut is just asking ourselves if this thought is a prophecy, if this thought that the people around me are so thoughtless is a prophecy. And if I keep thinking it, I'm gonna act thoughtlessly. Or I'm going to create an environment where they act even more thoughtlessly, and I'm gonna collect all the evidence of it. Do I want that to be true? Is this helpful to me? Or can I shift to a slightly better feeling thought? And then the last thing that really helps to shift your perspective is to ask how could the opposite be true? This is from the work of Byron Katie, and you can look her up. She has a three question turnaround that really helps turnaround any kind of perspective that we're stuck in. The questions include asking, flipping to the opposite, and then asking how something that we think someone else is doing, how we might actually be doing it to them or to ourselves. And when we go through these exercises, To try to flip around our perspective when we use the tools of a physical environment and physical movement to shift our emotional state. These are all tricks that we can do to change how we feel before it drives how we act and before it creates all the results that match the negative thinking and negative emotional states that we get into naturally. It's not the world's job to change. It's not our job to wait until we feel differently. It is our job to shift our emotional state when it's not working for us. That's what I've got for you today. I hope you enjoyed this 160th episode. And I will see you next week. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts and we apply them to real life in a community where we have each other's backs and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real. One idea at a time.