Ep 193. Relief

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 193, Relief.

This podcast is for people who know that living an extraordinary life is not easy or comfortable. It’s so much better than that. This is Better Than Happy, and I’m your host, Jody Moore.

Hey everyone. Welcome to the podcast. First things first, I have a new official podcast production company that is editing and producing my podcast for me, so after only 190 plus episodes, we’re finally getting official around here.

So the show notes are a lot better, let’s just say, a lot more detailed, and we have transcripts. So, if you prefer a transcript, you prefer to read, go to jodymoore.com, go to the podcast page, and you can go ahead and download or read the transcript right there online. You’re welcome.

So we haven’t gone back and transcribed the old episodes, but we’re transcribing going forward. Maybe one day we’ll go back and transcribe – I kind of want to create a podcast book, like best of. So we’ll need to transcribe or get somebody to write up some of what I’ve said. I think we should do something with all of that content. What do you think?

Anyway, that’s pretty exciting. The other thing I want to let you know about is Better Than Happy live. So I’m on the road this year. Every couple months or so I’m doing a new Better Than Happy live in a different city, different location. I’m going to be in Utah in April, which is sold out. I’m going to be in Seattle in June, which has just a handful of seats left. So if you want to come and hang out with me, go to jodymoore.com/bthlive. We’ve link it up in the show notes and grab your seat.

At that event, and at the Utah event, we’re going to be focusing on creating a deliberate future. So maybe you have a goal, maybe you’re stuck and you’re not progressing towards the goal like you want to be, or maybe you are progressing but you want to 10X your results. Maybe you don’t have a goal but you feel like you’re just surviving your life and you’re in sort of a reactive state of your life and you want to move into creating your life.

Maybe you feel a little lost because of a transition in your life and you’re asking yourself, “Now what? What am I supposed to do now? Who am I even?” So that’s the work we’re going to be doing on the day. We’re going to spend the entire day together, workshop style. And one of the benefits of a live podcast is that it can be a two-way dialog.

It’s not going to be just me talking but you’re going to be there to ask me questions. We’re going to talk through your specific situation, we’re going to do tons of coaching. So much fun. So, come and hang out with me in Seattle, but you got to grab your seat because they’re going pretty fast. So let’s do it.

Alright, let’s talk about relief, shall we? Relief is a topic I’ve been wanting to talk about because it comes up a lot when I’m coaching, and I’m always fascinated when I start asking people how they want to feel and they tell me they want to feel relieved. So relief is an emotion, right? It goes in the feeling line of your model. So I want you to think about how relief feels.

Relief is sort of a relaxing, it’s an exhale. It’s a letting go of tension. And it feels good because of what comes before relief. Before relief is stress and tightness and pressure. So relief is the lack of those negative things. You with me?

So if you find yourself wanting to feel relief, I want to suggest that you just take a moment and examine what is going on for you currently. What is it that you’re trying to get some relief from? Most often, what we want relief from is the worry, fear, overwhelm, stress, or pain that we are creating for ourselves with our thinking.

One of the things I was thinking about as I was preparing this episode is that we want relief from those – what I call dirty pain emotions. So clean pain on the other hand is sort of healing and cleansing. It’s a pain-like sadness that we experience but we move through. We don’t tighten up and there’s not a lot of pressure around it.

When we do add pressure and tighten up, then we may decide that we want some relief from that sadness, but often with clean emotions that we experience, that we move through like a good cry, we don’t need relief at the end of a good cry. We feel relief because of the good cry.

So on the other hand, dirty emotions are the kind that are not moving us through an experience and helping us to heal and recover from it. They’re actually creating more of a negative experience for us and creating pressure and digging us deeper into a ditch, such as the ones I named earlier like worry, fear, overwhelm, stress.

So let’s talk about some examples. A client that I was coaching recently told me that her son – and I want to say that her son was in his early 20s. 21, 22 years old or so. She said that this son of hers plays video games non-stop. And that he’s not motivated to find a job or do anything with his life, that she would like to see him do, that she always thought he would be doing by now, and that she thinks he actually has some desire to do but he doesn’t seem to want to be taking any action towards that.

And so she worries about her son at times and she feels frustrated with her son at times. And I asked her what she thinks she would feel if he was motivated and out there job hunting and living the life that she imagined he would be at this point. And she said, “I would feel relief.”

I thought, interesting. So again, the relief would only come because of the contrast of the worry that she has now. And if she wasn’t worried or disapproving or frustrated with him, then there would be no relief and she wouldn’t need relief. And she can choose to feel relief right now if she wants to, even if her son doesn’t do one thing differently.

We’re going to talk about that in just a moment. Let me just give you another example. Another client I was coaching was telling me about the house that she’s trying to sell and that they’re also looking to try to buy a house, and that they’re trying to coordinate the house that they’re in selling on time and at the right price with the house that they want to buy being available due to contingencies and things like that.

And so her main emotion was worry. She was worried about selling her current home and she was worried about finding a new home to move into. And again, I asked her, “When your house sells and you’ve bought a house that you love, how do you imagine you’ll feel?” And she said relieved.

So again, she’ll feel relief because she’ll no longer be feeling worry. Relief is the air after we’ve been holding our breath. Relief is a relaxing and breathing and letting go of tension, holding on, or trying to control the things outside of us, and relief is an escape from the belief that something has gone wrong.

So how do we feel relief when so many things happening in the world outside us, with the people around us, with our country, with our children, with our families are not going the way we expected they would go? When we are feeling the tension and the worry and the fear and the overwhelm, how do we get to relief?

Most people believe and what most of us attempt to do is that we need to change all of those things so that we can feel relief. Now, you might think if you’ve been listening to me for a little while or you’re one of my clients, you think that I’m going to tell you right now that the answer is to stop feeling fear and worry.

And that is one way. You could change what you’re thinking about the situation and you could feel something different instead, and that would be really useful for some of you and in some situations, I would recommend that. But I want to offer that I think there is an easier and equally powerful way to feel relief without having to change or control the things outside of you, and that is to just relax into the emotions you’re feeling now, to just be willing to feel them.

Because when we resist emotions, we exhaust ourselves. We layer emotions and we tighten up against them and push them away and emotions like that are warning signals. Our brain is trying to warn us and so they fight to be heard and that is where the tension and the exhaustion comes from and where relief is so welcome.

So I’m worried about my son and I’m frustrated about being worried about him all the time. See how we layer emotions when we’re not willing to just feel worry? So what if you were just willing to feel worried? Yes, you’re the creator of your worry with your thinking and yes, that thinking is optional. But what if you just were willing and able to feel worry and you weren’t frustrated about the worry when it came?

What if you just got into your body and felt some worry? Maybe you’re stressed about selling the house and then you’re mad about having to be stressed all the time. And so now you’re mad and stressed. So what if we just drop the part where we’re mad about being stressed and we choose to just feel some stress?

What does stress feel like in your body? It’s a knot in your chest or your gut, right? That’s it. It’s really no big deal. If you stop clenching and tightening and pushing back against it and you relax into the stress, I dare say stress wouldn’t even be so harmful if we just allowed it and felt it that way.

So I find that for myself as I do this work, because sometimes you guys hear me on this podcast or I know my clients hear me coaching and they just picture that I must never feel worried or stressed or overwhelmed or fearful, which I assure you is not the case. But I have become very good at feeling those emotions, and so I minimize the resistance and the tension around them.

So a couple things I’ve noticed. Number one, I experience so many emotions in my stomach, in my gut, or at least in my core area. And number two, I also carry some extra weight in my stomach or my gut or my core area. And so I’m kind of always trying to suck that area in to fit in my jeans the right way.

And when I’m feeling emotion, I have to let it all go to process emotions or even a physical stomach ache, for that matter. So I try to imagine that just like my three-year-old just lets her belly out, she doesn’t try to suck it in to impress anyone, she just lets it out and takes deep breaths, I try to do that and just relax into it.

Relax my jaw, relax my neck, relax my face and I just think, “Oh, there’s stress. I feel you, stress. Come on, let’s do this.” It’s almost like I’m dancing a little bit with stress. I then relax my shoulders, my arms, my legs, my feet, my hands. I try to think about relaxing my entire body and I’m going to feel some stress. And I’m like, trying to find it in my gut or my core.

Now again, all the while I know that I’m creating this stress with sentences in my mind, but feeling stress is not dangerous. That is how you just allow feelings, you guys, and you don’t layer on a bunch of other feelings about your negative feelings. I dare say that if you were willing to do that, you would feel some relief right away, even with some of the negative feelings still there.

Okay now, let’s take all of this to the next level. When we think that we want to feel relief, it’s because we’re resisting emotions maybe times. When we’re not willing to feel them, then we cause that problem for ourselves. So that’s the first thing I want to recommend that you try. But secondly, if you’re ready for some master’s level work on this, then let me offer you this, that relief is sort of like wanting to feel neutral.

Many people tell me that they just want to feel some relief because that’s the only thing they think is available and possible, given the current circumstance. Because relief, like I said, is just no longer feeling the negative emotion, but it’s not necessarily a positive emotion. So what is actually possible is maybe even better than relief because relief is one of those emotions that feels really nice at first, but then it fades because without something to push against before it, there is no relief.

So, just like being really thirsty and then taking a drink of water and that first few sips tastes so good, but then you’ve quenched your thirst and the next sips after that become gradually less and less enjoyable. So relief is like that. It diminishes and it requires even more discomfort if it’s going to be that powerful and satiating again.

But what’s possible, and I think what’s even better than relief is – I’m honestly not even sure we have the right word for it in our language. The closest thing I can come up with is it’s joy. It’s peace. Maybe it’s happiness, I don’t know. But it’s a belief that all is well. It’s not possible by manipulating our lives or ourselves, although we try.

There is no amount of manipulation that your brain won’t still be able to find something wrong with, something to worry about, something to fear, something to loathe, something to question. So joy only comes by choosing to believe that nothing has gone wrong, despite any evidence that you have to the contrary.

Nothing has gone wrong and nothing could go wrong because there’s no such thing. I know this is, like I said, master’s level advanced concept to grasp, so it’s okay if you’re not there yet but I like to offer it because I know some of you are ready. Some of you have been listening for a long time.

I’ve felt this feeling, that kind of joy that I’m describing to you, a handful of times in my life and is it the spirit? Maybe. I think so. I think the spirit can witness to us that nothing has gone wrong. But in the past, I mostly experienced it during a trial and I experienced it for fleeting moments, and then my brain would kick in again with fear or worry.

But those moments of even though everything around me seems to indicate otherwise, I just know that nothing has gone wrong here. Have you felt that before? It’s such an amazing feeling to feel. And in the midst of whatever you are going through, I want you to know that you’re allowed to just believe that nothing has gone wrong.

And believing that nothing gone wrong doesn’t mean you stop parenting your child, and it doesn’t mean that you keep working to buy the house you want and sell the house you want to sell. It only means that you know that no matter what happens, nothing has gone wrong.

It means that you remember that you thought you knew how it was going to go and what the timeline was going to be, but you were clearly wrong about that and nothing has gone wrong. And I will say that lately, I’ve been able to really get to that place of joy on just an ordinary day and it’s amazing. It’s even more powerful than nothing has gone wrong. It’s everything is so right.

I’ve experienced it recently while driving over to my parents’ house on a Wednesday afternoon to visit with them, while watching my kids ride their bikes in front of the house, talking with my husband about our dreams and goals for our business and our family, getting a text message from my 12-year-old son about the weather. He likes to focus on the weather.

Driving home after my class at Orangetheory Fitness just feeling stronger and feeling those endorphins of exercise. These moments of joy, I’ve literally been having these moments lately of overwhelming gratitude and the thought behind it is just everything is so right. And I want you to know that it’s not because my life is without circumstances that I wouldn’t choose.

I honestly just think that I’ve been doing so much work over the last year, so much practicing and managing my brain to just let go, to let go of trying to control things and let go of believing that I know how things should be. And I just decided to say yes to all of the things outside of me. Yes to the hard, yes to the emotions, yes to the surprises I didn’t expect. Just a big yes to all of it.

And here’s the thing about joy; joy lasts. It doesn’t require a negative thing to push against in order to feel powerful again. It isn’t that huge surge initially that relief might be, but it’s this strong feeling that fills up your entire body and then it kind of lingers.

So please don’t think I’m suggesting that I’m always able to generate joy for myself or that I never worry or stress. I’m definitely not saying that at all, and I’m not suggesting that anything is wrong with you if you’re feeling that way. But if you’re willing to feel those emotions and then you’re willing to just believe that nothing has gone wrong, there is joy available on the other side of that.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope that you find some relief. I hope that you find some joy. If you have a question for me about something going on in your life, go to jodymoore.com/askjody and register to come and get some free help with me. It would be my honor to help you out. I will see you next week. Bye-bye.

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