Unraveling Emotional Indulgence: Steering Toward Authentic Emotional Empowerment

Are your emotional responses holding you back from living a life true to your values and aspirations? This week on the Authentic Life Connection Podcast, I, Seth Lusk, take you on a journey through the nuanced landscape of emotional indulgence. Together, we'll unearth the subtle traps of comfort and doubt that often go unnoticed, impeding our ability to take risks and embrace the growth necessary for a fulfilling life. We'll dissect the common emotional responses that lure us into stagnation and offer actionable insights on how to experience our emotions authentically, steering clear of victimhood and the futile pursuit of unending happiness.

As we explore the intricate relationship between our emotions and personal growth, I'll guide you through recognizing when "I don't know" is a mask for fear, how claiming to be "tired" or "busy" might be dodging the discomfort of growth, and the importance of leaning into the answers within. From examining the comfort found in busyness and self-pity to confronting the illusion of hopelessness, this episode is a deep dive into understanding and managing the emotional indulgences that can ensnare us. Listen closely as we unravel these emotional webs and illuminate the path toward taking authentic steps toward our dreams.

Concluding with a powerful call to action, this podcast episode is not just a passive listening experience but an invitation to challenge the status quo of your emotional health. By recognizing patterns of procrastination and emotional avoidance, you're equipped to feel your emotions fully and responsibly, without them dictating your life's direction. If you're ready to transform your emotional landscape and harness the power of emotional sovereignty, join me on this transformative journey. Your unstoppable and fulfilling life awaits on the other side of emotional empowerment.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You are listening to the Authentic Life Connection Podcast, episode number 174. Welcome to the Authentic Life Connection Podcast. I'm your host, seth Lusk. I'm a master certified life coach, author, personal trainer and nutrition specialist. For over a decade I've been helping people with their dreams and goals for their life and health. I spent many years watching people get frustrated with their journey in life and giving up on taking actions towards their goals, so I dug in deep to find answers to why so many of us face this same frustration and struggle in life. So in this podcast, we're going to dive in deep on topics surrounding what it means to consistently live a fulfilling and authentic life where you are unstoppable in taking action towards your dreams and goals. So the only question is are you ready to start living your most authentic and fulfilling life once and for all? Then let's get started. Shall we, shall we?

Speaker 1: 1:27

I was talking about emotional indulgence, and lately I've been talking a lot on social media and with you guys on the podcast about emotional reactivity and how it's important to feel our feelings, but reacting to them does not serve us. We need to respond to them, and being able to recognize when we're indulging in an emotion or reacting to an emotion is important to be able to do this, so I'm re-airing an episode for you all. It's from a long time ago, so I know some of you all might need this little reminder, and for those of you listening in for the first time, this episode is going to be informative for you in many ways. So enjoy the episode and I will see you all again here next week.

Speaker 1: 2:03

I hesitated on putting out this episode, and the reason why is because the topic that we are going to discuss today is, first of all, very near and dear to my heart. It's something that I've worked on with myself for many years, also something that I've worked on with many clients for many years, and it's a topic that's rather deep. Maybe even for some it will feel a bit difficult to understand. It's a topic that I am still growing in to this day and will always be growing in till the last day that I'm here on this earth. And I hesitated to put out this topic because I was afraid that maybe I could not do it justice, because this is so important for us to understand in the world that we are living in today, with the way society teaches us to view our emotions or feelings, how society teaches us to handle our emotions, our feelings, how society teaches us to handle our emotions and feelings. There is what I feel like an all-time low in emotional intelligence with our current society, and what I mean by that is that there are very few people on this planet that understand what emotions are, what feelings are, where they come from, how we use them to help us to live the life that we want to be living, and how we become fully experience our emotions without being afraid of them, while, at the same time, choosing responses in our life, while experiencing those emotions that keep us aligned with our values, our sensitivities and our purpose in life. And this is one of the huge struggle points that I see so many people around me facing in life, and the sad part is is that most people don't even realize that they're struggling with it.

Speaker 1: 4:13

I've had a few discovery calls in the past week, and if those of you listening in for the first time don't know what a discovery call is, they're basically a free call that I offer to anyone who's interested in becoming a client of mine, and the purpose of this call is for people to reach out to me and tell me what it is that they're struggling with what obstacles they have standing in their way, and for me to get to know them and their struggle, their obstacles, a bit deeper, and for them to get to know me and the way that I coach and to choose whether or not it's a good fit for my coaching to help them with the struggles that they're facing. And I'm noticing this theme in a lot of these discovery calls of people telling me that they always saw themselves as being someone who wasn't a victim in their life, as being someone who handled their emotions responsibly and that they were emotionally healthy. And then they listened to my podcast and listened to the ways that I was describing the ways that a lot of this emotion, what I'm going to call emotional constipation or emotional ignorance there's so many different labels we could put on this how it shows up in our lives, emotional resistance, how emotional reactivity shows up in our lives, and how we can play a role of emotional victimhood, play a role of emotional victimhood. And the theme that I'm seeing is that they're telling me that the way society showed them to look at their life to them, they thought everything was okay, that they had handled everything. They had arrived at that point in adulthood where they no longer needed to worry about their emotions and how they handle them. And what I would say is we never really need to worry about that, but we do need to be aware of it, and our society does not prepare us for that. Our society does not prepare us to be aware of our emotions, what they're doing, what they're there for, where they come from and what we can do with them.

Speaker 1: 6:21

And so today we're going to talk about another aspect of emotional responsibility, of emotional health, that kind of gets overlooked. It's maybe even a bit uncomfortable because, to be honest, almost all of you out there are doing this in one way, shape or form. Now, how much it is affecting you and your ability to step forward in your life and feel empowered and to do the things that you're here to do with intention, with purpose. That's on an individual basis, but I see the vast majority of you out there struggling with this topic that we're going to talk about today. It's emotional indulgence.

Speaker 1: 7:07

So before we dive into talking about emotional indulgence, I think it's important first that we understand what the word indulgence actually means. So indulgence is basically when we gain pleasure from allowing ourself to yield freely or to give free reign to something, even though it may not be healthy or appropriate for us. Okay, so it's gaining pleasure from allowing ourselves to yield freely to something or to give free reign to something, even though it may not be healthy for us or appropriate. And healthy can mean emotionally healthy as well. I think that this is another thing that our society doesn't prepare us to look at, and I think I love the fact that there is a lot of pressure on our society right now to look at emotional health as being just as important as physical health. I love that there's a lot of pressure out there, but also, along with this pressure, there's coming a lot of misinformation.

Speaker 1: 8:11

A lot of ignorance is kind of coming to the surface about our emotions and the way we're approaching emotional health, because emotional health is very important. But the way I see a lot of people approaching emotional health is from a state of victimhood, because we haven't been taught to empower ourselves and to step into a role of empowerment, of sovereignty in our life, versus being victims in our lives. So in the case of emotional indulgence, what we are doing is we are indulging by giving our emotions and our feelings free reign or we yield to them, we react to them in a way that doesn't allow us to show up in our life in a way that we want to be showing up. And what I mean by that is not necessarily like you get angry and you hit someone, but maybe you get angry and you had planned to do something at that time and then something happens. You feel angry because of some thoughts that you're having about the thing that just happened and, instead of doing the thing that you planned to do, you stew in anger for hours and you run over the circumstance in your head for hours and create more and more anger. Meanwhile, the thing that was important for you to do, the thing that would have gotten you closer to living the life that you want to be living, the thing that you wanted to do for your own growth, just sits there, ignored and pushed to the side, while you indulge in an emotion.

Speaker 1: 9:47

And here's the thing I have told you all many times it is so important for us to be comfortable with feeling our feelings and our emotions and to be able to have our full human experience of emotions, and that means not resisting emotions. But here's the thing it's like we do with so many other things in this world, it's either one extreme or the other, and we forget that there's this whole area in between the two extremes that the solution usually lies in. But that area in between is usually very uncomfortable to be in, because it requires for us to be open. It requires of us to be diligent in opening ourselves up to truths and constantly seeking truth and constantly questioning what it is that we believe in, and why do we believe that to be true? Do we have to? If not, why are we choosing to believe it to be true? And this is uncomfortable for so many people. Because we've been taught that we need to get to a position where we arrive in life and then we're done, we're good, we're set for the rest of life. Life is good from there on out.

Speaker 1: 10:56

But this isn't the truth of how life works. We are constantly growing in our emotional awareness and our emotional responsibility and our emotional intelligence. We're constantly growing in our physical abilities too, throughout life, until the very last second that you're here, and so, instead of us looking at as we either resist our emotions or we wallow and indulge in them, what I want to talk about today is, first of all, how we recognize. We've already talked about how we recognize emotional resistance, and what's funny is, when we talk about emotional indulgence, a lot of the ways to recognize it are the exact same way, almost exactly the same, because both of these extremes usually end in the same symptoms A lack of emotional intelligence, a lack of emotional awareness, a lack of emotional awareness, a lack of emotional responsibility, and it ends in victimhood. Okay, so today we're going to talk about that. I want to talk about what it looks like when we indulge in our emotions and what we can do to begin practicing feeling our emotions. But not when I say feeling our emotions, I don't mean emoting and reacting to the emotions. We're going to talk about what feeling an emotion actually means today and a practice you can do to begin doing that.

Speaker 1: 12:14

Okay, so, to start off, when it comes to emotional indulgence, there are some particular emotions that I find people. There are some particular emotions that I find people indulging in the most frequently. Now, this is not an exhaustive list, meaning that there are emotions out there that people are indulging in that are not on this list, one being happiness, which I did not put on the list Because it's a bit complicated to explain how we can indulge in happiness, because we're taught so much to look for happiness as being our end goal and to constantly want to be happy. And I don't want to dive into that one today, because I think I might want to do an entire podcast episode on indulging in happiness and the destructive nature of constantly seeking to be happy. But today I want to talk about some of the bigger emotions that I see people indulging in, and remember the definition of indulgence is that we take pleasure from yielding to something fully or allowing it to have free reign over us, even though it may be unhealthy for us or it may not be appropriate for us.

Speaker 1: 13:21

Okay, so the first emotion that I see, one of the biggest ones, is doubt, and I know a lot of you right now are scratching your head and being like why on earth would you say that anyone would indulge in doubt? No one likes doubt. If indulgence means taking pleasure in it, then why would someone indulge in doubt? Because it doesn't feel good. And here is the thing. Yeah, doubt doesn't necessarily feel good for us. Not necessarily. Now, this is also a bit subjective, but for the most part, the experience of doubt is not a pleasant experience. It's not comfortable. It's not one that we just are like oh yeah, that's an emotion I love feeling.

Speaker 1: 13:56

Let me just bring up doubt, and so you may think why on earth would anyone indulge in it? Obviously, no one wants to indulge in it, but the truth is and we have talked about this a little bit before we, as humans, don't do anything unless there's a payoff. We don't. Unless there's a reward, some sort of payoff that we see getting out of it, we don't engage in it. Okay, so doubt is the same way. There is a payoff, and there is something we can learn from experiencing doubt and feeling doubt and leaning into doubt and listening to what is there to tell us. But when we indulge in doubt, there is also a payoff, because doubt does feel good in many ways that you may not be paying attention to. When we doubt, especially when it comes to self-doubt, we halt action, we press pause, we don't believe that we are capable of doing something or that something else is capable of doing something. We choose not to trust abilities of either ourselves or something else and we try to slow or halt action moving forward. So here's the part where you might not recognize that it actually feels good. There is a payoff in your brain Because again, remember most of us are allowing our brain to use us.

Speaker 1: 15:19

We're not using the brain for us and for our goals, because most of us don't even know what it is that we really want in life to use our brain to accomplish it. We know what we think, we think we should want, or what other people tell us that, or what society rewards, and therefore we think we should want that because society rewards it, but most of us don't know what it is that we really truly want in life. We haven't taken the time to understand that, and so we're not using our minds as a tool to bring us closer to those things, and instead what we're doing is we're letting our minds use us and remember the brain. Its only job, biologically speaking, is to keep you alive and safe, and there are some biological programs in your brain that are designed to misguidedly, in the 21st century, try to keep you safe and alive, and the biggest software programs running in the background are the software program of something is wrong, which is where we get our negativity bias.

Speaker 1: 16:23

Your brain is constantly looking for what is wrong versus what is right, and so we see things as being worse than they really are, because the brain thinks if it looks for what's wrong, it can protect you. But also there's another program running in the background that basically says stay in the cave, stay safe, don't do anything new, you might die. Says stay in the cave, stay safe, don't do anything new, you might die. Because the brain sees new things as meaning it can't predict as well, it can't control as well, it can't have as much certainty and therefore you might die, it can't keep you alive. And in the 21st century, how this shows up is we sit in fear of taking the actions that we want to take, that we're actually designed to take, because we're afraid of feeling uncertainty, because we're letting our brain convince us that uncertainty means death and we shouldn't experience it, that we should have certainty, that we should have control and we should have comfort at all points in time.

Speaker 1: 17:29

And this is where people start to indulge in doubt, because when we doubt, we halt growth, and when we halt growth, we halt taking action, moving forward into uncertainty that would be involved in growth. So, while you may know on a conscious level that you want to accomplish something and want to go after it, it's important for you on a less conscious level, if you are not choosing to be active and using your brain as a tool and it uses you. Your brain recognizes that going after these things means doing things that are not familiar for you yet and learning and growing. And to the brain, this feels dangerous and it will run all of the programs at full blast in your head to try and convince you to doubt yourself, doubt the ability to move forward, but to be certain in the fact that it will be dangerous and not worth it and you might die. And what do we do In order to avoid this feeling of moving into uncertainty?

Speaker 1: 18:33

We start indulging in other emotions that will keep us from moving forward, such as doubt. And I want to be clear here the emotion itself does not keep us from moving forward. It's the indulgence in it that does. It's the lack of awareness of what it's there for, the lack of emotional responsibility with it is what keeps us from moving forward, not the emotion itself, because we can experience emotions and still move forward once we learn how to feel them and then lean into them and learn from them. Learn how to feel them and then lean into them and learn from them. Okay, what I want to say here is that this does not mean that we don't want to feel doubt when it comes up.

Speaker 1: 19:11

Doubt is an important emotion to feel, but when we indulge in it, we react to it. We don't seek to understand it and instead we seek to react to it. And then, when we do, we let it pull us into action. I know you're like wait, wait, I thought you just told me that it made us not act or not take the action. And this is true. We're not taking the action we want to take, but we are taking action. The action is to choose to not take the actions we want to take. That would get us to where we want to be going, and that is an action. And instead we take actions like seeking comfort or avoiding or procrastinating. And we're going to talk a little bit more about how we can start feeling emotions like doubt without indulging in it, but for now, let's keep moving.

Speaker 1: 19:56

So the next on the list is comfort, and this one is a little bit obvious. Why it's pleasurable to indulge in. And this one is a little bit obvious. Why it's pleasurable to indulge in Comfort is well, it's easy, it's comfortable, it feels secure and emotions like doubt when you indulge in them, will convince you to also indulge in comfort. And again, this is not me saying we don't ever want to feel comfort. We can feel it and we can even enjoy feeling it.

Speaker 1: 20:24

It becomes indulgent when we let it have free reign, when we seek to feel it at the cost of not taking actions that we planned to take, when we use it to seek to avoid the uncomfortable truth that we uncover in our journey of growth. We indulge in comfort when we know that what we truly want to be doing that is aligned with our mission in life is something that would feel a little bit uncertain and maybe we feel some fear about that. So instead we choose to do something that feels easy and familiar but that may also keep us busy. But it's not what we plan to do. It's not what we're actually designed to do and what we're wanting to do. It's not something that is aligned with our mission in life. And I also want to say here this does not mean that we cannot plan time for comfort in our journey of growing, in our purpose and our mission. We can always plan time for comfort. This is not a problem.

Speaker 1: 21:22

It becomes indulgent when we plan time and then that time is up and you planned to do something else, but you keep indulging in the comfort. Or when you plan to do something else and instead you choose to do something comfortable, this is where it becomes indulgent. It's not that we can't plan time for comfort and actually I recommend that you do but then I also recommend you follow that plan. And this is where indulgence in the emotion creates distraction from our mission, from what we're after is because, instead of moving into the thing that we plan to do, into the thing that we want to do, into the thing that's truly important for us, we continue to do the things to feel comfortable, to avoid the discomfort of doing the thing that we actually plan on doing.

Speaker 1: 22:17

So another emotion that I see people indulging in is anger, and what I want to say here is that anger is an important emotion to experience. When we lean into this emotion, we learn things that we want to see less of in life. We learn places where we are casting judgment on someone or something or an action. We learn where we might be trying to control something that is not within our control. So anger is an important emotion to feel and understand, but it can become indulgent, and I see a lot of people doing this. It becomes indulgent when we allow anger to drag us into actions of violence, whether that be verbal, emotional or physical, where we planned to create more understanding and connection.

Speaker 1: 23:04

But here's, the thing about understanding and connection is that understanding and connection require vulnerability, and because there's uncertainty involved in being vulnerable, because we no longer can, you know, we're no longer manipulating the other person's emotional experience and what they might think about us and what they might do, we're being vulnerable instead and allowing them to have their full emotional experience of us having ours. That feels uncertain to the brain, and so the brain will try and resist this uncertainty by bringing up anger, because anger is a way for us to avoid feeling vulnerable, feeling connected, feeling compassionate, feeling intimate in moments with people in which we would be opening ourselves, to look deep inside and be truly honest. You see, there are moments where we truly want to understand another person and we want peace and we want connection, but we let our ego come in, we let our brain come in and control us and control us and convince us that that uncertainty and that vulnerability is too scary and we're better off putting up walls, going into offense and attacking with anger and hoping the other person gives up and maybe they become vulnerable and then we can control them and take over their emotional experience and control their emotional experience and use it to get something that we want, but at the same time, we do it at the cost of truly connecting with this person, truly understanding them and allowing them to understand us. Every time we do this, we dull our connection with people and this is an indulgent emotion, because we use it so often to not connect in our relationships, to keep relationships at surface level, to keep us from being vulnerable and allowing people to believe what they want to believe about us, but knowing our truth about ourselves.

Speaker 1: 25:03

Anger becomes indulgent when we start using it to resist the vulnerability of connection, the vulnerability of understanding and letting someone else understand us. I see this happen so many times in friendships, when someone or both people haven't been completely honest with each other about something and that allowed this dishonesty to build and build and create tension. And in these situations where what both people really want is to get back to feeling connected, get back to feeling understood, get back to feeling seen and close to each other, instead, they indulge in anger as a way to feel more protected, more safe, from allowing the other person to truly see them and have their own emotional experience about it, to have their own thoughts about it. And in this way, people start using anger to indulge in. Even though anger doesn't feel good Maybe to some people, they think it does. But even though anger is not one of these pleasant what we would label as a pleasant emotion, we indulge in it because it feels safer, more controlled than being vulnerable, being open, trying to understand another person.

Speaker 1: 26:24

I see this happening in families where relatives will fight with each other for years and when they're not around each other and you talk to them about this fighting, they'll tell you what they really want. What they really wish is to mend the relationship and get to a place where they can connect with each other and understand each other and love each other and have peace. But then, when they are around each other again and the opportunity arises, the people get scared of that vulnerability, of opening up the conversation to growth, and they take that familiar emotional path of reacting to anger, indulging in anger just a bit more Because it feels more familiar, it feels more safe to attack the other person and to be angry about them, to judge them in anger than to be vulnerable. So the next emotion that I see people indulging in is sadness. Now, sadness is again one of these emotions that I want to stress how important it is for us to experience the emotion and when we lean into it in a healthy way and feel the emotion, sadness can remind us of connections in our life, joy that we experienced.

Speaker 1: 27:30

It can remind us where we're telling ourselves that we're not worth experiencing it anymore, or where we're not able to, or where we lost something and therefore we are not good enough to experience these joys in our life anymore, maybe because of a breakup or a divorce or a separation, maybe because of death. Sadness can lead us to understanding what we actually have to appreciate in this life when we lean into it, and can remind us of where we have limited ourselves in being able to experience that appreciation. Sadness can remind us of the richness of connection that we have experienced with a person and lead us to understanding the wanting of more of that feeling in our life and wanting to connect and wanting to have real vulnerability and connection with someone. But here's where I see people indulging is that they see sadness as a way to block themselves from moving forward in life, or that it has to block them from moving forward in life. I see this a lot after breakups, divorce or death of a loved one.

Speaker 1: 28:33

And it's not that we don't want to experience sadness in these situations, but it becomes indulgent when sadness no longer teaches us, when it no longer empowers us to find what we're longing for in this life and to remind us to go after it, but instead it convinces us that there's no hope, there's no point in trying and that it's just not worth it to want anything anymore in this life or to try anymore. When we allow sadness to derail us from living our life and convince us to sit in hopeless inaction, then we've begun to indulge in sadness. That's no longer feeling the emotion, when you feel like you can't want what you want in life anymore or there's no point in wanting it because you're sad and you'll just always be sad. And then, therefore, you've chosen to indulge in sadness. And I know again, some of you are thinking indulgence means pleasure and no one gets pleasure from sadness. But remember, as with doubt, there is a payoff that is very similar here to the one with doubt we do get pleasure from indulging in sadness. We get the pleasure of avoiding the discomfort of moving forward into growth and learning and healing, because to the brain it's like, oh no, no, we don't know what's. On the other side of this, we're sad, remember, because the familiar thing is gone, the thing that we were comfortable with is gone. So we're sad, we don't move forward. Healing would mean moving forward, finding new ways to make connections, finding new ways to appreciate your life. So we get pleasure of avoiding the discomfort of leaning into sadness and finding out what we want to create more of in life and then going after it. We avoid that discomfort of growth again, and this is why indulging in sadness is pleasurable to us. And another way that we get pleasure from indulging in sadness is attention For a lot of people.

Speaker 1: 30:35

When we're sad, there are people around us that have a very people-pleasing nature or that feel like people shouldn't be experiencing sadness and that they should help you get over your sadness. And so seeing someone feeling sadness triggers within them to try and make you happy, because that's the goal right, to hurry up and get you to happy, because happy is the emotion you want to be experiencing, not sadness. But the truth is we want to experience sadness. We just don't want to indulge in it. The goal is not to get to happy as fast as possible. It's to be in the sadness and learn what is there to teach you what you're wanting in your life and where you want to go after it.

Speaker 1: 31:21

And for a lot of people, because of what society has taught us about what love is, a lot of people equate attention to love, and I talk about this in my book that's coming out in January. What I really wanted was love, but I was really just too full of trying to get attention from people because I thought attention equaled love. But that's not love, my friend. The love that we feel only comes from ourselves. So, attention from other people, while we may feel love when we're receiving it, it's because we're allowing that attention to bring up thoughts within us about loving ourselves and being worthy of love and allowing ourselves to experience the feeling of love. But it's our feeling of love that we feel, not someone else's.

Speaker 1: 32:09

But a lot of people equate attention to love, and so being sad has the payoff of receiving that attention, and I know this is very uncomfortable for a lot of people to look at, and a lot of people might call it victim blaming. It's not victim blaming. I'm not blaming anyone for feeling sad. I'm not blaming anyone for even indulging in sadness. What I'm saying is it's time for us to begin to recognize that we're doing it, because we haven't been taught to recognize it. We're not aware of it. Of course, you haven't done anything about it yet. You're probably not even aware that you're doing it, and so what I'm wanting to do today is not blame you for it. I'm wanting to help you see that you're doing it, so you can re-empower yourself, because awareness is always our first step into growth.

Speaker 1: 32:53

And there's another way in which I see people indulging in sadness. It's not just about the attention. Sometimes, with sadness, we perceive lower expectations on us from others. Oh, they're sad. No, no, don't expect them to do that. That's too hard for them right now. They're sad, they're going through something, they're grieving, they're sad. Let's not expect anything.

Speaker 1: 33:16

So there's also this relief of expectations that we get from indulging in sadness versus experiencing it. Finding out what is there to teach us. Finding out what is there to show us that we have in our life that felt so good to us that we want more of and that we want to go out there and create more of, because maybe a person is gone that we were leaning on as being our source of that thing that we want to feel and this is something we may want to discuss a bit further about this these expectations, because when it comes to expectations, we also have to remember that expectations don't actually come from other people. They can tell us that they have expectations of us, but in order for us to feel like the expectation is on us, we have to believe in that expectation being on us. We have to take it. No one can put an expectation on us, but that's something to talk about for another time. For now, just what I want you to recognize is how you might be indulging in sadness because you feel like it removes pressure from you to be expected to do something in life, and leaning into those expectations will teach you a lot about what it is that you truly want in life and where you're allowing other people to tell you what you should want in life versus what you truly want. But again, that's for another episode.

Speaker 1: 34:32

So the next episode or the next episode, I'm sorry the next emotion that I see people indulging in. Very similar to sadness is hopelessness. And again, while hopelessness is obviously not emotion, not an emotion that we would label as pleasant, much like sadness, we can use hopelessness as an emotion to indulge in, because when we indulge in it, we are doing it, choosing to believe a thought or belief that there is no point in taking action. So to the brain, this means less uncertainty, less danger. We're going to stay where we are. There's no point in trying anymore. We're not going to take any actions that are involved in growing. People will indulge in hopelessness because it feels safer than the uncertainty of growth and the fears they might experience from doing new or hard things. So hopelessness becomes this emotional indulgence. People will sit in it. They will sit in hopelessness and let their internal dialogue of voices tell them why there is no point to keep trying. And they'll let that voice keep playing in their head and creating new evidence of why there's no point in trying. Because, even though this feels uncomfortable, it feels more familiar and safe to the brain because you won't be trying something new, you'll just be sitting back and not taking action.

Speaker 1: 35:52

Which brings me to the next emotion that I see people indulging in, which is worry. It's another emotion that most of us would not label as pleasant, and that's what's so interesting about these emotions. Comfort is really the only one on the list that feels pleasurable in and of itself. The other ones aren't emotions that we would label as pleasant, but we use them to indulge in to avoid another discomfort, one that we're actually wanting to move into, much like with doubt when it comes to worry. When we worry, we come up with excuses to not take action. We come up with future stories of ways that everything is going to go wrong and everything is going to be bad and it's just not worth it to try. It's too dangerous. Stay in the cave, stay safe, don't do anything.

Speaker 1: 36:43

Worry keeps a person in an action, and this feels like pleasure to the brain because it's more familiar. Your brain knows how to deal with the discomfort of a stagnant life that doesn't feel fulfilled, because your brain's like okay, we've done this already. We know how to stay alive here, but going out there and facing those emotions, not really sure what's going to happen out there, so it's probably just better if we stay here and stay miserable than try and grow. That's a better idea to the brain, and when we let our brains use us, and when we're not aware of what our brain is doing and we don't use it for a tool for us, it will convince you to use things like worry and indulge in it. Which brings me to the next emotion indecision.

Speaker 1: 37:31

I hear this all of the time as a coach, in my coaching sessions with clients, and I don't allow them to indulge in this. I don't know, I'm not sure. Immediately when I hear clients saying this, I'm like, okay, we're going to rephrase that If you did know, what would you know here. Phrase that If you did know, what would you know here. Because the truth is, when we say I don't know, when we say I'm not sure there is a solution there, but you're afraid to look at it, because you're afraid that if you look at it and follow through with it and you don't get the results exactly as you wanted, that somehow that means failure, that somehow that means you're not good enough, that you're going to judge yourself, you're going to punish yourself and you're trying to avoid all of that. Or you're trying to avoid the discomfort of finding what's on the other side of it, of trying something new.

Speaker 1: 38:23

So sitting in indecision becomes indulgent. You sit there, greedy for the how, and you might be like what do you mean? Greedy for the how? And what I mean by this is feeling like you can't take action to move forward into something you want to do until someone else has done it and tells you exactly how you can do it without risk of failure, and that you can therefore unload the responsibility of your results upon that how and the person who created it, so that when you choose to stop growing, when you choose to give up, when you choose to stop doing the thing, you can just blame it on the how and the creator of it, as it being their fault that you chose to stop trying. See, look, it didn't work. And this is why I really don't like these people that put out there these 10-step solutions Want to get over this. Here are my 10 steps to do that.

Speaker 1: 39:16

And people gravitate towards these solutions because like oh, there's the how, see, I can just follow these 10 steps and if it doesn't work, I'm not responsible. I can just give up and be like, oh, it's their fault, not mine, I'm good. Or they can be like yeah, I'm finally willing to do it because you know, I have the steps laid out for me. There's no possibility of failing here. And then you get to the end results and you're like, oh, it didn't work, there must be something broken about me, or obviously the solution didn't work, yeah, instead of trying to find our own way forward, our own path forward.

Speaker 1: 39:51

And here's the thing. It's not that these 10-step programs are so awful, it's that the way that we are programmed to look at them is that we look at them as being our unique solution. But it's not. It's like a very loose scaffolding that we have to put in the time and effort to find where we are exactly in our life, which is what I'm here to coach people to find. And then, when we know that, when we know our emotional responsibility, when we know our purpose, then we can take these little 10-step thingies, scaffoldings, out there and we can put it into our life and figure out how it works in our unique situation, instead of believing that someone else's exact process is going to work for you in your life, in your situation, in your circumstances, with your thoughts and your beliefs and your previous experiences, exactly how it worked for them. It won't. That's a load of bullshit, my friends. It won't work for you.

Speaker 1: 40:49

You have to take the time to know yourself and know exactly where you are first, to be able to figure out how to make these little three-step, five-step, ten-step processes to whatever it is that you think that you want to go after which, by the way, I think most of you are going after someone else's goal because you see how they were rewarded for it, and you want that reward because you think it makes you more worthy. That's something for another episode as well, but what I want to say is stop being greedy for the house, stop waiting around for other people to tell you how they did something and therefore, how you'll be able to do it. And indecision convinces us to do that. Indecision keeps us being like oh no, I don't know, even though we have a solution right here, we have a step that we could take today, but we're like oh, but I can't exactly predict exactly what's going to happen after that. So I'm just going to say I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what to do next, instead of taking the step, getting the result, and being like okay, maybe that's not exactly what I wanted, but you know, it's something. What can I do with that?

Speaker 1: 41:51

We're so obsessed with getting to that arrival point. We're so obsessed with being end goal oriented and result focused, versus growth focused and journey focused, that we're afraid to take steps that we know we want to take, because we are afraid that we can't control the outcome. And therefore indecision becomes one of these emotions that we indulge in, because it will keep you from taking action forward. It will keep you sitting there, waiting on someone else to tell you how. Instead of you figuring out how and possibly doing something and not getting a result that you want, you'll just sit around and be like oh well, see, I can't take steps forward yet because no one's figured out how to do this yet. Well, of course, no one's figured out how to do it yet. You're the person to figure out how to do it, so you're just going to sit around and wait for someone else to figure out how to do it. You know how they figured out how to do it, not by finding it from someone else. It's because they were do it again and repeat until they get the result that they want. And you're waiting around for everyone else to do that for you so that then you can take their process, which won't get you where you're wanting to go in your authentic purpose in life.

Speaker 1: 43:04

Indecision is an indulgent emotion that will convince you to sit there and spiral in this over and over again and convince yourself that you don't know. You don't know what to do next, but you do. This is why I do not let my clients give me I don't know for an answer. I don't know is a sign that the brain is afraid of your answer. It's not a sign that you don't have the answer. So lean in. When you catch yourself saying I don't know, be like, oh, there's something here, and lean in Okay.

Speaker 1: 43:35

So the next emotion actually it's two emotions here, because they kind of are very similar with each other that I see people indulging in is tired and exhausted. I hear people say it all the time. I'm almost getting to the point where I'm like so tired of hearing the word, I want a different word for it. Oh, I'm so exhausted and I'm like oh, what are you doing? What's exhausting you? And I want to be clear here before we dive into this.

Speaker 1: 43:58

This is something to really talk with a coach about, because there are many times where I see people who are legitimately overworking themselves, putting too much pressure on themselves, not sleeping, constantly hustling and trying to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow as fast as they can, because they don't like where they are and they're just so obsessed with needing to quote-unquote get there that they're working themselves to death. And so, therefore, they really are legitimately exhausted and tired. And these people, I will say take the load off, my friend. You are in a journey, not in a race. There is no destination. Be where you are right now, take care of yourself. Let's find your next authentic step, not you know 50 steps ahead where you think you need to be to finally be acceptable. But here's the thing.

Speaker 1: 44:45

For most people, what I see is that tired and exhausted becomes this indulgent emotion that allows them to escape their desire to grow and the uncertainty that comes with it, and sometimes it's really difficult to see the difference between these two, which is why I say it's important to talk to a coach about this, who can help you see.

Speaker 1: 45:06

Which one are you doing here? Are you legitimately exhausted because you're trying to hurry up and get to a goal, because you think once you get there, you'll finally feel acceptable and you cannot get there fast enough? Or are you using tired and exhausted as being a reason why you're not taking any steps towards your goal, because what I see is there are so many people out there that are not taking action towards their goals, but they claim to be exhausted, and when I ask them what they're exhausted from, most of what they tell me is a whole lot of worrying and doubting and feeling tremendous pressure building up from the things that they want to accomplish, but they're not, or they're tired because they're constantly reacting to crises in their life all day long instead of taking action towards the things that are actually important to them.

Speaker 1: 45:53

Or they're feeling exhausted from running around and busying themselves with little tasks that are not so important, that don't get them closer to what it is that they're truly wanting to go after that aligns with their mission in life and their purpose. So they indulge in this feeling of exhausted from being busy all the time because they use busy as a way to avoid what is doing, what is important, that they're afraid of doing. So they alternate back and forth between indulging in busy and indulging in tired and exhausted. Meanwhile, if you look at what is genuinely important for them, they're not taking actions towards that. Nothing is happening there. Which brings me to the next emotion I just mentioned it Busy. Busy is also an emotion that we experience. It's a feeling that we experience and don't get me wrong here I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to have days that are full, but busy is the buzzword. That's something different that I hear a lot of you all using as being the reason why you can't do the things that are important for you in life. Busy is just doing a lot of things, and what I find for a lot of you is that busy is doing a lot of things that don't align with your purpose or mission or goals in life that involve a lot of you avoiding doing what is truly important for you.

Speaker 1: 47:08

Let me give you an example here. Let me give you an example here of from the perspective of, let's say, you moms out there, because I hear a lot of this from moms and moms. I'm not trying to take away from the fact that having kids is work. I'm not trying to say that you aren't busy. I'm not trying to say that and I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't want to take care of your kids. This is not me saying, oh, make time for yourself, you need to pamper yourself. This is not me. What I'm showing you here is an example of how busy is an indulgent emotion that distracts you from what is truly important in your life.

Speaker 1: 47:46

So you have the goal of writing a book and say you even go so far as to plan time on Saturday to do this because there's nothing else that is important to do on that Saturday. Everything else could be done at a different time. You can clean during the week or clean on Sunday. So you plan time on Saturday to do this. Say you plan three or four hours, okay, and you wake up and you notice this twinge in your stomach oh God, I plan these three hours to write this book today. What am I going to write? Oh my God, I don't know. And so you start indulging in doubt. Book today what am I going to write? Oh my god, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 48:20

And so you start indulging in doubt. And then you start indulging in worry. And this is a goal that you have, and writing it and publishing it would mean more financial security. So it was really important for you and it means getting your truth out there, expressing it, and you've always wanted to write the book and this is your way of expressing and bringing your message to more people and creating more of those values and sensitivities in the world. This is important to you. But you wake up and you start experiencing doubt. You start indulging in that, you start indulging in worry and, as the time gets closer to that time that you plan to go, start writing the book. You're sitting there making your cup of coffee, getting ready to go in your office and write your book, and you look over and you see your daughter making a mess in the kitchen because she's cooking and she's learning how to cook. So what?

Speaker 1: 49:04

do you do, you run to go help her cook. Then, after cooking, oh look at this mess here. She's not so great at cleaning up. So you help her clean up. And then, as you do, you dirty some towels. So you go to put the dirty towels that you were wiping up the counters with into the laundry. And as you do, you notice that the laundry basket is full. So you're like, hmm, I should start a load of clothes.

Speaker 1: 49:24

So you do that and as you do, you find a toy in one of your son's pockets and it brings you to his room because you want to give it back to him. And when you do, you find this room is a mess. So you start yelling at him and then you begin helping him clean, because you start telling yourself he can't do this on his own. He's not good enough to clean this room to my expectations. I don't want him to learn from cleaning. I want it clean, so it's best if I help him do it. And so you help him clean his room, you help him organize his room and as you finish, he mentions to you how hungry he is, because it's almost noon and it's almost lunchtime, and therefore you go start cooking lunch for him. And then, as you do, the family smells it and they want lunch too. So you start making an even bigger lunch. And then, after lunch, you see your daughter struggling with the dishes and you want the dishes to be done right. So you decide to help her with the dishes, help her clean up the kitchen, and again, as you do, you start to notice the kitchen faucet is dripping. So you're like, hmm, that's something that my husband needs to fix. So you run outside and you go to tell your husband in the backyard and, as you do, you notice your plants are looking a bit dry. So you go and you grab the hose and you start watering the plants. And as you water the plants, you get some mud on your shoes because you're standing there in the wet dirt. And so you go inside and you track some mud on the floor. So you notice the mud on the floor and you think, hmm, I should get the mop and go mop that mud up. And as you do, you notice how dirty the rest of the kitchen floor is. So you mop the whole entire kitchen. You go into the bathroom to dump out the dirty water, because you can't get to the kitchen sink because the floor is dirty and you notice how dirty the bathroom is. The bathroom is a mess. It's your kid's bathroom and your kids are obviously not capable of cleaning it, so you should clean it right. So you mop the bathroom too, and then you clean the bathroom and you clean the bathroom, and then you think, well, I've already mopped all of the floors, so I might as well vacuum the carpeted floors too. So you start vacuuming the carpeted floors and as you vacuum you notice dust, so you better get to that too. And then the next thing you know it's dinner time. I think you get the picture here.

Speaker 1: 51:17

My friends, that's a busy day the whole day, and nothing that you did was bad or objectively not important. But for that time it was not what was important. It was not what you planned. You broke your promise to yourself to start writing that book that was important to you. You convinced yourself that being busy with these little tasks was what you should do, to spend your time, to avoid the uncertainty of starting to write that book and seeing where it would take you and seeing what you would say and getting that message out. The cleaning, although it may not have been as thorough, could have been done by your kids or done on another day. You had planned that time for writing the book. Your daughter knew how to cook. She's just learning and struggling, and instead of you letting her learn through the struggle, you decide to show her. Your son was cleaning his room too. So many things that you did on this day that could have been done by someone else or done at a different time, when you planned to do them, instead of during the time that you planned to write the book. That was important for you.

Speaker 1: 52:19

This is indulging in busy to avoid the uncertainty of the important things in your life that are a bit uncertain, that require a little bit of hard work from you, effort from you, learning from you, a little bit of doing it and not getting the result, and trying it again and doing it again until you get the result you want. Busy, while not necessarily fun, it's familiar, it's comfortable, it's you doing a bunch of things that you know you're good at, that you can do, instead of doing the thing that you plan to do, that you set time aside for, that you told yourself you were going to do. And, my friends, it's not just moms either, or even just parents. I see single people doing the same thing in their lives in different ways avoiding a project that is important to you, where you want to be going in your life, and by doing so you would be moving into uncertainty. So instead, what you do is you indulge in busyness with helping other people doing tasks that are important to them that you you quote-unquote notice at the time that you plan to do the thing that's important for you, not planning to do these other things at other times. So instead you just do them as a reaction to avoid the uncomfortableness of doing the important thing that's uncertain for you. This is where we start to indulge ourselves in busy, my friends, all of you are doing it.

Speaker 1: 53:39

I used an example of a mom and moms. I'm not just trying to single you out here, but I do see it a lot with you guys. I see it a lot with moms who busy themselves with taking on the responsibility of everyone and everything in their house and trying to control everything and taking no time out for the things that are important for them, not planning the things that are important for them so that they have time to do the things like the cleaning in the house, to help their kids with learning things, but also to help themselves with learning things. And it doesn't stop with just moms. You single people out there are doing it. You dads out there are doing it too. You married couples that don't have kids You're doing it too. You married couples that don't have kids you're doing it too, using busy as a way to distract yourself from what is important, that thing that if you did, it will get you closer to the life that you want to be living. But you're not sure if you can quote unquote, do it right. So instead you indulge in busy.

Speaker 1: 54:40

This brings me to the next emotion, which doesn't really relate to busy, but it's an important one Self-pity. I see people sitting around and indulging in self-pity, feeling sorry for themselves because of how much of a quote-unquote loser they believe they are, how incapable they think they are, how hard their life is in comparison to another person's life. And here's the thing this is subjective, but let's just say, for instance, you could somehow prove that your life is objectively harder, which you can't. And if you believe you can, I say please speak with the coach or me so we can show you how you are putting yourself in a victim mode in your life but say somehow you could. You could prove that your life is objectively just harder. So if you sit there and complain about it and feel sorry for you about it and talk about how much it sucks and how it shouldn't be this way, let me ask you what actions are you taking to make up for how much harder your life is to accomplish the goals that you want to accomplish in your life, that the person who you think has an easier life can somehow do easier? What actions are you taking? None, you're taking zero actions other than sitting there and indulging in self-pity.

Speaker 1: 55:48

And here's where self-pity becomes indulgent. Sure, no one loves to feel self-pity, but it feels safer to the brain than looking at where you want to go and seeing exactly where you are and creating the steps to bridge the gap in between your genuine steps. So while self-pity might not feel great, it gives us pleasure in the payoff of that. It helps us to avoid uncertain, it helps us to avoid new and hard actions, to grow.

Speaker 1: 56:17

And self-pity like sadness. Sadness can sometimes even trigger other people to give us attention. And this self-pity is very close to another emotional indulgence, the one of hopelessness. In the same way people indulge in self-pity people will indulge in hopeless, for the same reason. It keeps you from taking action and it can create a tension for you that you may perceive as love or connection. So, my friends, the question is I want you to ask yourself are you indulging in self-pity? Are you sitting around and feeling sorry for yourself and not taking action because you feel sorry for yourself?

Speaker 1: 56:52

My friends, if you feel sorry for yourself, look at what it is in your life that you feel like you're not taking action towards, that you're not creating in your life, and then ask yourself why am I sitting here feeling sorry for myself instead of going out there and creating it? Why am I sitting here and convincing myself there's no point in trying? Where is that getting me? Nowhere. And this is how self-pity becomes indulgent, which brings me to another emotion that we use to indulge in, and that's boredom. And here's the thing Boredom is a great emotion to experience when we use it as a signal to show us where we've become stagnant and complacent in life.

Speaker 1: 57:30

We can choose it to be a stimulus to grow, but where it becomes indulgent is when we use it as a way to avoid growth. We sit around and talk about how bored we are, how boring our life is and how other people's lives are less boring, and we indulge in it to avoid looking at what we truly want in this life and how we could actually create it. So let me ask you the next time, next time you hear yourself saying that you're bored, I want you to lean in. Are you using that boredom to be like? This is a sign for me to get up and do something important in my life? Not busy yourself, but to do something that is truly important to you that you're terrified of doing. If boredom becomes a stimulus to do that, great, I'm so glad you felt boredom, but if you're sitting there complaining about how bored you are, complaining about how boring your life is or how boring you are as a person, you are indulging in boredom. My friend, the emotion has lost its ability to signal you to do anything productive in your life. But you can switch that. You have the power to switch that by leaning into it, which brings me to the next emotion, almost the exact opposite of boredom, and I see people doing this.

Speaker 1: 58:41

This is a huge one that I see in these days and it ties back to the tired or exhausted or the busy. It's overwhelmed. Overwhelmed is not a pleasant experience, so why would we indulge in it? It's simple If you believe you are overwhelmed, then guess what. You also believe Everything is too much. So what will you not do? You're not going to take action that will expand or grow you into the life you want to be living in. You won't even allow yourself to think about the life you want to be in because, guess what? You're too overwhelmed. It's just like tired and exhausted if you indulge in it.

Speaker 1: 59:16

And this is not to say that there aren't people out there that have bit off literally more than they were ready for, because they were trying to jump 20 steps ahead instead of taking their next authentic step, and that they're not trying to stay afloat on their own expectations of how fast they should quote-unquote be growing. I'm not trying to say that there aren't people out there that are doing this or that they are doing so much to grow in a way that they feel like they should be growing, that they are doing so much to grow in a way that they feel like they should be growing that they reach a point of overwhelm. This can really happen, but just like with tired and exhausted, what I see a lot of people doing is that they're not at this point but they're indulging in the feeling of overwhelm. I see a lot of people claiming overwhelm but when I sit down and talk with them about what they feel overwhelmed about and I ask them questions to get them to find their own path forward, it turns out they're not overwhelmed, they're avoiding.

Speaker 1: 1:00:12

There are usually solutions right in front of them that they see and they know they could do or that are possible. But the moment that they recognize the solutions and recognize that there is actually a step I could take today to move forward towards them, they go right back to their story of overwhelm and how overwhelmed they feel and how this is why they can't do the thing that they see in their life that they could do, the next step that they could take. They're so busy indulging in overwhelm though it's not comfortable for them, but it feels more comfortable than stepping into growth that they're designed for to take that next genuine step for them, the next authentic step. It feels safer to them to just sit and feel overwhelmed and convince themselves no, it's all too much, I can't do it.

Speaker 1: 1:01:04

Overwhelm becomes this it feels heavy, but it almost feels like a warm blanket or shield to a lot of people, a shield from them seeing their way forward, because as long as they don't see it, they don't have to do it. And overwhelm means oh, no, no, no, I can't look at that. No, it's too much for me. No, no, no, I'm too overwhelmed right now. Don't give me solutions, I'm overwhelmed, which is ironic because if you had solutions, you wouldn't be overwhelmed. You would be taking steps to take care of the things that are important for you, instead of feeling overwhelmed with watching them pile up and pile up, and pile up and pile up because you're indulging in overwhelm, instead of taking the action today that you could take to get closer to having that fulfilling, organized, purposeful life. And I see so many people indulging in stories that create this feeling of overwhelm for them because it keeps them playing small, it keeps them playing safe and keeps them staying in the comfortable actions.

Speaker 1: 1:02:03

So how can you recognize whether or not you have patterns of emotional indulgence in your life? So here are some signs, some patterns to recognize that you may be in emotional indulgence. Number one is the most obvious there's no growth in your life. You don't see yourself getting any closer to the life you want to be living, when you close your eyes and you imagine yourself living that fulfilling life. If you're not getting any closer to that feeling that you feel there there's no growth. So that's the first sign. Number two no movement at all in the direction that you want to be going in life, or feeling stuck.

Speaker 1: 1:02:44

The next one, next sign procrastination. If you call yourself a procrastinator, my friends, I can almost assure you there are also emotions in your life that you're indulging in to help you procrastinate. They make it feel like oh no, no, I wasn't procrastinating Legitimately, I couldn't do it because blah blah, blah, blah, blah. So procrastination is a huge sign Unfinished projects that you started or that you wanted to start. Maybe you went and got supplies for starting something and then you just didn't do it. Another big one we talked about this feeling busy or exhausted or tired, but not having done anything to move yourself in the direction of your mission in life that you want to be moving towards.

Speaker 1: 1:03:32

You may find yourself being presented with solutions but immediately wanting excuses for why they couldn't possibly work for you. That's a huge way to recognize emotional indulgence. You will notice a growing list of things that are important for you that you want to do, but you're not planning time for them Because maybe you're too overwhelmed. You will notice feeling stuck in patterns of the same emotions emerging over and over again, and this being the reason why you haven't planned to do something or you haven't done the things that are important for you. You may notice, if you look back at the last few years of your life, you notice feeling overwhelmed regularly or many times, but you cannot see where you're doing things differently now. That would help you not feel overwhelmed. This is a big sign of emotional indulgence and overwhelm. Another pattern to notice of emotional indulgence is you may notice wanting to release sadness for something, but then resisting the idea of it, a part of you saying no, no, no, no. Let's hold on to that sadness, let's keep it, maybe even having feelings of anger or fear at the idea of releasing sadness. That's a sign of emotional indulgence. You may notice patterns of you telling yourself about how pointless it would be to even bother creating solutions or doing something differently in your life. That's another sign of emotional indulgence.

Speaker 1: 1:05:07

So the question becomes what is it that we want to do instead of emotional indulgence? Well, we want to feel our emotions, and a lot of you are like. Well, I thought that was feeling my emotions. For a lot of people indulging in emotions, feeling trapped in the emotions, feeling swept away by the emotions and taken by the emotions, or emoting the emotions that that's feeling the emotion, and I tell you all how important it is to feel emotions, and so I want to clarify here today what does feeling an emotion actually look like? And here is a process that you can begin to practice that will help you learn what it feels like to feel an emotion, versus resisting it or indulging in it or reacting to it.

Speaker 1: 1:05:50

Number one is to notice that it's there, notice that the emotion is there. The next step is to tell yourself that you are having a thought that is creating an emotion and then name the emotion. Right now, I'm having thoughts that are creating sadness. I am thinking thoughts that are creating sadness. Name it, name the emotion, take its power back.

Speaker 1: 1:06:23

The next thing I want you to do is describe it in your body to yourself, and when you do this, I want you to pretend that you're in the presence of a creature from another planet, and on this planet they don't experience emotions. They don't know what an emotion even is or what it's like. And I want you to imagine you're trying to explain in detail to this creature what it's like to have an emotion in your body. Where do you feel it in your body? Does it feel like heat? Does it feel like tightness? Does it feel like heaviness? Does it feel like a vibration, like a pulsing? Does it feel like tightness? Does it feel like heaviness? Does it feel like a vibration, like a pulsing? Does it feel like coolness? Does it feel like tingling? Does it feel solid or does it come in waves? Does it feel big or small? Does it feel intense or soft? Does it feel cozy? Really, just pay attention to where it is in your body and what it feels like and describe it for yourself, as if you were describing it to this creature, who has no idea what an emotion is or what it feels like.

Speaker 1: 1:07:24

And as you do this, I want you to also focus on breathing. I want you to breathe into the feeling, wherever you feel it in your body. Breathe into that area of your body, lean into it, and I want you to focus on the exhaling of the breath too. Breathe into the feeling and long exhales, and keep describing it. Keep describing it to yourself and what you're going to notice is you're going to notice the feeling of the emotion in your body as it comes into a wave and crests and then slowly it just kind of fades out.

Speaker 1: 1:08:10

This is feeling an emotion, and once we feel it, we want to own it. We want to own that that emotion is present and that we generated it. Own that. You generated it, that you felt it and processed it. And this is important because when we own our emotions, we take our power back over them instead of feeling controlled by them. When we indulge in emotions or react to them, we become victims to them. They take us along for a ride in which we feel like they make us do things. This is emotional victimhood, and what I want to ask you to do is own that. You generated an emotion, you felt it and you processed it.

Speaker 1: 1:08:50

And the next part to owning it is owning the thoughts that created the emotion, by getting curious and leaning in. By getting curious and leaning in, it's also so important to own these thoughts that create the emotion, and it's important because if we don't own our thinking and take time to understand it and where it came from, we take the role of being a victim to these emotions, just coming out of nowhere and grabbing us and taking us on rides, you know, versus recognizing. I'm generating these emotions because of thoughts and beliefs us and taking us on rides, you know like versus recognizing. I'm generating these emotions because of thoughts and beliefs that I'm having and when we take this role, when we take the role, we take our power back, because when we, when we take the role of not understanding the emotion, not seeing the thoughts, what we do is we take on the role of having no power. We take on the role of not seeing where we're creating the results that we're currently having in our life and therefore we see no way to change where we are in our life, because we take on the belief that life happens to us and makes us think and feel things that we have no power over and we just have to resist and try and survive it.

Speaker 1: 1:09:56

But when we own our thoughts and beliefs behind our feelings and emotions, then we understand them. We understand where they came from. We get the opportunity to look at our thoughts and beliefs and understand them deeper and understand why do I have this thought or belief? Is it something I want to keep around. Is it something that I truly want to believe in, or is it something that I was told that I should accept and believe in? And maybe I want to question it a little bit? And when we do this, we have sovereignty and power again in our life. We take dominion over our life again. We get back in the driver's seat.

Speaker 1: 1:10:34

So what I want you to do is, after we start getting comfortable with experiencing and feeling the emotion not reacting to it or resisting it or indulging in it we get curious about the emotions and feeling the emotion, not reacting to it or resisting it or indulging in it. We get curious about the emotions and what it wants to teach us, what it wants to teach you about your thoughts and beliefs. As we get curious about these emotions and thoughts behind them, I want you to take an approach to look at these. That's going to be very helpful for you, and here's the approach. I want you to approach it with curiosity, with the approach of. Every emotion is there to show you something about yourself and how you are choosing to see the world, and that through seeing this, you will learn new ways to free yourself from the role of being a victim in your life and to re-empower yourself and put yourself back in that position of sovereignty in your life. Every emotion is there to offer you that opportunity. That's how I want you to approach this, from that perspective. Your emotions are here to help you know something, to know yourself deeper and to help you to grow. And by taking this perspective, when you experience emotions and feelings, instead of resisting and indulging and reacting, you lean in and, as you feel, you get curious and you look for the lesson, you look for the growth, you look for how the emotion is there to help you.

Speaker 1: 1:11:52

And, as I've told you before, our brain is a tool that we get to use, and when we tell our brain what to look for is a tool that we get to use. And when we tell our brain what to look for, it will find evidence for it. It will find evidence for it. Try it out. Test me if you think I'm wrong about this. If you tell your brain to look for evidence of something, it will find it. Just keep telling your brain to look for it.

Speaker 1: 1:12:16

And what I want to be clear about here is that this is a practice. This is not a destination. I'm not trying to tell you all that there is this time where you will arrive at this point in life where you just no longer react to emotions and you never feel overwhelmed, and you're never confused and you never indulge in an emotion. I'm not trying to tell you that this is an arrival point. What I'm trying to tell you is that every time you notice these things come up, these feelings of overwhelm that you want to indulge in, when you feel reactions, when you feel confusion, and you want to indulge in it. Every time you notice this, you have this practice to turn to, to bring you back to your position of empowerment and sovereignty in your life. That's what this practice is for. It's not to get you to some arrival point where it's like oh, I did it, I arrived, all emotions are taken care of, I'm good, I am an emotional scholar, I have a PhD in emotions and I no longer have to think about my emotions. I'm just flips the hair, perfect. No, that's not the point of this. This is a practice that you will take with you for the rest of your life that re-empowers you every time you notice yourself slipping back to emotional indulgence or emotional victimhood.

Speaker 1: 1:13:25

So, my friends, emotional indulgence it is a tricky little habit that we've gotten ourselves into and our society doesn't prepare us to recognize it. So a lot of us are doing it All for the sake of avoiding the discomfort of growing into the journey that you're actually designed to grow into. So, my friends, there's a lot more that we could talk about here with this, but the important things that I want you to take from today is I want you to begin to recognize if you're doing this in your life, if you're indulging in emotions and keeping yourself feeling stuck because of that, and I want you to begin to practice instead of indulging in emotions that keep you feeling trapped or out of control in your life. I really want for you all to understand how to recognize this and step out of it, and to re-empower yourself to experience and feel the emotion and learn from it, not feeling controlled by that experience of the emotion or feeling resistant to it. There's this huge space between those two opposing experiences of resisting or indulging in emotions and within this space in between, you can richly live the human emotional experience while showing up in your life and creating the life that you are designed to create and journey through. All right, my friends. So that's what I want you to take away from today about emotional indulgence, and if this sounds like something you might be struggling with or feel confused about, then I am here to support you. I'm here to guide you to some clarity and empowerment in this area of your life.

Speaker 1: 1:15:02

I work with people one-on-one regularly to guide them into a life of emotional empowerment and responsibility so that they feel free in their life and unstoppable to do the things that they're designed to be here to do and grow into. So if you want this too, feel free to reach out. You can book a free discovery call with me through my website Really simple website wwwslchch. It is a ch because I am in Switzerland, so it's not a com. Wwwslchch. The sl is for Seth Lusk, so S-L-C-H dot C-H. I'm going to have it linked in the show notes so you can also go there. You can also find me on social media on Instagram, facebook, linkedin. All of these will be linked in the notes below, so feel free to find and follow me there. Learn more about the kind of work that I do with Clients 101. But also feel free to just reach out and ask any questions that you might have about this topic or any other topic that you've heard in other podcast episodes that I've covered here. I'm here to support and guide.

Speaker 1: 1:16:05

Okay, emotional indulgence does not have to trap you. It does not have to be something that you live through constantly. There is a way out, okay? So that was the episode on recognizing emotional indulgence. For those of you all hearing it for the first time, I hope you enjoyed the episode.

Speaker 1: 1:16:28

For those of you all maybe listening to it for a second time, I hope it's a good reminder of this topic and how important it is for us to recognize the difference between indulging in emotions, reacting to emotions, versus feeling our emotions, and I think this is a good reminder for us all to have at this time. I've been talking a lot about emotional reactivity lately and the difference between feeling and reacting to our emotions, so I felt like re-airing this episode today would be a good reminder for you all and give you a chance to remember this message and how important it is. So I love you all. I'll see you again here next week. Until then, ciao. If you did, please subscribe so that you're one of the first people to know when I release a new episode each week.

Speaker 1: 1:17:21

If you have any questions, or if you have interest in learning more about the coaching that I do with my clients one-on-one, then just head over to my website at wwwlifecoachsethcom. That's wwwlifecoachsethcom. There you're going to have the ability to reach out to me for questions that you might have or to book your free discovery call with me to discuss what one-on-one coaching with me might be like for you. You can also check out and order your copy of my book to get a taste of what I'm all about as a person and as a coach. I'm so happy that you joined us today and I hope to have you here again next week. So until then, let authenticity be the guide to your most unstoppable and fulfilling journey of life. Thank you.