You are listening to the Less Drama More Mama podcast, episode 009: Balance of Emotions
This is Less Drama More Mama, the podcast for moms who want to feel calm, in control, and confident about how to handle anything life throws their way. If you’re ready to go from feeling frazzled and disrespected to feeling calm and connected, this is the podcast for you. I’m your host, Pam Howard.
Hey, hey, Mamacita! Three more days til my birthday and I got another iTunes review that I want to share with you today. This one comes from Bethbee7654 and she says, “Most podcasts are looong! These are discrete treatments of topics that provide great advice. Love the blog, too.” Thank you so much, Bethbee7654! You know, I’ve heard from a lot of you that you like the short episodes. It’s funny, though, because there are some people I listen to that when I see an episode is like less than twenty minutes, I’m like, “Oh, man!” I’m disappointed that it isn’t longer because the information is just so good. So, please keep letting me know. You like the short episodes, you’d like them to be a little longer and more in depth. I’m open to all the feedback, the good and the bad.
And that’s really a good segue into today’s topic because I want to talk to you about the balance of positive and negative emotions. And I’m using the terms positive and negative, not because I believe that some emotions are good and others are bad, but because of the way they feel inside of our bodies and the effect they have on our behavior.
Remember that your feelings drive all of your actions, so if you want to change your behavior — for example, if you want to stop yelling at your kids or you want to spend more time with them and less time on your devices, or you want to set limits and stick to them instead of constantly making empty threats, you need to become aware of the thoughts and feelings driving those actions, especially if you want to create permanent change.
When I go into my guidance classes at school, I’ll say to the kids, “Raise your hand if you think you should be happy all of the time.” And usually in the younger grades everyone raises a hand. In the older grades, about 70-80% of the kids also raise their hands. And so I’ll ask them, “Are there times when you wouldn’t want to feel happy?” And as they start to think about it, they’ll say, “Yeah, I don’t want to feel happy when someone dies.” Or “I don’t want to feel happy when my brother hits me or when my friend is upset about something.” And so I explain to them that to be human is to experience all of the emotions and the contrast between positive and negative emotions. Suffering, pain, and hardship are all a part of being alive. You can’t escape them. And you don’t have to. Without negative emotions, we wouldn’t even know or be able to appreciate the positive ones. Without fear, we wouldn’t know courage. Without self-doubt, we wouldn’t know self-confidence. Without failure, we wouldn’t know success. And without sadness, we wouldn’t know happiness.
This is exactly what the movie Inside Out teaches us and our kids, right? If you haven’t seen that movie, it is so good, and without giving the plot away, I’ll just say that it teaches us that all of our feelings are okay, even the ones that don’t feel very good at the time — and that emotions like fear, sadness, anger, and disgust — can actually serve a purpose in our lives and can make the happiness we feel even stronger.
Now obviously, we create a lot of negative emotion that doesn’t serve us, and part of what I do as a coach is to help you become more conscious of what types of emotions you’re creating with your thoughts, and how to change them should you choose. I don’t want you to misunderstand the goal of coaching. There’s nothing in what I teach my clients that says we’re supposed to be happy 100% of the time or that that’s the goal of working with me. In fact, a lot of what I teach is how to actually feel your feelings and process them, rather than reacting to them or avoiding them altogether.
By resisting and avoiding negative emotion, we actually make those emotions stronger and we suffer more. We add negative emotion to our negative emotion because we feel bad for feeling bad. Know what I mean? So I have found it incredibly useful to adopt the 50/50 rule. And this is the idea that 50% of the time, we are supposed to feel negative emotions, and the other 50% we’re supposed to feel positive ones. And when I think, “Ok, half of the time I’m going to feel fear and frustration and overwhelm and self-doubt, and that’s just the way it’s supposed to be…nothing has gone wrong”…it makes the negative less negative. People like to argue about the 50/50 rule…they they want their lives to be more like 80/20. And I think there are times when life is 80/20…and there are times when it’s 20/80, so overall it’s about 50/50.
I used to have something on my website that said, “You didn’t sign up for all this drama when you became a mama.” And my sister heard that and said, “Yes, they did.” And so I thought about it and I realized, “You know, she’s right.” Before we get married, we all hear the grim statistic that 50% of marriages end in divorce. We even talk about the contrast of experiences in our vows right? For better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness or health. We know that any of those things are possibilities and that relationships take effort and compromise. And yet, we still say, “Yes, I want to do it. I want to be married.”
Then we decide to have kids, and we know that there will be ups and downs. We know that there will be tantrums and messes and sassy attitudes and homework battles and lots of pain. And yet, we still say, “I’m all in. Sign me up for that.” Why? Because we know that it’s worth it to experience all of it. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Creating what you want in your life — whether it’s a family, a job, a healthy body, a relationship — requires you to be willing to experience a lot of negative emotions. That’s how you grow and learn and change. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but the more you’re willing to experience emotions like defeat, humiliation, rejection, frustration, vulnerability, and fear, the more self-confident, satisfied, and peaceful you’ll feel as a result. My coach Brooke Castillo always says, “Discomfort is the currency to your dreams.” I love that quote.
Now, this 50/50 rule applies to you, but it also applies to your kids. I can’t tell you how many times a week I hear parents say, “I just want my kids to be happy. That’s the most important thing.” And if I’m coaching them, I’ll ask, “Why? Why do you want your kids to be happy? Why is that so important?”
And I’ll tell you that the main reason they want their kids to be happy is so that they can feel happy. They tell themselves that when their kids are upset, it means that something has gone terribly wrong. But nothing has gone wrong. Their child is just experiencing his or her human life. When you understand that all feelings are caused by optional thoughts, thoughts like, “My child shouldn’t suffer” or “My child should always be happy,” you realize you have the power to change your own feelings by questioning and examining those thoughts and even choosing new ones.
A lot of the students that I work with have the idea that they’re entitled to a completely comfortable, easy, and happy life. They don’t want to do anything that’s hard for them. They give up the minute they feel challenged. And I tell them, “School is supposed to be hard. If school was easy, you wouldn’t need to be here. It’s supposed to push you to think in ways that are uncomfortable and to make mistakes and learn from them and grow.
Yesterday, I was watching my daughter at her jiu jitsu class. And there was a new boy there who looked like he was about to cry. And his dad said to him, “Hey, don’t get frustrated.” If he had known about the 50/50 rule, he might have said something like, “Hey, I know learning a new skill can be frustrating. It’s ok.” We don’t need to push those negative feelings away. We don’t need to fix them or distract our kids with food or toys or cheering up. We can allow ourselves and our kids to experience them and then come out stronger on the other side.
In episode 11, I’m going to talk more in depth about how to process your emotions rather than reacting, resisting, or avoiding them. But next week, I have a very special episode. It’s episode 10 and my first interview, so be sure to tune in for that. And I also still have spots open for my mini-sessions. So if you like what you’re learning here on the podcast and you want to take it to the next level and apply it to your own life, go to lessdramamoremama.com/mini to sign up to chat with me. I am wishing you a great week full of positive and negative emotions! And I’ll talk to you again next week.Bye bye.
Thank you for listening to the Less Drama More Mama podcast. If you liked this episode, please take a moment to write a quick review on iTunes and make sure you subscribe, too, so you never miss a show. Got a question, comment, or idea for an upcoming episode? Email me at pam@lessdramamoremama.com
