433. The Valley of Resistance and Fear

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 433, The Valley of Resistance and Fear.

This is Better Than Happy, the podcast where we study what the healthiest, most successful people in today’s world think, feel and do. And we leverage this knowledge to create our best lives. Are you ready, little bird? Let’s fly.

Well, hello, just a little light fun topic we’re going to talk about today, the valley of resistance and fear. I played with what to name this episode because whatever I name the episode should make you want to click on it. I just wanted to be able to identify it. I wanted you to be able to identify it down the road. And this is a tool that I am using in the Deep Dive workshop I’m teaching right in and Be Bold. Actually Be Bold is now The Lab. Did you know that?

We rebranded Be Bold to Be Better Than Happy, The Lab where we’re taking all the concepts here from the podcast and we’re experimenting with them like you do in a lab. And by experimenting, I mean, we’re going deeper. We’re applying them in our everyday lives. And we’re having a lot of fun in there. So if you’re not in there, you should come check out The Lab. But at any rate, like I said at the time that I’m recording this, I’m in the middle of teaching a Deep Dive workshop in The Lab and this is one of the tools I’m teaching.

We’re going deeper on a lot of these concepts than what I’ll be able to do here. But I really wanted to introduce this tool to all of you here on the podcast because I find it to be really helpful. So the valley of resistance and fear is where we go many times over and over again when we are feeling hurt or afraid or ashamed or angry or frustrated, all kinds of negative emotions live down here in the valley.

And the reason I like to think of it as a valley is because for those of you that have ever lived around mountains, and especially at this time of year in the fall and in the spring, we notice this a lot where I live anyway, in Spokane. Where I can literally walk outside my house, there are beautiful mountains behind us. And I can see this layer of fog sitting at the base of the mountains and the fog takes over the valley. Anybody who is below the fog just sees fog.

You don’t even see what’s above the fog. But above that fog is clear sky or at least a lot more clear than what is under the fog. And many times there’s even sunshine up there but there’s fog down below. And this is the reality of the world that we live in and the human experience that we’re having is a lot of times we drop down into the fog and we can’t even see that there is clear sky available. It feels impossible. It feels like it’s just a foggy day, there are fog and clouds everywhere.

But the truth is, up above those fog and clouds there is always clear sky at some point. And this is how I like to think about the work that I’m trying to offer to all of you here as your coach, is the mountain ranges that we have that are creating this valley. I want you to picture two mountain ranges, one on the left side, one on the right. And on the left side, we have the mountain range of blame. We have the mountain range where we think that it is the things outside of us creating the problem.

I just did a call on this and somebody posted in the Q&A box, well, if somebody speaks about you and behaves in a disrespectful way. Doesn’t that hurt our feelings? So the words other people say, the things they say, even if we would label them disrespectful and the ways that they behave. That doesn’t hurt our feelings. Our thoughts about those things hurt our feelings. So when we’re in that camp of thinking, they hurt my feelings or I’m scared because of the economy or because of what’s going on in Israel right now.

When we credit the things outside of us, we drop down into the valley and we feel fear and resistance and we give the credit to things outside of us. Now, I’m not saying we wouldn’t want to be sad about the things going on in Israel or that we wouldn’t want to feel hurt when people say certain things. Stay with me. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with how you’re thinking and feeling. I’m simply saying that when we credit our emotions, when we delegate our emotions to things outside of us, we drop down into the valley of fog where things become cloudier and harder to navigate.

And I’m going to talk to you in just a minute about what to do with the appropriate emotions that we want to keep. So that’s the left side mountain range is blame. Now, I want to mention something else too. Blame doesn’t always sound like it’s these people’s fault. Sometimes it comes from a place of love. It’s I don’t want to see these people that I love, suffer and struggle in this way. I’m worried about my child. I’m sad for my dad. Whatever it is. I just want to help these people.

I want to help them solve their problems, get out of their pain so that I can feel better. Now, none of us say it that way. We don’t say, “I want to help my kid so that I can feel better.” We say, “I just want to help my kid.” And when I ask why, then oftentimes the answer is because she’s just struggling so much and she doesn’t need to. If she would just do these things or if we could find the right solution then she wouldn’t have to struggle. And I say, “Okay, so you have a belief that your child shouldn’t be struggling, is that true?”

Whenever we dissect these things at the root of it always we know, okay, I know of course they’re supposed to struggle, I know they’re going to. I just want to take it away. And there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s natural, healthy human behavior to want to take away the suffering from people around us. What I don’t want is you being way down in the valley where you’re not allowing yourself any moments of peace until we can fix this problem. When you have a heightened level of anxiety around their anxiety then we just have double anxiety.

Sometimes on the blame side it sounds like that. I just feel really bad for them. It’s just really unfortunate. Then on the other side is the mountain range of shame. And the shame mountain range instead of blame, is what’s the matter with me? I shouldn’t be feeling this way or thinking this way or behaving this way. And sometimes it comes after we notice the blame part and I give you back the credit for how you’re thinking and feeling. And then you start saying, “I know I shouldn’t think this. I know I shouldn’t feel this.”

Sometimes it’s messier than that, especially in a situation where maybe let’s say somebody wronged you, what you would call wrong. And now you’re angry with them but there’s a part of you that also wonders if you were better or different would they have not wronged you in the first place? So there’s some shame kind of at the primary level. Then there’s secondary shame of I shouldn’t be mad at them, I shouldn’t be thinking this. I shouldn’t be feeling this. Any of that is going to keep us in the valley of resistance and fear.

And again, it’s foggy down there, which means I don’t even know which direction I’m going. And most of us will wander back and forth between those two mountain ranges quite a bit. We will be angry at the person who wronged us. And it doesn’t feel good to be angry so after a while then we start feeling ashamed or guilty for even being angry or wondering if we were just more amazing if they maybe would have never wronged us in the first place. And then that doesn’t feel good and so then we go back to anger.

We’re trying to get relief, but the problem is the relief is coming in the form of a different negative emotion. So we’re lost in the fog. We’re wandering around. We can’t even tell which way is up. Think about a really thick fog, you can’t even see your hand out in front of your face. The fog gets denser based on what we are believing in our minds. Are you with me? So I call it the valley of resistance and fear because it is full of resistance. It is resistance for other people, it is believing that they should be different than they are.

It is resistance of ourselves believing that we should be different than we are. All of that resistance and judgment keeps us in this fear based place and it feels tricky to get out of. Up above the fog, though, is the blue sky, the clear blue sky, the picture of the sun shining up above and up above are three things. If you want to get out of the valley, you have to come up to the sunlight, where number one, we own what is ours. We keep the ownership.

Again, this does not mean you won’t want to feel bad or that you just won’t feel bad even when you don’t really want to but you can’t help it. You will still feel bad some of the time as a human being. You will be sad when you see terrible things happening in the world. We want to keep that part. You will feel worried sometimes. You will feel afraid sometimes. You will feel judgmental of others, even though you don’t want to. You just won’t be able to help it because your natural human brain will go, “They shouldn’t do that.”

You will feel maybe judgment of yourself. You will feel all kinds of emotions, but you will stay up above the fog if you know I’m creating this with my mind. I’m creating this sadness with the way I’m thinking about these things in the world and I want to keep those thoughts. I want to feel sad about this or I’m feeling disgusted with myself because of what I’m thinking about myself and that’s okay. That’s how we keep it, instead of going, “I want to feel this way.”

It might sound like, “And it’s okay that I am, I’m a human being. It’s okay that I have thoughts, even though I don’t want to keep all these thoughts, even though they’re not all serving me. And even though they’re just thoughts it’s okay.” Are you with me so far? So the next thing, there are three things up in the clear sky. Number one is keeping the ownership of what’s yours, knowing that you’re creating your current experience of the world.

Number two, let other people keep what’s theirs. Isn’t that generous of us? As though we could take it away if we wanted to. I don’t know about you, but I keep having to learn this lesson the hard way that I cannot take away other people’s problems, even if I want to and they want me to. I can be a force of positivity and love in their life and I can be generous and I’m all for you doing all of those things. But ultimately it doesn’t solve people’s core problems because just like I’m my core problem, they are their core problem.

This is disappointing news to me. I don’t know about you, but it’s the reality. And when I remember that, listen, this is their journey. This is their stuff. I’m going to be here. I’m going to offer any support that I want. I’m going to offer love. But my job is to regulate how I’m going to feel through all of this. And their job is to ultimately find solutions. Yes, even for our kids, you guys, even for our kids. Again, offer support, offer whatever you want, but don’t take on to a greater extent than necessary the emotional baggage of anyone else’s problems because there’s zero upside.

It doesn’t help them solve their problem. So I own what’s mine. I keep straight in my mind about what’s other people’s and give it to them in my mind. And sometimes that happens in an outward manifestation, but my point is you don’t have to walk up to everyone and go, “Well, that’s yours and I’m not taking it.” That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about in your head understanding the difference, this person is hurt or angry, and even if they want to give it to me. I couldn’t possibly take it on in the way that I actually kind of wish I could sometimes.

So I can be empathetic. I can say, “Tell me more, I want to hear all about it. Tell me what you would like me to do differently. I might be totally open to it.” But ultimately, other people’s emotions are created by them and their experience of the world is created by them.

And then the third thing that happens up in the sunshine is acceptance. Remember, in the valley of fog, we have resistance. Up in the sunshine we have acceptance, the exact opposite of resistance.

I was just coaching a woman literally 20 minutes ago, I got off the workshop in The Lab. So if you’re in The Lab, go check it out. It was how to solve any problem part 2. She was so amazing and lovely and she said, “I have this friend.” Well, she said, “This is a pattern.” Friends who she’s in close contact with and then suddenly it feels like they don’t reciprocate and they stop replying and answering, etc.

So when we looked at this example, what she realized was that she has expectations of how friends should be, especially if you have a pattern and a history of keeping in touch and talking to one another, then you should continue that. Or if you don’t, you should give a certain kind of reply and explanation, not just make excuses. So as we took a look at what her manual for friendship is and how she thinks friends should be, I said, “So you believe that people should be that way. And yet that hasn’t been your experience.” And then she kind of laughed. She was so cute.

She’s like, “I don’t even think I can be that kind of friend. It’s actually a really high expectation.” What we did was we changed her expectation from people should behave this way. They should reply at this frequency. They should say these things. They should act this way. Two people should be lovely and all the things I wish they were half the time. And then half the time they should be a hot mess and act in ways that I don’t understand at all or act in ways that I would describe as bad. And I don’t even know why, except that they’re human beings and they’re going to get it wrong.

So we shifted her expectation. She was so darling, you know who you are, person who got coached. I’m going to keep your name anonymous. But at the end, she goes, “Oh, so I should make my expectation match reality?” And I was like, “Yes. That is the definition of acceptance.” Instead of trying to change reality to match our expectation, which is exhausting, we just could change our expectation to match reality. Because once we do that, do you notice how then we become liberated to decide, okay, so now what? Now what do I want to do?

If I can expect that people are going to behave in ways that I think are lovely half the time and then they’re not the other half the time, what do I want to do during the half when they don’t? How do I want to take care of myself, or who do I want to be or how do I want to show up? Or do I need a boundary? Is this a situation where I need to protect myself? Okay, I’m in on all of that. But when we expect reality, we stay up above the fog. We’re not so confused and shame and blame and angry and in this fog that feels cold and terrible. We’re up in the sun at least up just out of the fog.

And we can get a lot of clarity from there. It’s a lot warmer up there. It’s a lot easier to see what direction you’re going up there. You can see really far, far ahead into the future from up there. You can only see just a few feet in front of you down in the fog. So you come back up out of the fog by number one, owning what’s yours. Number two, giving other people what’s theirs in your mind. And number three, accepting reality with compassion, with curiosity, with kindness.

If we’re on the blame side and we need to do some accepting, it becomes, okay, you know what? People get to do and be whoever they want to be. And even though I think I know the best way people should be in the world, that’s just my way. That’s just what I have decided is the right way. And maybe that is the right way for me, but I certainly don’t know what is the right way for everybody. That’s how you come up. And, again you expect people to be people, which is messy, complicated, dynamic, inconsistent at best, beautiful on some days and kind of crazy on other days.

If we expect that, we don’t have to be disappointed anymore. And then if you’re over on the shame side, you do the same thing with yourself. Lots of compassion, lots of curiosity, lots of kindness. I see today I’m having a lot of judgment. I see today I am feeling a lot of negativity. I’m feeling really stuck. I’m feeling really angry. I’m feeling really trapped. I’m whatever it is and I notice that I’m not behaving the way I want to. What’s that about, I wonder? Hey, self, I love you. What’s going on? I got you. Instead of the rejection and judging that we’re tempted to do instead.

So I hope that you can picture that picture in your mind. Those of you again in The Lab, I drew a really beautiful sketch of it. I hope you’re picking up on the sarcasm because I’m not a great artist. But I did do a little drawing of it that we’re using in this workshop that you can go back and check out. And I want you to think about, am I keeping myself in the fog or am I coming up out of the fog?

Now, one other thing I’ll say is that I don’t want you to expect perfection of yourself. I don’t think that’s realistic and I don’t think it’s necessary. All of us are going to dip down into the fog and back up over and over again in life. That’s the way of it. What I’m trying to avoid is you doing nose dives all the way down deep into the fog and getting so lost in the thickness of the fog that you can’t see your way out. None of us are perfect at any of this. But if you dip down and dip back up and you just have little rolling hills, it’s a lot less exhausting. It’s a much more fulfilling way to live.

And how do you do that if you’re used to nose diving down into the fog? You practice it. Come and join us in The Lab, and we will help you get out of the fog and then practice staying up there where the sky is a lot clearer. Alright, thank you for joining me today, you guys. The valley of resistance and fear, let’s stay out of there as much as possible. Alright, I’ll see you next time. Thanks for joining me today, everybody. Bye bye.

Coaching changed my life and I’ve watched it change the lives of thousands of men and women since, but is it right for you? You’ll only know by giving it a try. Try it out today at jodymoore.com/trial.