Good information, bad fuel

On a podcast I listened to a few months ago, a psychiatrist talked about the danger of venting negative emotions.

The problem, he said, is that when you vent, the negative emotions lose their steam. 

Which sounds like a good thing, right? But he went on to share that negative emotions are actually important motivators. 

My ears perked up. 

I've been saying for years that motivating yourself with negative feelings doesn't work. That doing so leads to burnout. 

Was this psychiatrist saying that people should be doing the very thing I've advised against?

Short answer: No, he was not. 

Longer and more interesting answer: 

Turns out the psychiatrist and I agree. He wasn't saying that you should fuel your actions with negative emotions.

BUT he wanted to point out that venting your negative emotions can keep you stuck in the same situation. Because once you've vented them and you feel better, you may not feel motivated enough to make changes. 

And without changes, you're very likely to find yourself right back in the same situation. 

This is where the psychiatrist's ideas overlap with a concept I've been teaching for a long time: the idea that you can gain a lot by treating negative emotions (specifically anger) as spicy information.

These feelings may not feel pleasant to experience, but they carry important information about what's working for you and what's not.

And if you vent (or numb) the negative emotions, you miss out on the things they're trying to share with you. 

But in order to move forward and apply that spicy information, you need other emotions to come in and carry some of the weight so you don't burn yourself out.

Which is to say, there's a switch to be made between understanding that the negative emotion is alerting you to something that's not working and then going on to make whatever changes that information is inviting. 

It could look like this: 

1. Frustration about your current job.

2. Picking apart the frustration and seeing that the information it's trying to communicate is that something isn't working with the current situation.

3. Using curiosity to understand whether you need an outside change (like getting a new job) or an inside change (altering the way you relate to your job, setting boundaries, etc). Sometimes you'll need both and then you have to prioritize which changes to make in what order.

4. Brainstorming a way to fuel yourself that feels good and keeps you going. (This is the part where you may find that your initial feeling, while powerful, does not make good day to day fuel because it feels bad and doesn't actually support you taking action towards your goal.) 

5. Using your intentionally chosen fuel to move forward, navigate issues, and enjoy the journey along the way, knowing that how you're practicing being now will be the way you'll be when you reach your goal (which is to say, fueling with negative emotion will make the goal feel negative when you arrive, so if you want to enjoy achieving your goal, fuel yourself with an emotion that's more enjoyable and let it make the journey to the goal fun rather than a slog).

But a lot of people get stuck in this instead: 

1. Frustration about your current job.

2. Vent frustration.

3. Feel better. Go about your life. Make no changes.

4. Repeat. 

There's nothing wrong with the second option. I have no judgment. I've done it millions of times myself. AND sometimes you may even want to choose that option, like if you're not ready to deal with the information in your negative feeling, it might make more sense to vent it off and go about your day.

BUT: if you want to make changes, if you want to stop the ever-repeating cycle of feeling this way, if you want to wake up six months from now and have things be different, well, then I suggest trying out the first option. 

And if you don't want to do that work alone, because it feels hard or scary or even just plain triggering to hang out with your negative feelings long enough to get the information out of them, well that's exactly the kind of thing coaching is for. 

And good news: I have room right now for new 1:1 clients. 

If you want to be one of them, just click this link to get the process started.

Yours in wild possibility & spicy information,