Mini Episode: Allowing Yourself to Feel Everything and Post Traumatic Growth

so bear with me. But the first one is really to allow yourself to be where you are and to lower your expectations if you need to. There are a lot of people I know who seem to be working at it about forty to sixty percent of their normal capacity. There us really struggling right now, whether it's the anxiety, whether it's the fear, whether it's the being cooped up at home. It's just we're not ourselves right now and the way we are, and so allowing that to be

the case is really important. If you need some insight into self compassion, which is what this is, i'd encourage you to listen to our episode with Kristin Neff from a couple of weeks ago, because I think it's really important. I saw something on Twitter the other day that made me laugh, and it's from a mom who wrote on Twitter in all caps, if you keep them alive, that is sufficient. And I think that's funny because for many of us, there are children at home and trying to

parent them while working full time and all. This is really difficult, and we set these super high expectations. We see these things online about people who are taking the children through a tour of every great museum one day per week, you know, virtually, or all kinds of crazy stuff for people who are learning, you know, their fifth different language in the last two weeks. So some people might be thriving in this, but lots and lots of people aren't. And I think that we're all struggling in

different ways. Some people are struggling because they're isolated by themselves. Other people are struggling because they're isolated with their many children. Some people are struggling because they're sick. Other people have economic worries. They've been laid off. There they're a restaurant worker, or a massage therapist or a hair stylist, and their work is dried up. So there's lots of different challenges

that are facing us. So again my invitation to you is to be a little bit kinder to yourself and allow yourself to feel your feelings. Right, what we resist persists. But when we give ourselves permission to feel all the emotions and we validate that what we're feeling makes sense, emotions dissipate faster and we're able to work with them. And so perhaps something that you might do that might help you cope with some of what you're facing, perhaps is to just write each day for five to ten

minutes in free form. This is just a suggestion, not something to add to your to do list. And so from that, I want to pivot to a slightly longer term view of all this, and I want to think about the idea of post traumatic growth. So Victor Frankel has a couple of quotes that I love. One says, when we're no longer able to change the situation, we are challenged to change ourselves, and that is certainly the case.

And then the other thing he says that in some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning. So I want to be sensitive here and not turn this into like some global growth opportunity, because for some people, the suffering is very very real. Okay, so I don't want to minimize that, but we know that adversity is often a chance for us to become better people, for us to grow, and most traumatic growth

is a real thing. And the interesting thing, one of the key factors that allows us to turn this adversity into something better is the extent to which we fully explore our thoughts and feelings surrounding the event. So this ties back to what I was just saying, as part of not just coping with this, but growing from this is really allowing ourselves to explore our thoughts and feelings. And so again this goes back to this idea of

writing about a topic that triggers strong emotions. There's a lot of research that shows that writing about strong emotions for fifteen to twenty minutes a day has been shown to help people create meaning from stressful experiences and better express both their positive and negative emotions. So the next thing I want to add to this is just I want to briefly talk about the seven areas of growth

that have been studied. The spring from adversity. And this is again sort of as a hopeful message that hey, we've got a chance to grow from this also, right, And those areas are greater appreciation of life, a greater appreciation and strengthening of our close relationships, increase compassion and altruism, identification of new possibilities or a new purpose in life, greater awareness and utilization of personal strengths, enhanced spiritual development

and creative growth. And again, so these are the sort of things that can come from us weathering difficult times. And so I say all that too. Again, not turn the great suffering of some people into growth experiences for other people, right, But the reality is that yes, difficult times can bring about growth. And so we can spend all of our time only thinking about, all right, how do I cope with this awful time? How do I get through it? But we can also think about how

might we be growing from this? And how can we grow from this? I don't think that's premature insensitive to at least start to orient towards that in some ways.

The last thing that I want to talk about is if there's anything that I think is important for us in this time right now, it's our routine, routine, routine, routine, structure, structure, structure, right, because we've lost all the external routines for most of us, and so I want us to think about routine and really structure in the sense of being something that supports us. We can think of structure is something that confines us.

Often we think that way will structure it's confining. But let's think of structure in the way that we use it. In a building. We lay a foundation. In a building, we put up structural beams and buildings, and the reason we do that is to keep the building from collapsing so that it supports the weight of the things that we put in the building. And right now are structure or can be the thing that supports our weight and keeps us from collapsing and keeps things from falling apart.

And so creating structure is so important. And what I want to do is talk about four key areas that I think we need structure in life right now. We can certainly do more than this, but if we keep it at its basics, here are the sort of structures that I think are really critical. What time we wake up, If we can get consistent about waking up at a consistent time. What time during the day are we working

or doing productivity things? So if we're not working, maybe we're learning in a new skill, or we're taking on a new project, or we're doing something, but what are our work hours or productivity hours? Blocking those out thinking about what those are and sticking to them. What is our time for health and self care? When are we going to exercise? Do we meditate? Do we eat healthy foods? When are we eating those? How do we orient around that? And then finally, what time do we get to bed?

And again, if your structures have disappeared for you, the ones that the external world provided, it's really important to provide these for ourselves. I see this over and over again in the coaching work that I do, that people who lose external structure really struggle. So I've worked with a lot of people who have gotten to the point where they finally are able to leave a job and

pursue a passion project. They're able to leave work and start their own business, They're able to leave work and get a leave of absence to write a book, all different kinds of things, and I see these people struggle mightily, And it's because when that external structure goes away. Everything collapses. We don't get up at the same time, which means since we don't have to get up at any time, we don't have to go to bed at any time. So why not watch another episode of this and well,

I might work on this. I can work on that later. There's no reason to do it this morning. I've got all afternoon. It just all falls apart. So creating these struck yours for ourselves, deciding what time we're going to do things right. A key piece of structure is specificity when am I going to do something. The science is unequivocal that when we decide when we're going to do something, we are way more likely to do it. So I'm going to exercise today at ten am is way better

than I'm going to exercise sometime today. It's just if we pick a time, we are way more likely to do it. So pick times for when you're gonna get up, pick times for your work or productivity hours, pick times for your health and self care, and pick times for bed and do your best to stick to them. And if you don't stick to them one day, don't write it off. Don't say oh, I can't do this. Just do your best the next day, keep coming back to your structure and follow it as much as you can,

and it really will help support during these times. So, um, those are my messages if you're looking for help with any of these things. I am offering discounted coaching on both the Personal Transformation Program as well as the Spiritual Habits Program and they're both uh, really good fits for these times. And access to everything we're doing is that when you feed dot net slash help and the group coaching call, the free group coaching call on Wednesday is

turning out to be a really great thing. I'm getting some people coming back week after week and we're talking about these issues of structure. We're talking about issues of how we deal with people being in close contact with people, how we deal with working from home, all these different issues and so it's, uh, it's turned out to be a really fun call each week and details on how to access it or at one you feed dot net slash help. I wish you the best during this time.

I wish you skills and getting through it, and I wish you the opportunity to perhaps grow through this. Also, see if you can put one eye on your growth as you put one eye on your survival and stay well and be safe, and thanks so much for listening. Bye but a swool