The F-Word We Don't Talk About: Feelings (And Why They Matter)

🎙️ Episode 12: The F Word — Feelings

What if the reason you feel stuck isn’t a lack of discipline… but the way you’ve been taught to treat your feelings?

In Episode 12 of Trail Talks, we’re talking about the real F word — feelings. 🧠💛
The emotions we were never taught how to name, process, or trust — and how they quietly influence our goals, decisions, relationships, and leadership.

In this episode, we explore:
✨ Why feelings often feel like facts
✨ How emotional intelligence shapes consistency and discipline
✨ The difference between feeling through emotions vs. around them
✨ Why motivation is unreliable — and standards matter more
✨ Practical tools to name, process, and manage emotions without suppressing them

Feelings are real. They’re valid. But they don’t have to be in charge.

This conversation connects emotional intelligence, cognitive behavioral tools, and real-life examples to help you stop waiting for the “right” feeling — and start showing up with intention, even when it’s uncomfortable.

🎧 Whether you’re navigating goals, leadership, relationships, or personal growth, this episode will help you build awareness, consistency, and trust in yourself.

Awareness is powerful. Support is transformational.

Transcript

0:38

hey friends. Welcome back to Trail Talks. We are on episode 12 and we are talking about the F word today. Tara, what is that F word? Do we dare say it? Do we dare say it? We should say it. Feelings. Feelings. Oh, feelings. So we're talking about feelings because for the last month leading into 2026, we had a couple episodes about goals and why goals are important and what to expect on the journey of reaching that goal. And last week we talked about time. Making decisions and allocating the proper time so you can meet those goals. Along the way in, in that journey of reaching the goal, we talked about the joy, the setbacks what builds momentum, how you lose momentum, and an area called the messy middle. And through all of those phases of the gritty eight of reaching the goal, there's gonna be a lot of emotions. Yes. And we're gonna talk about that today. Why we think feelings are facts and they drive what we do, action and inaction. And then we're gonna give you some tools. I never like to talk about feelings I never did. Yeah. Prior to coaching and understanding the coaching model. Thoughts lead to feelings. Feelings lead to actions, feelings, emotions, same thing. Yeah. And prior to understanding cognitive behavioral therapy and going to counseling myself I didn't, I never liked to talk about feelings. We were always just fine. Yeah. I think it was way we were raised too. You're, nope, you're not allowed to have them. If you were to ask me five years ago, seven years ago to name, 10 feelings or 10 emotions, I probably wouldn't be able to. And maybe most I would gravitate towards would be negative emotions. Yeah. Mad, angry, sad. Yep. And then it wasn't until learning. Cognitive behavioral therapy, the coaching model, understanding feelings, emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is huge. And that is feeling intelligence. It's understanding emotions and how they impact your life. And it wasn't until then when I started understanding why we feel the way they we do and what happens as a result of us listening to our feelings. And not all feelings are gonna be positive, and we're gonna talk about that. Life is 50 50 when right. When we have negative experiences, we're supposed to be sad, we're supposed to grieve, and that's okay. We can feel how we wanna feel. It's just processing those appropriately. So how do you feel today, Tara? Feeling a little mentally exhausted. Okay. Exhausted. I'm exhausted. Yeah. So I have a prop here. The feelings wheel. So when I was, in counseling my wonderful truth tellers would ask me every morning, we'd look at the wheel of feelings and say, Kelly, how do you feel today? And I would not only say the feeling, but why that took everything out of me. It was painful. I can't imagine it was painful. Yeah. Because I went in there, I went in there, just say, fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. One word. That's how you're trained to be fine. Yeah, all the time. Yeah. Yeah. And then I would really have to do like some introspection and really look at the wheel. They're like, Nope, come on. You cried yesterday. You're not fine. And I found in the beginning. Just, I was, going through some struggles and navigating, through that part of my life I was in. Like the darker, it was like shame. I was feeling shame or scared or fear, and then as I began to rewire and understanding feelings more and how it was impacting my life and how I was showing up, then I would start to go into the yellow and the green feel grateful, you feel proud. So anyway, just a little background of that. I think Tara's got a prop there too. What do you got, Tara? Yeah, I have the Emotional Intelligence 2.0 book. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. When I, yeah, when I took the emotional intelligence class. I've taken a lot of'em, but they gave us this book. It's pretty good. So many articles. When you look at fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, all of that emotional intelligence is at the top of the list. When you look at leadership traits of exceptional leaders, it's high emotional intelligence and it's always strengthening that emotional intelligence.'cause it fluctuates, yeah. So when we look at this and connect it to our. Goal journey. When we ask ourselves how we feel that day or if we feel tired or we feel exhausted or disappointed or ashamed, we tend to look or think about those feelings as facts, and then they show up throughout our day. So we yeah, we let feelings decide what choices you make. Yes. So that how we feel make our choices, which is very inconsistent. Yeah. We do it all the time. It's, I don't feel like it today. I'll start when I'm motivated. I just need to get in the right head space. What is that? I know what I should do. Like it's almost like we wait to have that perfect feeling to, to take a step forward. And it's gonna show up in the goals. It shows up in our relationships, folks. Next month I think we'll do a few episodes on relationships, shows up in our health, how we take care of ourselves and our boundaries and much, much more. So we, yeah, give them a lot of power. We give our feelings so much power that we let our feelings decide our actions and our behaviors. I learned that to be emotional reasoning. So it's a cognitive process. Where we conclude that the emotional reaction proves that something is true. Yeah. So it's like a cognitive reasoning, emotional reasoning. Yeah. We create like an emotional truth. We believe it. If we feel it, we're believing what we feel and our actions are gonna come from that. When really we have to look at why am I feeling this right? And that usually comes from your thoughts. So we let our feelings be in charge, and when we give the power to our feelings and we let them be in charge, then we're not gonna have consistency or discipline in our life. And how are we gonna. Reach our goals when we don't have consistency or discipline. So let's talk about feelings first. Okay. So what is a feeling? We're gonna start with the basics. What is a feeling? A physical sensation that's created by how we interpret a situation. So something happens, a circumstance happens, we put a thought to it, and then we feel based on that thought, the real, it's a real feeling like if Tara's exhausted right now, that is truly how she feels. She feels exhausted. If I have a headache, my head hurts or I can. Be anxious. That was also one that I used quite often. It was anxious if I'm getting nervous about doing something or I could feel anxious. It's a real feeling. It's valid it, but it's also informative. It's informing you of something. Just because they're real and they're informative doesn't mean they're facts. And we're not saying that you shouldn't feel them. They're not allowed or anything like that. Yeah. 100% natural and normal. Look at, they're all allowed. This is just a small portion of them. You're allowed to feel what you wanna feel. Yeah. And yeah, life is 50 50. We are not gonna walk around and be happy all the time. We're gonna experience. Every single human experience that we can, I'd rather be human than happy. So this is where emotional intelligence comes in. So we talked about feeling it's a physical sensation in our body that comes from us interpreting something. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize the feeling. Recognize that emotion, understand it and manage it. So it's still gonna show up, but instead of you quickly acting upon that feeling or emotion, emotional intelligence is gonna make you a little bit more curious about it. Yeah. I read something about emotion versus feeling and that the difference is having and knowing. So for some people, the emotion and the consciousness of it are not strongly connected. So they don't even realize that they're fearful, angry, or depressed until it becomes so persistent that it drags them into a severe mood, which then makes them recognize it. So you have these feelings that you just don't recognize. And so it's the difference between having and knowing the emotion that you're having it. Knowing the feeling is usually the knowing part of it. So the knowing is oh, I guess I've been really sad about whatever, or I've been afraid or fearful of these things, but you didn't notice that your body was having those sensations or that you're going through those emotions until it became severe enough. And I guess a lot of people don't have the ability to connect the two. That's where emotional intelligence comes in. Yeah. When did you start hearing about emotional intelligence that, that concept? 10 years ago. Yeah. I would say. Yeah, because I, it was Daniel Goman, is it Daniel Goman, the author? I think he was the one that like created the concept of it. And now it's a huge thing, but, it's almost like a buzzword now. Yeah. It's a concept. It's, it is. Yeah. How smart are you about your emotions? Because we do things and we don't do things based on how we feel, right? Yeah. But really, when we were in school, did you learn anything about emotional intelligence? No, we were raised, all of us Jen, what am I? Gen Xers. And those before me were raised just to be happy to feel good all of the time to. And I always say that. Yeah. And I was raised by a boomer. Yeah. Yeah. And other people dictate our feelings. They hurt my feelings. Yeah. I always did that. I always blame, oh my gosh. They hurt my feelings. They did this, and you're given so much to your power, yeah. And because you weren't allowed to feel or. Be sad or hurt I know I used to exchange hurt for anger. That's a common thing. Oh, someone hurt your feelings. You turn your thought process into, now I'm mad at them. Yeah. I'm mad at the world anger. And then you make bad decisions. Your reactions are bad. Where if you just accept, okay, your feelings are hurt and that's okay, and you feel through it, then you're not gonna create this. Fake emotion. It's a secondary emotion. You're not gonna create that fake, secondary emotion. Yeah. Yeah. Even looking back you always felt bad if you felt sad. You're allowed to be sad. It's okay. Yeah. Yeah. That was emotional intelligence 1 0 1, where feelings come from. Let's talk about the neuroscience of it real quick. And we talked about this a little bit last week and in past episodes when we talk about the brain and you have your high level executive functioning through the cortex is the prefrontal cortex and your middle brain, your feeling brain, they call it where the amygdala is. That's your limbic system. That's your fast reactions. That's your autopilot. We talked about that. And system one. Yeah. And your react and your reactions. So when somebody does something or something happens, a circumstance, and we think from you can either be the lowest part of your brain, which we call like the lizard brain. That's the lowest part of thinking. And then it goes to your limbic system. That's where you react. That's where you feel all those feelings, which for the most part are indulgent emotions, which in the most indulgent emotions that will never serve you well are worry, fear, doubt, and overwhelm. And I know there's another one in there, but those four. So anytime something happens or somebody does something and you lash out or you react quickly and you wish you had that moment back that you could take it back, that's your limbic system responding versus just breathing a little bit and maybe even waiting 10 seconds, doing some deep breathing, going for a walk. All those tools that we share where you're thinking from a higher level or a higher part of your brain. Your prefrontal cortex.'cause the limbic, I just wanna clarify that the limbic system is a part of brain that's responsible for survival. Yes. And threat detection. And your emotional reactions, which is why sometimes we react the way that she was just explaining. Thank you for catching that. So limbic system, indulgent emotions are the trap. When you are trying to reach that goal, you're going to be feeling so many emotions and joy, everything and you are going to be feeling indulgent emotions. Those are the worry, doubt, fear, overwhelm, anger not bad. We don't say bad emotions. We say indulgent because we tend to, again, listen to them and when. We feel those emotions rather than being curious. We let them make the decisions for us and we ruminate and stir, in those emotions. So they're gonna sneak up. They feel productive, but they're gonna hold you back. Yeah, we talked about goals and time and, the processes and like you said, feelings will come from it, but we have to also remember that when we think from a feeling standpoint. Feelings respond to now and not to where you want to be. Yeah. So a good example is professionalism. Professionalism is one that really resonated with me because you can't react and fight every battle at work. Because you wanna promote, you wanna move up in the company, you wanna do well. So if I'm coming from feelings and emotions and I'm reacting with those, that's not gonna put me to where I'm trying to go. It's only. Responding to the now. Yeah. Yeah. When you feel worry, does it move you forward? No. No. When you feel doubt, does it move you forward? Absolutely not. Fear doesn't move. Overwhelm does it? Anger does not move you forward. Yeah. And in life, and again, we gotta keep moving forward, folks. Yeah. We're not saying you can't, we gotta be, we gotta be clear. So I say, oh, I can't be angry. We don't wanna sound like the boomers. You could feel, whatever you could feel, whatever you wanna feel. You could feel word, you could feel fear. What we're saying is when you feel those, be curious. There we go. Why? Yeah. Feel it. Feel it. But be curious about it because ultimately it's gonna affect how you show up and trust. When things happen, we're supposed to feel a certain way. Okay. Indulgent emotions. That's one of the concepts, right? Emotional intelligence was one. Indulgent emotions is another. They don't lead to action. So all that worry, the doubt, the fear, it's not gonna move you forward. And when you're trying to reach that goal, yeah, you are gonna have some setbacks and you have time to reset. So it's allowing yourself. Be curious about those emotions and just know, like you can reset and you could show up better the next day but if you indulge in those and you continue to indulge, you're gonna stall out. Yeah. The CTF ar, we talk about how we use that. I, when I get in those type of feelings about whatever my actions are that are not moving me forward. I try to recognize him and I use the CFT AR backwards. Yeah. So what action am I doing that's not moving me forward? What is the feeling that I'm feeling and what was the thought that I had so that I can then move forward and change my thought, change my feelings, and change my reaction and reset. I'm gonna say it again. Every episode, if you aren't using the model in your life every day, use it. Yeah. And we should really dedicate like one episode to it. Just remember, circumstance happens, something happens. Factual. You have a thought about it. That thought leads to your feelings. Feelings, you lead to action. So you act or not act. Inaction is an action based on what you feel, and those are the results. So what Tara is saying is, your goal is the result that you want. That's the R that your goal is that what actions do you need to take to get to that result? And that's where you fill in everything you need to do to reach that goal. All your increments and milestones. Our next question to you if we were to coach you, would be how do you need to feel to do all those things? And this is where can pick something here, right? Motivated, empowered, you just pick a feeling. Something that would get you motivated to give you that momentum, to reach those goals or to do those actions. Okay, the next concept, and I said it a few minutes ago, life is 50 50. We just normalize those negative emotions because we're not gonna walk around and be happy all the time. We wanna be human, we wanna go through and we wanna feel every experience and feeling that we can, but we are supposed to feel grief. We are supposed to be sad. When sad things happen, we can be disappointed. We can feel hurt, we can feel everything we wanna feel emotional intelligence isn't avoiding those emotions. Like we said, we expect you to feel those. It's just allowing them without living in you. So it's allowing it and then being curious about it. So we are meant to feel negative emotions, not build our lives around them. For those that are not as familiar with emotional intelligence, can I ask you to explain what you mean by be curious? Oh, you're asking me? Yeah. Oh, I thought you were asking. No, asking. You explain.'cause you keep saying be curious about it. What do you mean? Why? I know what you mean, but Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna use the model backwards and I'm gonna say why am I feeling. Worried right now. Why do I feel anger or overwhelm? And that's gonna lead me to think, what am I thinking right now? What are the thoughts I'm having about what I'm about to do or what just happened? So it's exploring the why behind it. And it's all up here. It's all in your thoughts. It's the thoughts that are surrounding it. And it may be something because our brain works on. Predictions and habits, yes. That it might be something new. It might be the discomfort that you feel. Or if I'm doing something for the first time, or even if it's public speaking and I feel anxious or nervous, and I tend to sometimes indulge in those emotions and they hold me back it's because I'm about to be taken out of my comfort zone. So it's, for me, it's exploring that and being curious I'm supposed to feel that Kelly, I'm, it, I'm supposed to be a little bit uncomfortable. That's the price of growth. So it's okay. Just breathe, prepare, control what you can't control and everything is gonna be fine. Sometimes I say, what's the worst that can happen if you don't put yourself out there? What's the worst that can happen? You're gonna have lessons learned, you're gonna fail forward, but it's all about moving forward. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure.'cause if there's keep saying being curious, I'm like, we need to explore what that means exactly. So I also said besides being curious, when you feel something you wanna process the emotion what does that mean? How do we just process an emotion? It doesn't mean venting. It doesn't mean if I'm mad, I'm gonna lash out at tariff. I'm mad at Terra. That doesn't mean I'm processing it. You're actually reacting to it. Yes. Yes. And it's not suppressing it because that's not healthy. And it's not just waiting for it to disappear, it means you're gonna allow it to move through your body. We said it's a physical sensation in how you interpret the situation. You're gonna allow it to move through your body and nervous system without avoiding it. You're gonna allow it to move through your body so it doesn't decide your next actions. Neuroscience supports this, that emotions are physiological responses. When acknowledged and Tara and I have talked about this before, that sometimes a good method and a good tool is when you feel something and it can be an indulgent emotion, like worry fear, doubt, shame to separate yourself from it and write it down. Do you remember that? Yeah. Because when you separate yourself from it and you write it down, you're taking yourself out of your body and looking at it objectively. So that could be another way of processing it. But when you resist it or you try to avoid it, which we've done for a very long time. Yeah.'cause we didn't think we were allowed to feel neg negative feelings, but when you resist it. Or avoid it, then it's just gonna linger. It's almost like sometimes when you grieve you go through the feeling versus trying to go around the feeling. The best way to do it is to go through it. And there's plenty of models out there that you can find on Google.'cause we talked about the change curve when we were talking about change. But how it also works with grief. The cycle that you go through we all have a similar system or cycle that our body and brains go through. Yeah. And so there's a ton of tools out there that you can find to help deal with each emotion, not just grief or change or changes in emotion, but yeah. You feel, you feel so many emotions when there's change. Yeah. So the other concept that we just talked about, what feeling through versus feeling around we just wanna make sure we get that across clear. Feeling around emotion looks like numbing it, so avoiding it, scrolling when we feel sad or. Bored or stressed or worried. We tend to go on autopilot and pick up our phones and maybe scroll or avoid or overthink feeling through. Looks like naming it just like we said. Maybe just name it, Kelly, you're anxious or you're nervous because you're about to do a public speaking event. It's okay. Just breathe. It's okay to feel that. So feeling through it is naming it, allowing it, breathing through it, and then choosing how to act so you can't bypass emotion and still move forward. And this is where your standards come in. So our standards, the next concept is how feelings drive action, which was part of the cognitive behavioral therapy, the life coaching model. Feelings, influence action. Action creates results. If feelings are in charge, if we let them rule our lives, we're gonna have inconsistent action because we're gonna feel so many different things and just keep acting based on all those different feelings. We won't have boundaries, and then we're gonna stall out. It's not gonna keep us moving forward like we want. I like to think about it like a toddler. Who doesn't know what these emotions are? They have no clue. Yeah, we don't know either, but they really don't know the emotions and what they're going through and how they're feeling. And Vanessa told me about these little stuffies, I think you have'em too, right? I do, yeah. The little stuffy. Yeah. For the kids. I love, and it has the angry face, the sad face, all these things. And when your kid is going through something, you tell them to point out which feeling they're having so that they can understand it and process it.'Cause back in the day we just get a whooping, right? You, what are you scream at for what is wrong with you? You get a whooping, you go to your room and they don't acknowledge that you're actually having some type of emotion, some type of feeling. And I noticed a world of difference, when I allowed my son to point out the feeling that he is having. And then it helped me, yeah, understand where he's at instead of being angry at him. Yeah. Yeah. Kids now in school are getting the, I don't know what phrase they're calling it, but they're getting something on emotions or emotional intelligence. Yeah. They are getting that now. Yeah. We have the little poster up where he can choose how he's feeling. So if he's sad or I just, I don't have it hanging up now'cause we're moving, but I would say point to whatever you're feeling and when he's mad, he makes sure. He points to red points, that extra hard red, he points to that red face, he points to that red face. And I said, okay, you're allowed to feel that you're allowed to feel it. But but it is hard for us to do that too. Yes, but now it's out there like we see emotional intelligence. We see it in all these articles. We see it in all these companies. We are. Emotional intelligence coaches. But what is that movie? What is that? Kids movie. The Inside Out. Oh, inside Out. We love that movie. Brilliant. Brilliant. Yes. I love that movie and yeah, I do too. How brilliant it is to base these characters off of feelings. It even made me, I learned something from that movie. I think I, it's like what? Yeah, that was amazing. That was brilliant. Yes. We used to show it, when we did our emotional intelligence class, we used to show a couple clips from that. And one of them was the sadness when one of the characters felt sad and'cause we always think that. When somebody is sad that we need to quickly get them out of their sadness so they could be happy Happyness, we need to get them, we need to get them to the Happy 50 instead of the SAD 50, right? The life is 50 50 and it showed the clip when Blue or sadness? I'm sorry for the listeners that I don't know. It was sadness, sad. It was depression, I think. And then and joy, sadness, controlled. Yeah, joy went up to him and wanted to quickly get him out of his sadness, out of his funk, and get him happier, and he wasn't until sadness went up to him and just sat with him. That's it. He didn't need anyone to fix his problems. He just needed somebody to sit with them, and that's what people need sometimes. That's, that is empathy. Sympathy is feeling for someone. Empathy is feeling with somebody, and there's a huge difference that sometimes people aren't looking for the answer. Sometimes people are not looking to go from one to 10, just like that and feeling very happy. Sometimes they just want somebody to be there and say I'm here with you. Yep. Great movie. Wow. Yeah. Genius. Okay, let's take a detour. Okay. Can we talk about whether or not you went to the playoffs with your fantasy football league, Ander family? Oh yeah. Yeah we'll talk about fantasy football and playoff football. I did make it to the playoffs. Good. However. This is probably the second or third year in a row that I've made it to the playoffs, but I lost, this is perfect for this episode. And the previous, I lost momentum, like I started losing a little bit of interest, and I don't know why this always happens at the end of the season, but I didn't set my lineup. I just, you didn't, I didn't, you forgot. I don't, I didn't, I don't wanna say I forgot because I thought about it and I just thought I'm sure it's fine. Whereas in the beginning of the season, I have the joy and I have the excitement, and I'm like, yep, I'm gonna win. This is how I'm gonna set it up. I'm gonna analyze everything. And then towards the end of the season, I'm like, eh I'm sure the, I'm sure the lineup's fine. No, because somebody I had on my bench scored like 25 points. Oh my gosh. And I, so I didn't do any analysis or anything and I lost in the first round of the playoffs. But I will say, I love the league and I will do much better next year. That two, so first and second place, they were in there for the championship and it went down to the last game. In week 17,'cause we don't have week 18 because it, usually some of the teams like, don't even play their starters. But this championship game, I will say was the best championship game I've ever seen in our fantasy football league. And I need to look it up. The score. It was so close, I'm in bed, following the game because it was so late and I'm like, oh my God. There is no way the winner was losing by over 40 points. What before? I forgot what team played, was losing by 40 points, and I thought there's no way there's no way he's gonna win. And he did. I'm looking it up. So this was the final score of the championship game. I can't believe this 170.62 and second place was 170.44. What? I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. It was unbelievable. So did our girl, was our girl, Jill. Second place Jill, because she talked a lot of cash money. She was third. I think she was pretty happy with third'cause she got her money back. She got her entry fee back. I'm like, okay, go ahead. Yeah, she was pretty happy. She did pretty good. It was a great season. We're actually talking about having an end of season virtual banquet. So Jill is, oh, virtual. So Jill is helping out with that. We're gonna give out some awards, some virtual awards, and then Nice. And then when everybody's in Buffalo, or hopefully most of us are in Buffalo over the 4th of July, we'll present the trophy.'cause the trophy is in Florida in Jacksonville. And I'll talk about Jacksonville in a second with my aunt and uncle. So I'll pick it up at some point and then we'll bring it to Buffalo. But yeah. Not as much chatter in our league as previous years. Not as much family drama. So we gotta pick it up a little bit. Next year. We gotta have more drama. Yeah. You guys are more elaborate than most you have. We virtual banquets and awards and trophies for fantasy football. Yeah. Yeah. We gotta do better. That's pretty impressive. But I already look forward to next season. It's fun. And I'm nervous. The anxiety has started for the Bills game Sunday and of all teams to play, I play my family's team in Jacksonville oh, very nervous about that. And we have not played well in Jacksonville. It brings back horrible memories that the last time I was there for a Bills game, I was bragging to my family, like we were gonna drop a 40 burger on them and we lost. And I walked out of that stadium in shame. So I was gonna go, I was gonna go. But because of what happened last time if the bills lost, I would not forgive myself. I would say it was because of me. Oh. You I go that far. Field tripping yourself. Oh. Oh my goodness. I go that far. So I'm superstitious like that too with sports though. It's if I go to every game and you lose, and the one game on routine win, I think it's me too. That's, I wonder how many other people feel that way. That's how I feel. And I do like just watching it at home and I think I get more nervous as I get older watching the Bills play versus Of course, yes. Absolutely. When I was younger. So yeah, I am nervous. They play at one o'clock and there's so many narratives around Josh Allen and no more excuses if he loses and it's annoying. It's everybody just trying to get their attention. The sports analysts and all of them out there, they need somebody to talk about and something to talk about. It's look, he never came up with excuses. There's one person that takes the blame for their losses. It's Josh Allen and their window is not closing. So anyway, I love bills. Bills mafia. We're gonna be okay. They're gonna go in there and they're gonna win. And Josh Allen is going Nuclear. It's gonna go nuclear. We're claiming it. We're claiming it. We're saying it. We're saying it. Here folks. Unleash the beast! Good luck Bills. Oh man. Anyway and I like the Steelers. I'm hoping the Steelers do well. I love seeing the bears make the playoffs. I don't know. I love playoff football. So you don't follow playoff football. No, I don't. I like to go and watch the games, but do I, if the Beals, do I actually follow it? If the Bengals weren't yeah. For the books or Yeah. The Bucks. Oh, God. But, and that's tough when you won the game, but you still have, you're at the mercy of a team winning or losing that'll get you in there like that. That's, I'm sorry, bucks fans. That was tough. And I'm a Bucks fan. I'm a Bengals fan too, and I feel bad like everything happening with Joe Burrow. He is just, I don't know. It'd be interesting to see what happens with him. Yeah. All right. Let's get back on the trail. Let's do it. And hey friends, we've already given you some tools, so we're gonna just go through these again. Tool number one for feelings. Don't take them as fact and let them decide how you're gonna act. Wow, that rhymed. That was good. Dropping Barb. Now we're. Good word, jc. There we go. First tool, name the feeling, name it. Just take a second and name it. Just like our kids do when they gotta go to their feelings poster. They name the feeling and what we see an inside out too. So it's just saying it, I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'm feeling resistant, I'm feeling anxious. If you can name it, you can manage it. Which takes us to tool number two, processing it. So notice the feeling. Allow it without judgment and avoid emotional suppression. Yeah. You don't wanna indulge in it. Processing is different than indulging. Just notice it. Allow it. Don't judge yourself. And tool 3. Set standards after the emotion is validated after. So even when the feeling is there,'cause you're gonna allow it, then you decide how you're gonna show up or how you want to show up. So even when I feel tired, I'm gonna move. I'm gonna go for a walk even when I feel uncomfortable. When you feel that discomfort, I tell the truth. Even when I feel unmotivated, I'm still gonna show up. If I feel tired or unmotivated about going to the gym, guess what? I'm still gonna walk in there and do it. I'm making that choice. I'm making that decision. You're acknowledging the feeling, but now your standard of showing up is gonna guide your actions. It's gonna guide your behavior. Tool number four. No negotiation area. So you pick one area where feelings don't decide. So your movement, your sleep, your daily priorities, your boundaries. Yeah. What would you decide off this list, like of those four that we're seeing movement sleep, a daily priority or a boundary where, what's one that you would say is non-negotiable Movement. I've been on this gym journey and I, no matter how exhausted I am, how tired I am, even if I go to the gym and it's not the best workout. At least I made it, at least I got some movement in. Yeah, like a walk or something. Yeah, because my goal, because of the goal that I have as far as my health and getting in shape and everything. So good. Yeah. The other night, and this goes back to the goals, how I said I wanted to move more. I got home, I think it was at six 30, and I was exhausted. It was a long day and it's already dark. God. Oh my God. This daylight savings, it's already dark, so I just wanted to hibernate and go to bed and I didn't. I got changed and went for a run. I just knew I needed to, even if it was just 15 minutes, still I went out there and moved. I would say movement and I didn't yesterday, but I did spend three hours packing and moving and lifting. Sleep is so important. I would say sleep is up there for me. I used to function now I shouldn't say function, barely function. For years I was burning both ends of the candle working during the day, working at night, getting up back early in, and then going right to work. And it was just constant. It was burning both ends and it would show, we'll do an episode on sleep, but I would say for me, like movement and sleep is huge. If it's, seven to eight hours. I can't say more than eight hours, realistically, but seven to eight hours, and if I have six, I don't feel good. Yeah. I don't feel good. You know how I feel about sleep. So you I was gonna say like you no, no emotion in the world is gonna make me not do that. So that's why I couldn take that one. And you took a nap, like you can take naps. I don't take naps. I usually do sleeps. If I take a nap, I usually don't wake up till the next day. So I try not to take a nap, but I knew I had this to do, so I set my alarm and it was important to me. So I made myself get up, but it was hard. I almost didn't get up. Oh God. Yeah. And our producer has good sleep pattern too. Yeah. You guys really value your sleep and good sleepers. Okay. Yeah, and the rule for those non-negotiables. So whatever you choose, the movement, sleep daily priority or a boundary, it's, I don't decide this based on how I feel. I already decided that is your number one standard. It is non-negotiable. That way, you know that if it's your non-negotiable, then you don't have to spend all this time making all these decisions. Should I go to the gym? Should I not? Should I go outside? Should I get changed? Go outside for a run. No, it's a non-negotiable. It's your standard. And then you're not gonna give that up to do other things. Emotional bargaining. That'll help build consistency. It'll help build your discipline. So when you feel those emotions your brain is gonna override, that feeling, you're gonna be able to process it and then take that step forward versus stalling out. So we had the tools naming the feeling. That's a core emotional intelligence skill. Understanding the feeling while you're having it, processing it, then acting based on you processing it, setting standards after the emotion is validated, and then choosing your non-negotiable area. Those are good. Good choice. Yeah. Great tools. All right. As we wrap up, we wanna leave you with this. Your feelings matter, but they don't have to be in charge. You're allowed to feel tired. You're allowed to feel unsure. You're allowed to feel unmotivated. The work isn't to get rid of those feelings. It's to feel them and still choose how you wanna show up anyway. When you live by standards instead of moods, you stop waiting for the perfect moment and start trusting yourself in the moment you're already in. You don't need to feel ready, you just need to be willing to show up. Thanks all. If today's conversation resonated with you, you don't have to walk your journey alone. I offer emotional intelligence assessments with personalized coaching, one-on-one, mindset coaching and leadership development for teams and organizations. You can explore all of that@kellymichellecoaching.com. Linked in the show notes, and I'll leave you with this. Awareness is powerful, but support is transformational.