In this episode, we are talking about processing pain and failure. In our last few episodes we talked about having difficult conversations and negotiating and odds are good that whenever you engage in either one of those activities, you are setting yourself up for some big fat failures and all the feeling that go along with it. So I felt it was a natural segway to spend today talking about how to process failure and the pain that goes with it. We explore my personal, painful experiences and insights on how to embrace negative emotions and use them as a catalyst for growth.
New episodes every other Wednesday.
RELATED TO THIS EPISODE:
Free coaching consult: https://autumnnoble.as.me/freeconsult
WHERE YOU CAN FIND ME:
SHOP THE LAWYER LIFE COLLECTION on Etsy
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
In this episode, we are talking about processing pain and failure. In our last few episodes we talked about having difficult conversations and negotiating and odds are good that whenever you engage in either one of those activities, you are setting yourself up for some big fat failures and all the feeling that go along with it. So I felt it was a natural segway to spend today talking about how to process failure and the pain that goes with it. We explore my personal, painful experiences and insights on how to embrace negative emotions and use them as a catalyst for growth.
New episodes every other Wednesday.
RELATED TO THIS EPISODE:
Free coaching consult: https://autumnnoble.as.me/freeconsult
WHERE YOU CAN FIND ME:
SHOP THE LAWYER LIFE COLLECTION on Etsy
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Autumn G Noble (00:00.174)
You are listening to the Lawyer Life Podcast, episode number 24, How to Process Pain and Failure. Hello and welcome to the Lawyer Life Podcast. I am your host, Autumn Noble. I am a practicing attorney as well as a life and career coach for lawyers. My legal career has led me all over the map. I've worked at firms of various shapes and sizes. I've built and shared my own practice group from the ground up.
I've taught in both business schools and law schools and eventually transitioned to my practice in -house with a Fortune 300 company. Now I teach all of my clients how to do the same thing. If you want to learn how to build your practice and client base, establish some independence, find more time, get more done, or if you are just looking to get out of law altogether, you are in the right spot. In The Collective, we offer a monthly newsletter packed with free resources and tools.
free monthly webinars, one -on -one coaching and ongoing seminar series that will teach you everything you actually need to know to survive in lawyering. If you're not sure about this whole coaching thing, be sure to sign up for a free coaching consultation to get some free support and see what this coaching thing can do for you. I promise you have nothing to lose and truly everything to gain.
Autumn G Noble (01:17.614)
Today in this episode, we are talking about processing pain and failure. In our last few episodes, we talked about having difficult conversations, negotiating, and odds are pretty good that whenever you engage in one of those activities, you are setting yourself up for some big fat failures and all of the lovely feelings that go along with it. So it seemed like a natural segue to spend today talking about how to process failure and the pain that goes with it.
This episode actually comes at a really interesting time in my life that seems like the topic is just meant to be. I recently had to put down one of my Shiba Inu dogs that I have had for almost 10 years. And it's always really hard to put down a dog, but I wanted to give you a little bit of backstory about this particular dog and why having her in my life was such a pivotal experience and such a big part of my own evolution story.
I got my dog Nala almost 10 years ago. And at the time I was in a relationship that wasn't the right relationship for me, we'll put it that way. And I had been wanting another dog and suddenly I get this email from a friend of a friend of a friend in the same community. And it's another blonde Shiba Inu. And if you know anything about Shiba Inu's blonde ones are a little bit more unusual and just simply harder to find. And so.
I get the email with a picture of Nala and I'm thinking, this is just meant to be, I have to have this dog. So I speak to my partner at the time about it and he's frustrated, he's not really interested in that particular dog and eventually he says, go ahead and get the dog, I just don't really care. So I go and I meet this dog and I bring my Shiba with me. And as we're sitting there with this couple,
Nala comes over and she lays down next to me and lays her head in my lap, which over the years I realized is incredibly unusual for her. And for Shiba's in general, they're just not the friendliest dogs. And at that moment, the couple that currently owned her said they knew that she needed to be with me, that they thought that was so odd for her. And they really took it as a sign that I was the person she was supposed to be with. So I bring her home.
Autumn G Noble (03:33.902)
And suddenly the person that I was with at the time is completely enraged and tells me that they couldn't believe that I would go and get another dog without them agreeing to it or without even telling them about it. And I'm having this whole dissonance where I'm thinking we did talk about this and you told me that I could go and get the dog and he's telling me that that's not really what he meant and how dare I do this. And it became this whole disaster.
So that began the tense relationship between my partner and that dog. So Nala, I think when I adopted her was maybe five years old and she had some incontinence issues and she barked a lot, which was pretty unusual for a Shiba. And so if she was outside and she wanted to come in, she would bark, which was not what we were expecting from another Shiba. And this really infuriated my partner.
And one day I came home from work and he said to me, that dog, you know, was barking her head off outside. And he said, you know, I just opened the door and I just clocked her in the face. And he mimics this like ridiculous kind of uppercut humongous like punch. And I'm thinking there, did he really punch the dog? Like what is happening here? And I go and I check the dog out and she seems fine. But it was a moment in my life where I thought, okay,
if this person is willing to hurt a dog or tell me that they hurt a dog, maybe all of the things that he's telling me about how he wants to hurt me, maybe those are true. And maybe it's an opportunity for me to wake up and really get out of here. And so that was a really pivotal moment for me in recognizing that I was I was riding a train that was going somewhere really bad, really fast.
And for whatever reason, it took that dog to kind of like wake me up and help me like realize that I needed to get out before things got really bad for everybody. So fast forward a year, I get out, I've got my dogs and there's the psychic that I really love and her name is Rebecca Rosen. She's from Omaha, which is where I actually live. But and I think she's currently living in Denver. Anyway, I go and I see her.
Autumn G Noble (05:50.702)
periodically over the years. And this one time in particular, I went to visit with her and she says to me, you know, do you have a white dog? And I said, yes, I do. And then she thinks about it for a moment. She's like, do you have two white dogs? And I said, yeah, I do. And she says, one of those dogs is your guardian angel and was sent to you to get you out of a really bad situation. And.
Of course, for me, it's all sort of clicking and it's all like coming together. And I'm really realizing that there really was a reason that that dog was brought into my life and to give me that aha moment and to help me get my things in order to get out and start a better life. And she really confirmed that for me. So over the last almost 10 years with Nala, I always kind of thought of her as like this little guardian angel and, you know, this dog that was really meant to be with me. So anyway,
She was almost 15 years old and we put her down and she just was really struggling and it really was time for her. But I wanna tell you that story because I think it's really important just to recognize that when we're thinking about processing negative emotion or we're thinking about processing failure, there are times in our lives and there are things in our lives that we don't want to feel good about.
losing a dog is absolutely one of them. And it's really kind of brought this point home for me. And I've been thinking about it a lot lately that as much as I don't enjoy the way that I feel sometimes and thinking about her and missing her and thinking about our life together, I don't love the way that feels. But if you were to ask me on the spectrum of emotions, how do you want to feel when you lose a dog? My answer is going to be, I want to feel terrible.
I want to feel sad. I want to feel longing and just reminiscing about her and feeling sad that she's not around. And that's how I would want to show up theoretically. But when push comes to shove and those events happen in our lives and we're actually feeling it, we're actually experiencing it, there is that very human desire to not want to feel that way and to not acknowledge it and to not live in it. And that is what we're going to be talking about today because...
Autumn G Noble (08:12.11)
there are times in our lives and experiences that we will have when we don't want to feel bad because it's painful, but logically, intellectually, we want to feel bad. And that's what I want to unpack today. And I think I start with that story about Nala because I think it's easier to grasp this concept when it comes to pivotal life moments like the death of a beloved pet, but.
Oddly enough, I find that we overlook this fact when it comes to smaller day -to -day annoyances and disappointments and failures. I can think of countless coaching sessions where my client shows up and they're feeling frustrated or disappointment or embarrassed about something that has happened at work. Maybe they blew a deadline. Maybe they misunderstood a directive or just completely botched.
a research assignment and just missed something really pivotal and they're just feeling really terrible about it. And usually at least at the outset, what they intend to accomplish in the coaching session with me is how can they get to feeling better so that they can move on? And this brings me to my first point about processing those emotions. We have to practice discernment and understanding when we logically
want to feel badly about something. When we make mistakes at work, we don't want to feel good about it. Logically, I think that we would all agree. We want to feel disappointed or frustrated or angry with ourselves because we know that we can do better. But at the same time, we don't really want to feel those emotions and we really would like to find a way to not experience them and kind of get back on track.
The reality is that sometimes things will happen in our lives that we really don't want to feel good about. And so we need to figure out how to process those emotions because there's a part of us logically that understands that is where we want to be. In order to reconcile that tension, we have to simply acknowledge what our logical brain is telling us and then move forward. We want to feel bad. And the only way to stop feeling badly is to move through it.
Autumn G Noble (10:31.694)
and allow ourselves to feel that way because that's truly what we want and most in align with our intentions. But we don't want to live there. And so how do we recognize that and move through it? Whenever we have an experience that we don't want to feel good about, we cannot give into the temptation to try and fix it, which is what I see a lot of women doing in coaching sessions when something bad has happened. Instead, my recommendation is always,
We have to allow the feeling of disappointment or frustration or anger at ourselves to be there and to run its course. We can't try and cover it up those life experiences that aren't just sunshine and margaritas because there are gonna be bad days and we simply cannot write off that part of our lives. Half of the time, it's gonna be hard and it's gonna be painful. And we have to practice accepting that and we have to practice processing those emotions.
When we resist negative emotions and try to bury them with better feelings, the negative feelings just simmer below the surface and compound. I think about it this way. When you're making a cup of tea and you set the kettle on the stove, the kettle is going to boil. That is part of the process of making tea. Eventually, you can open the lid, release some of that pressure, and you have your tea ready to go. I think of our bodies, which are mostly water.
in the same kind of a way. When we have a negative emotion and we try to not feel it and we don't want it to be there, it's sort of like setting the tea kettle on the stove and being frustrated that it starts to boil. When you have negative emotions in your body, it's almost like part of you starts to boil. And when we don't recognize that that is what's happening and that that is part of our life, it's like leaving that tea kettle on the stove for hours. Eventually, it's gonna blow.
And so our work is sort of recognizing, okay, I'm starting to boil and that's okay, but how can I release that pressure so that I don't explode? Because when we don't, that energy will eventually make its way to the surface. If you leave that tea kettle on the stove for a day, it's gonna blow up. If you don't process those feelings that logically you want to be there, you wanna feel frustrated and disappointed when you mess up at work. But if you don't process them and do something with them,
Autumn G Noble (12:52.526)
Those emotions will eventually make their way to the surface and blow up. It might not be today, but it will likely be at some inappropriate time that has nothing to do with the original stimulus. It might be when you're stuck in traffic on your way to meet a friend for happy hour and you just burst into tears. You're frustrated at the traffic, but the response is disproportionate to the trigger. That is typically a sign that you are boiling below the surface and you have not released that pressure.
or process those emotions in any kind of a way. And remember, again, these are emotions that our first step is just recognizing sometimes we want them to be there. We want to be frustrated. We want to be angry. And that is where we start. But if we don't do something with them, we're going to blow up and we're going to have negative consequences from that. For others of us, it might be we blow up at our spouse when they ask a really innocuous question like, hey, what time are you going to be home for dinner? And we just lose our minds.
That's another sign that there's more emotions going on that are just looking for some kind of a release. And if we don't have a practice of processing them in a healthy way, that is the kind of pattern we set ourselves up for. Those feelings always find a way of getting out and whomever is on the receiving end very rarely is the one who actually deserves it. So aside from the fact that resisting those emotions is futile, they're just going to sit there and boil and come out in some kind of a way.
There's also a practical reason for allowing yourself to feel those emotions. If we don't accept that 50 % of our emotional experience is negative, we will never get good at experiencing those emotions and moving on. If we think that they shouldn't be there and we fight against them when we try and push them down, we never get skilled at experiencing them, processing them in a healthy way.
and releasing them in a way that doesn't lead to further casualty. Instead, we simply create a pattern where we resist and avoid those emotions and start to believe that we just can't handle them because we're so unpracticed at it. This brings me to my second point. Once we recognize that sometimes we don't really actually want to feel good about something, we can then move forward and embrace the possibility that these negative parts of our lives actually play a really important.
Autumn G Noble (15:21.422)
role. Consider, for instance, what life would be like if we chose to show up every day believing that life is supposed to be rough and crappy and painful 50 % of the time, like the ancient yin yang symbol. Many of you are probably familiar with the yin yang symbol, which can be interpreted literally to mean a shady side.
and a sunny side with a little bit of good and bad sprinkled on each side. This symbol stands for the idea that two opposite dualities create the balanced whole. And the Tao Te Ching talks about this and says that when people see things as beautiful, ugliness is created. When people see things as good, evil is created. One cannot exist.
without the other. In our modern times, this ancient concept means that there is a higher purpose for our negative emotions and experiences. And what so many of us struggle to see is that the negative emotions and the negative experiences truly are the foundation of a happy life. If we didn't know the pain of loss, we wouldn't be able to understand and experience love. If we hadn't experienced anxiety, we wouldn't be able to appreciate or even identify.
feelings at the other end of the spectrum like peacefulness or contentment. In other words, if our lives were 100 % positive all of the time, that positivity would lose all of its value. It would no longer mean anything to any of us because we wouldn't know any different. We would not be able to see those positive experiences and emotions for what they are, a departure from sadness, loss, guilt, fear, et cetera. Those positive emotions exist,
only in the absence of the negative and vice versa. That is the yin and yang of life. If that is so, why do so many of us spend our lives trying to avoid and resist negative emotions and negative experiences like failure? I believe that this is rooted in one of the most common misconceptions that many of us carry about our lives and that is that we are supposed to be happy the majority of the time and that is the ultimate goal.
Autumn G Noble (17:37.038)
Anymore, everyone just wants to be happy. They want their marriage to be happy, their work to be happy, parents should be supportive and family members should be loving, abuse should never happen and infidelity should not occur. These are thoughts that our lives should be happier and they are toxic. They cause us to resist the bad parts of life and to struggle against those negative experiences and emotions.
to bury them and avoid them and see them as some kind of an error or a glitch in the matrix that we have to fix. When we're feeling any of those emotions or feeling upset with our lives, we usually tell ourselves, it wasn't supposed to be this way. This was not supposed to happen. Or we make ourselves this victim to some cruel game of luck and we just got the bad hand and everyone else gets to be happy all the time and we just got screwed. But what is so essential?
is being able to just accept that sometimes you will feel sad and unhappy and angry and disappointed and that is okay. And not only is it okay, but it is a requirement to ever have a happy life. So from that premise, okay, that's all fine and good, right? Sometimes I wanna feel really upset about things. I wanna feel negative emotions. I can understand that logically.
I can also understand that those emotions present an important role in happiness overall, but what am I supposed to do with those emotions when I can feel myself about to boil over? When you accept your negative emotions, it provides an opportunity to learn what thoughts are creating those emotions, and it gives us a chance to really develop a deeper understanding about our lives and our experiences.
and we can become better stewards of our minds and our emotions the more we pay attention to our thinking and to our emotions. This doesn't mean that the goal is to replace all of our negative thoughts related to our negative emotions and just swap them out with positive thoughts. What it means instead is that we become intimate acquaintances with negative emotions.
Autumn G Noble (19:55.726)
that we start to learn what thoughts are generating those emotions so that we can learn more about ourselves and develop an understanding of why we feel the way we feel and then make intentional choices from there. In honor of this concept of yin and yang, I've actually been spending more time examining negative emotions in my life and it's been really timely as I said. Specifically, one thing that I've been thinking about is,
understanding what it means to experience a negative emotion. And for me, that's been really connecting to my body. Where is it located? How do I feel it? What is the sensation? And what do I physically experience when I'm in that kind of mental emotional headspace? From there, how do I act? How do I show up? And what is going on in my head that perpetuates or maybe heightens?
that emotion. That's the practice that I have been engaging in. For example, and I think many of us can relate to this, Sunday scaries. Sunday evenings, I think for a lot of attorneys or really anyone in a high stress, high pressure environment, the day before your week starts can really be anxiety ridden. And it has been for me for years during my legal practice.
and it's something I've been working on over the years and it's gotten marginally better. However, it used to be incredibly anxiety inducing for me and it is still for many of my clients. I know for me on Sunday nights, that was when my weekend to -do list would kind of resurface and I'd start feeling guilty about the things that I didn't accomplish over the weekend or feeling guilty that I didn't put more on my to -do list over the weekend. Then inevitably, I would tell myself that,
Instead of relaxing with my partner, I should do a few more things on my list. And then as I start to feel guilty about my lack of accomplishments, I also start feeling guilty for not being more present with my partner. And then I beat myself up for my inability to relax and thus the cycle begins. For me, whenever I feel that way, it inevitably would drive me to snap at my partner or criticize him or pull away from him or just not show up as the partner that I wanted to be.
Autumn G Noble (22:12.078)
And then after I had sufficiently beaten myself down, I would get up and just start running around like some anxiety fueled speed demon trying to get 10 ,000 things done at once so that I could finally feel like I was a worthy and productive member of society. All the while this was going on, I would beat myself up, telling myself what a terrible partner I was.
and that I should be able to be better to him and I should be more organized and I should be able to relax and make time to relax and enjoy relaxing and be present, you know, on and on. It just would never stop. And that was a lot of what I was starting to observe during this sort of inner work and processing those experiences. I started focusing on simply sitting with that Sunday anxiety. I always knew it was coming.
And when it did, I would just sit with it and I would feel it in my body. And for me, it was always a really tightness in my chest, like a dull headache, dizziness, kind of a racing heart. And I would just practice sitting still and feeling those sensations in my body. And as I sat there, I could observe all of those thoughts just swirling around my brain. And I would allow myself just to resist the urge to spring up and get to action.
in an attempt to try and make myself feel better. Instead, I would just sit there and watch the thoughts and feel the sensations in my body and almost like introduce myself to anxiety. My old friend like, hey, good to see you. Welcome back again. You know, let's hang out and let's just see what comes up. And that was kind of my approach to it. And it has been really transformative to me to observe that cycle from a removed perspective.
I had no idea how strong the urge to act was and how I would go out of my way to buffer against those negative emotions. I would get up and try and do a million things in 20 minutes to try and not feel like a failure and not feel disappointed in myself. And I had gotten so used to letting those thoughts and feelings just switch me into autopilot.
Autumn G Noble (24:19.374)
But once I started doing this work, I was able to really overcome that visceral urge to jump up and do something to make myself feel better. Instead, I would just identify all the negative things in my mind that were making me feel terrible. I would sit there and I would watch them. And that was when they really started to lose their power. I no longer felt anxious or scared. And the urge to act would slip away more like an afterthought.
Over time, that chatter in my brain would start to diminish and I would be left with the knowledge of those negative thoughts, but the power of that emotion of anxiety, it wanes significantly. And I was instead able to show up and be more present while kind of carrying the weight of those thoughts and feelings with me. Being present with your thoughts and emotions is truly one of the best ways to process, experience and release that energy.
It's the emotional equivalent of opening the valve on a boiling tea kettle or removing it from the stove altogether. We have to pay attention to it. We have to see what's going on with it and then just let it do its thing and let it calm down. That practice works with any emotion, the ones you want, like my sadness over the loss of my dog, as well as the ones that you don't want, like my Sunday scaries.
It doesn't mean that the emotions go away for good, but it will allow you to take the driver's seat back. Instead of letting the emotion slip behind the wheel and take you for a joy ride, you instead allow the emotion to ride in the passenger seat with you on the journey wherever you want to go and doing whatever you want to do instead of letting the emotion really kind of dictate those automatic responses. But we can't do this if we're fighting against the emotion's existence.
in the first place. And that is why we have to start from a space of owning the importance of negative emotions and allowing them to be part of the total experience and even recognizing that sometimes I actually want them to be there. I don't want to feel good about losing my dog. I actually kind of want to feel terrible. And so from there, figuring out how do I coexist and live with those emotions, honor them and release them.
Autumn G Noble (26:39.918)
For me today, sometimes it means just recognizing that I'm sad about Nala and that I miss her all of the time. I let that emotion just be there. I honor it, I pay attention to it, and I pay attention to the thoughts around it. When I witness the thoughts around it, I can ask myself, am I just wallowing in misery and negative thoughts around the loss of Nala, or am I experiencing the natural cycle of loss? One set of thoughts and emotions is natural and normal.
and part of that yin and yang, and some of those thoughts are much less productive and unhealthy. When I connect with my emotions and thoughts around them, I'm able to distinguish between those two and consciously decide what emotions I want to invite into my life as part of a healthy balance and which ones I'm more willing to let go of and release. So the process that I just described is more of kind of a physical, maybe even a meditative awareness.
checking in with your body, checking in with those sensations and checking in with your thoughts. Other means of processing negative emotions can simply be journaling or meditating. For instance, I always recommend that when you're at work and you're feeling that overwhelm or that anxiety or that frustration, the best thing that you can do is sit down and write down all of those thoughts. It's a form of journaling that's almost like,
We're just going to see what's up there and see what's happening and not even think about it. We're just going to get it out on a piece of paper. It's sort of like purging that noise up there. I find that that has been the most effective way for me to deal with negative emotions in a work context. If you're feeling any kind of a negative emotion at work, anxiety, overwhelm, maybe you're disappointed and frustrated that you messed up or maybe you had a negotiation or a difficult conversation and it didn't go well.
and now you're feeling all the feels about it, the best thing that you can do for yourself is to honor that and witness what is going on in your brain that correlates with that emotion. Truly, just doing that practice alone can leave you feeling a little bit more refreshed and sometimes can diminish the emotion itself because you start to see the crazy things that we tell ourselves when we make a little mistake. You're gonna see that perfectionism and that self -criticism come out.
Autumn G Noble (29:01.198)
when you pay attention to the thoughts in your brain and you get them down on paper. And that is very powerful. Watching us write out the negative things that we tell ourselves in our heads and seeing it in our own handwriting sometimes is enough for us to release it for good. Yes, I can be disappointed in myself for missing something at work or making a mistake, but what I'm not gonna do is beat myself up with thoughts like this. It's sort of like I was saying about my dog, you know, am I wallowing?
in self -pity or is this a healthy experience and emotion? You can do the same thing at work by doing that sort of thought download, looking at the thoughts that you're thinking, the emotions that you're having and decide which ones are healthy and which ones are just toxic and I'm not willing to engage in anymore. So far today, we have unpacked the need for negative emotions, how to process them, but I also want to take a peek at some of our more common
programmed responses to negative feelings and failures. And this is something that I call buffering. While it's really easy to wrap our heads around this concept of yin and yang and the need for unhappiness in our lives, that logic often goes right out the window when we're just having a bad day at work. It's those moments that most of us start to look for something outside of ourselves to feel better.
Consider this, have you ever reached for a glass of wine or two after it's been a really long day or I just need to take the edge off or I just really need to wind down? Have you ever plowed through a whole package of Oreos because you're just feeling kind of lonely on a Friday night? Or did you make a mid afternoon Starbucks run just because you wanted something to cheer you up during a long and stressful day? All of those actions.
are intended to bury some kind of a negative emotion, whether it's one we consciously choose or would want to include in our lives or not, that's kind of up for debate. But a lot of those actions are trying to fix a feeling that we don't want to feel. It's our attempt to buffer those negative feelings of frustration or loneliness, disappointment, anger. Sometimes we even consciously think, you know, a glass of wine is going to make me feel better, or maybe a piece of cake will cheer me up.
Autumn G Noble (31:21.294)
While this seems perfectly natural in our society and almost standard, the problem with this approach is really twofold. Once that cake or that wine is gone, that feeling is still gonna be there because that feeling is related to whatever is happening in your brain and the cake or the wine is not gonna make that go away. And again, it's like that tea kettle, right?
It's not going to stop the boiling below the surface. It's going to give you a little bit of an endorphin rush in the short term, but you're still going to be boiling down there. Furthermore, this pattern will create only more negative emotions and consequences for you down the road. If we continually indulge in wine or cake or Starbucks to make ourselves feel better, we're going to see the consequences of that. And are we able to show up at work when we're feeling a little foggy after too much wine?
How do we show up for ourselves when our clothes don't fit the same way? Are we no longer like the way our bodies look? Now we have more negative emotions to process that if we have a pattern of buffering and avoiding, it's just gonna create more of a pattern of overeating, over drinking or over indulging to fix those feelings from the negative consequences that we have now created for ourselves. So it creates this ongoing pattern of, I feel something negative, I don't wanna feel it, I cover it up and chase some kind of an endorphin rush.
Now I have more negative consequences that I need to cover up that I feel terrible about. And around and around we go. It's no wonder that our society has this obesity epidemic or other challenges to overcome relating to addiction, shopping addiction, alcohol addiction, whatever it may be. A lot of it is truly related to our inability to process our own negative experiences and our own negative emotions and not having healthy mechanisms to do so.
I think about this a lot when I'm around small children and you think about a kid, they skin their knee or they have a bad day at school or you know, maybe they're in a fight with their friend. I think a lot of times as as adults we say, oh, you know, do you want some ice cream that will make you feel better? So we're really kind of starting this pattern of reaching for something outside of ourselves to fix a negative emotion. And I think just culturally, we started at a very young age. Part of my work in coaching is to support my clients to develop
Autumn G Noble (33:43.95)
healthy habits of acknowledging and allowing those negative emotions. If they've had a bad day at the office, we just own it. We recognize it, we own the feelings that we want to feel, and we just let them be there and we connect with them. We journal about them, talk about them, but we just process them. And then we can ask ourselves, do I still want that cake or the glass of wine? Or have I found or could I find other ways?
to release that energy so that there's no longer anything to fix. Rather than drinking too much wine or eating too much cake and paying for that tomorrow or later on the scale, we learn to recognize the yin and yang of life and allow ourselves to experience the darker side of things. I think about negative emotions as kind of like our childhood boogeyman. In the dark, they seem really threatening and scary and we're kind of paralyzed with fear and we want to run away from them. We want them to go away.
But the second that we flip on the light switch, we can just see that, okay, maybe that's just a coat rack or maybe that's just shadows. There's nothing there to be afraid of. Similarly, when we run and hide from negative emotions through buffering, they're always going to seem scary, like something that we should avoid or cover up. But instead, when we learn to process them, it's like turning on that light switch. We shine the light on those negative emotions and allow them to pass through us and quickly fade. Think about how
quickly that boiling water in your tea kettle settles down when you pull it off of the stove. But you gotta be paying attention. You gotta recognize that you're at a boiling point and then pull it off. It's the same thing with your own emotions internally. By continuing to allow yourself to experience negative emotions, you no longer have to buffer or reach for things outside of yourself to fix them. The fear of those emotions will diminish over time as you learn to understand them in a different way.
Imagine what you could do with your life if you weren't afraid to experience fear, loneliness, sadness, inadequacy, or guilt and just think about how freeing that could be. Especially when you think about our prior episodes and having difficult conversations, asking for what you want or negotiating. A lot of us don't do those things because we don't want to have those emotions. But truthfully, when you're doing something new, I think a lot of us would choose to feel a little uncomfortable. That's just part of it.
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but yet we don't want to feel it at the same time. If we can develop these skills of processing all of those emotions, we will be so much more likely to have those difficult conversations, to engage in those negotiations because we know that those negative experiences and feelings are just part of it. As you think about this topic, pay attention to any patterns of overindulgence that you might have. Do you tend to overindulge in shopping or eating or social media, alcohol?
It might be a sign that you're using something external to cover up your own inner turmoil. And perhaps it is a failure at work or maybe it's your own judgment of yourself for not taking a risk at work. But it's up to you to figure out, you know, what is it that's going on inside of me that's driving me to reach for some external short -lived endorphin rush? Then consider how would your life be different if you were able to eliminate
all of those overindulgences, over drinking, over eating, over shopping. What negative emotions do you imagine those were historically covering up and how would your life be different if you got better at experiencing them? I would love to chat with you and find out and I think that you might be surprised. To recap, recognize that there are times in your life that you will actually want to feel badly about something, even though it sucks.
and recognize also that emotionally you don't want to feel it and that tension is important. From there, we can invest in the essential nature of those negative emotions as the only way to truly experience happiness. So when you're starting to feel that tension between not liking feeling terrible but knowing that you need to do it, we really have to let our prefrontal cortex drive us here.
and buy into this idea that this is an important experience and that by doing this, it will allow you to more fully understand and appreciate happiness. From that space, we can commit to finding a process that works for ourselves to release and honor those emotions and that energy, whether it's journaling, meditating, talking to a friend, whatever it may be, but we have to see that we're boiling inside.
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honor that and find a way to address it and recognize it. In doing so, we have to avoid our inclinations to buffer, to try and fix those emotions, and instead develop an awareness of our own avoidance patterns because we all have one. Last, I want to really impress upon you the need to keep going and embrace the failure and the negative emotions that are required for you to create the life that you want.
They're just a sign that you're evolving. Advocate for yourself, have the difficult conversation, fail big, and know that every time that you do, not only will you learn something, but as you practice experiencing failure, you will only get better at it. One of my favorite quotes on this topic is from Henry Ford, and he said, failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, but this time more intelligently. And I think that is so true.
And if we can think about failure and all the negative experiences that go with it through that lens, it can allow us to chase those failures and invest in their importance in our overall goals and evolution. Okay, my friends, that is all for this week. Thanks so much for tuning in again this week. If you could be so kind to leave a rave review on your podcast listening platform, I would so appreciate it.
A few announcements from the collective for you to keep in mind. Next month on June 19th, we are hosting a free webinar that will teach you how to find more time and get more done. Whether you're juggling work, studies or personal projects, we will show you how to find hidden pockets of time and boost your productivity. Say goodbye to feeling overwhelmed and hello to getting more done with ease. Don't miss out on this opportunity to elevate your efficiency game. Register now and take the first steps towards mastering your time.
Then in July, we once again kick off our seminar series, How to Lawyer for Real. Whether you're a recent law school graduate or a seasoned professional seeking to elevate your practice, this series is a must do. We're diving deep into essential skills, business development strategies, and independence building techniques that law school didn't cover. This is everything you actually need to know to succeed in law. Don't miss this opportunity to reshape your career path.
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and create a successful, fulfilling future in law.
Last, if we haven't met yet and you've been following along with the podcast, be sure to sign up for a free coaching consultation. The summer is the perfect time to level up your game before year end and holiday craziness take over. Whether you're seeking guidance, clarity, or just a friendly chat to explore your goals, this is your sign to sign up. Let's connect and unlock your future potential together. Check out the show notes or the Lawyer Life Collective for details on all of these opportunities,
or to sign up for any of these upcoming events. I hope to see you there.
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