REPOST: The Fastest Way to Feel Better

Jenny shares a simple mindset shift that can help you feel better immediately, without changing anything or anyone else around you.

Mentioned in this episode:
Poetry by Kate Baer
https://instagram.com/katejbaer
http://www.katebaer.com

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Transcript

Kevin: 0:09

Welcome to Rethink your Rules with Jenny Hobbs MD. A fresh perspective on relationships, success and happiness for high achieving moms. Hi friends, Kevin here. Jenny is still a bit sick this week, so I'm here to introduce another popular episode from last year. This one is about the fastest way to feel better when you are struggling with difficult emotions. Here's Jenny.

Jenny: 0:39

Hey, there it's Jenny, and I am back and so excited to really start digging into the good stuff here. One of my goals with this podcast is to bring you the most practical tips and insights that I can and go through them as quickly as I can and succinctly in each episode. I tend to get really excited about this stuff, give lots of examples and dig really deep into all the different applications. But I also find that for me, listening to really long podcasts sometimes feels a bit overwhelming. Maybe I'm running around dropping my kids off or commuting to work or things like that, and I love finding something that is quick and to the point but really relevant for me. So that's my goal when I think about what I'm going to bring here. So I think for this first part of the episode, I want to start by just telling you something, and I'll do this each time. It's telling you something in my life where I've chosen to take a hard pass and it's made my life better, okay, and something where I've said heck yes to something and that's made my life better. So for this week, I want to share my hard pass.

Jenny: 1:47

I have taken a hard pass on trying to get perfect reviews and evaluation at work. As you know, I'm a physician and I talk fast, I'm expressive, I'm dedicated, I'm energetic. I've got a lot of things going on where I work at the high stress environment. I'm very matter of fact and pragmatic and in that kind of role you get a lot of feedback. I have lots of opinions about things, and one of the things about physicians is we tend to really want to be perfect. For a lot of reasons which is a whole other podcast. We tend to think perfection is the goal and having a perfect review is the goal and we look for that external validation. And I've just noticed that that's kind of an expectation or theme that we sort of all accept and I realized that it was really holding me back in a lot of ways. And this isn't to say that I don't care what people think of me I absolutely still do. But I've just noticed that sometimes I'll get this set of evaluations and it's 80% amazing, wonderful.

Jenny: 2:48

And then some people have some critique of how I said something or they heard I did something once. Sometimes it's very subjective, sometimes it's very specific, sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't. And when this feedback is presented, a lot of times people are like well, this was really great. And also, if you could just change these things, kind of like, my goal should be to fix those remaining 10 to 20% of things that people don't like. And I realized somewhere along the way that I'm just going to take a hard pass on believing that the expectation is that I have 100% everything good and pleasing everyone. And again, this sounds really obvious.

Jenny: 3:23

But in the moment when someone presents the feedback to you and kind of looks at you expectantly, like waiting for you to say how you're going to like make that better and or feel bad, and you know whatever the thing is, or they're nervous or going to get defensive I can see that sometimes in people's eyes. I literally, like in my self-talk, I just think, oh right, like this is all, presuming that my goal is to have no criticism or negative feedback. But I'm taking a hard pass on that. I'm choosing not to accept that as my goal anymore, and maybe one of these times on the podcast I'll share a couple of experiences I've had with people who are outside of medicine that have really illustrated that for me. So I just remind myself like, oh yeah, that's not the goal anymore. And then I can say to that person, you know, calmly oh yeah, you know, that's something I need to work on. Or, oh, you know, thanks for letting me know if I, maybe if I don't agree, right. But it just takes so much pressure off and I've taken to now thinking this during my work stretches as well, right? So if I'm doing something and I'm, you know, worried about how it's going to be received or whatever, I just remind myself like okay, but like, even if it's received badly, that's okay, because remember how I decided to take a hard pass on trying to be perfect. So take a hard pass on it, right? And this can come up for you anywhere, right? So think of where in your life you're you're assuming the goal is to be perfect and maybe just decide you're not going to choose that goal anymore. You don't have to tell people, you can just smile and say thank you, but it'll make your internal life better. And, my heck, yes, this week I'll put this information in the show notes so that you can find it. This is just something really simple and it's made my life better.

Jenny: 4:57

There's this amazing woman who's a poet and she is. I found her on Instagram. Her name is Kate Bear, b-a-e-r and first name, k-a-t-e, and she writes poems that are very you know, they're about women and kind of feminist in nature, and she gets a lot of Instagram comments and her DMs and DMs from mostly men who have a lot to say about what she's sharing. And she is so genius she took these. She takes these comments and DMs and she posts them and then she posts a version where she's removed a bunch of their words but left a few remaining words to create a poem that speaks to the opposite of what they're saying. So she basically takes their words and like has this, like genius poet's mind and like pulls it together in a beautiful empowering poem for women. And it's hard to explain on a podcast, maybe not the best choice for this medium, but I'm telling you it is so worth it.

Jenny: 5:57

I found her on Instagram so I'll post that link, but I actually I really believe if someone's art is speaking to me like that on Instagram, I always try to invest in it, and so she has a thin little book of these poems that she's collected. It's called I Hope this Finds you Well, poems by Kate Bear, and I have it in my little reading nook where I take my mommy time out when I need them and it just it's genius, it's empowering, it makes you feel like someone understands all the thoughts that you have as a woman trying to get through life as we know it. So, anyway, I just a little thing again. These the heck yeses. Sometimes you know they may be something bigger or something smaller, but just something that's making my life better and might make your life better.

Jenny: 6:42

So with that, I want to go into the topic of today's podcast, which is the fastest way to feel better. So I will tell you that there are so many tools and resources that have helped me to feel better over the past couple of years and even before that. I was always the kind of person who is looking for ways to improve my life and feel better, but this is, I truly believe, the fastest way to do it, and in some ways it's the least complicated, and that is this the fastest way to feel better is to stop trying to feel better. Now, I know I can hear you groaning. It's like when you're in school and you hear an answer and you're like, of course, and also you know that's not really an answer, but I'm telling you it is an answer and it's more interesting and complicated and difficult than it may sound at first. So let's unpack that a little bit.

Jenny: 7:48

The fastest way to feel better is to stop trying to feel better. What I mean by that is that there are always going to be bad, negative feelings and emotions that are going to come up in our lives, and the experience of being a human is both positive and negative. There's a 50-50, right, and we can unpack that sometime in a longer episode where that idea comes from, but for now, suffice to say if you can accept the fact that sometimes sad, sad emotions, negative emotions, difficult emotions that are uncomfortable, are going to be part of your life and that's part of your whole complicated, beautiful journey as a human, then you can also notice how often we hear messages that are exactly the opposite of that. If you look around at social media, at movies and advertising, even at the way we talk to our kids, there are all these messages that the goal in life is to feel good and that if you don't feel good, there's a problem and you need to fix it by changing something right. And so we accept this message and in the moment that we're going through something uncomfortable, we forget that that's part of the deal and we decide that we need to get out of this bad feeling as soon as possible, and the easiest way most of us see to do that is to change something. Right. And so you'll see this in people who feel unhappy and they think they need a new job so they will feel happier. They think that if only their spouse would do something different, they will feel happier. Right, if only COVID hadn't happened, then that's right, all the things. So that's the first thing that we do. Thank you, even though deep down in moments of truth, we may be able to accept that the goal in life is not to feel happy all the time, and in fact, we may even tell our kids, right, like, life isn't always fair, et cetera. Right.

Jenny: 9:39

At the same time, we are also often sending messages that a bad feeling is something that needs to go away or be dealt with or pass more quickly. And so I think of emotional eating, right, or when our kid is upset about something, we offer them a cookie, or when we have a hard day and we want to have a glass of wine. Or I see this in my son. It's so interesting with kids because you can see it so clearly. My son. If, like he's, genuinely frustrated that his sister got something that he can't have, right, and he has this, you can see this big flood of negative emotion and sadness. He's very expressive and he'll say to me oh, he's so sad, he's like I just want, I want to watch a TV show, or I want a cookie or whatever. And it's so interesting because for him his screens, video games and things bring such joy. And so when he has this sadness which may be very legitimate, because something sad happened right, he immediately wants to get rid of it by switching to something more fun.

Jenny: 10:39

Examples from kids are just so great because everything seems so clear when you see it in a kid. But it's also provides amazing insight for us into what's going on in our brain that we may not be acknowledging right. And so our brains do the same thing. When we have a negative, uncomfortable emotion, our brain is not that much different than the eight-year-old brains. Like I don't want to feel this way, what can I do to feel better? And our brain seeks that out, and it's buried under years and years of habits of doing that and avoiding those negative emotions or covering them up or seeking out things that make us feel better in the moment and all these messages from society that the goal is to be happy and everyone else seems happy on social media, right, and so we've all these reasons why, in the moment, our first reaction is not to think it's okay that I feel bad, but rather to think I feel bad and that's a problem. I need to try to feel better Totally part of the human experience, and it's also part of our human experience that we actually can have some control over.

Jenny: 11:38

So one of the ways I like to think about this is a saying that's actually from originally, I think, from Buddhism, although I also know Kristin Neff, a psychologist, talks about it. It's the concept that the amount of suffering you have equals pain times resistance. I'm gonna say that again suffering equals pain times resistance. So pain is part of the 50% negative part of life. It's not avoidable, right. Resistance is when we resist the experience of that pain and think we need to change it and make it go away, and that part is optional. The pain is not optional, but the resistance is. That's the part we have control over.

Jenny: 12:18

So the fastest way to reduce your suffering at any given time is to decrease your resistance. It sounds so simple. Right, and it is simple and, like I said, it is the fastest way to feel better and it doesn't require you to change another person, doesn't require you to change their opinion of you, how they talk to you, it doesn't require you to change your job, your marriage, your house, anything right. All it requires is this simple reframing in your mind. But simple is not the same as easy. This is hard work because your brain has years and years of habits that are ingrained, that are telling it otherwise, and there's so many implicit and explicit messages around us to the contrary, thinking that we need to feel better. So it does take effort, but I will tell you that it is surprising how much simply being aware of this truth will help you. We really tend to underestimate the power of simple awareness in our lives.

Jenny: 13:33

So I actually have several other aspects of this that I want to explore and share with you, but I'm going to stop here, because I actually really want you to notice the power of simple awareness and applying it in your life and seeing it where it comes up for you. So I want you to kind of take this concept into your week and explore it, notice where it shows up, notice what happens when you remind yourself of these truths, when you're feeling bad and maybe even think of where you're skeptical or where it doesn't make sense for you or where you think I'm way off base. I mean send, shoot me an email or a message. I am a huge skeptic and I don't believe in platitudes and all that stuff. I'm a very direct, candid person, matter of fact, and so I can tell you, if you're having an objection or a thought that you know you don't see how this applies or it seems oversimplified, trust me, my brain has offered me the same things and I really dig deep and wrestle with those things myself. I love it. So let's keep talking about it, but for this week, here's what I want you to do. I want you to simply notice how often you receive messages or say things that imply that feeling bad is a problem. Okay, just notice when you're talking to your kids, when you're watching TV, when you're on social media at work, whenever you're thinking, if only this or I'm stuck here, I can't feel better until this happens, those kinds of things. That's all examples of that. Think of like.

Jenny: 15:03

Another example, for my life was, you know, let's say, when I had a little baby and my baby was up at five o'clock in the morning. It was painful, right. But I also was like, well, you know, she's six weeks old, this is what's supposed to happen, right. So I wasn't resisting it. But when that same sweet, wonderful baby was you know three or four and she was waking up every day at five o'clock and insisting on my attention, I was like she's supposed to be sleeping right now and I'm tired. And I was resisting it and I was angry with her and, guess what? I was suffering a lot more. But the situation was the same. In fact, I probably was still getting more sleep than I had been when she was a baby, but I was not accepting the pain of having a three-year-old wake up at five am because I was resisting it and making myself more miserable. So you can see that and, by the way, arguing with that reality of her not sleeping till five past five am wasn't helping me, wasn't making me get any more sleep, it wasn't helping her, right, it was essentially arguing with reality.

Jenny: 16:04

And there's this great quote from Byron Katie that says when you argue with reality, you lose 100% of the time. And I always tell my clients you know, when you argue with reality, you always lose and it's exhausting, right. So I love, I want reality to be better than it is. I want to resist everything. I'm a perfectionist and I also have come to a point of realizing that I was only increasing my own suffering by doing that. So, again, there's a lot of things that are going to come up with your brain.

Jenny: 16:31

Just notice it, notice them all. Notice where this applies to you. Notice where maybe a situation is something that you could just sort of step out of the negative emotion that feels all encompassing, like you can't handle it right. If you can just step aside from that for one second and become aware of the fact that you are feeling that way Because you're not accepting that, even if you still don't accept it, just noticing that that's why you're doing it and that that's your human brain being human right, that separation already will make you feel better because you're not feeling so much at the mercy of your emotions but rather you're feeling a little bit distant. It's kind of like when you're looking at another person who's emotional right, you can feel bad for them, but you have some distance. It doesn't feel all-encompassing, but when you're in your own head and your own emotions, it is much more difficult to get that distance.

Jenny: 17:21

And so these phrases, I really come back to them all the time. I'll think to myself okay, suffering is pain, times, resistance, right. Or I'll think, okay, am I arguing with reality here? Is that really helping me? Or I'll even, you know, just think like, okay, like what if nothing's gone wrong here? And this is just part of my 50-50?. So I will talk more about this next week, but please notice where it comes up for you and let me know what questions you have, how this might apply or not apply for you. And the last thing I will say is that if this potentially does apply to you, if this sounds like something that would help you feel better, but you also aren't really sure how you would do it, how you would find the time where you could apply it, if you really want to explore it, I can tell you that the best way to do that is through one-on-one coaching. I still get one-on-one coaching myself, because even though I know these concepts and I'm telling you this when I'm in my own brain it's much harder to see them, and when I work with someone else and I give them my situation a trained coach, they really can help me see how it applies.

Jenny: 18:25

And when you explore and apply something in your own life, it always has a lot more meaning than when you just hear a phrase. This is why, by the way, someone put in an Instagram quote card that says you know, stop arguing with reality, or whatever. Well, it can have an impact and be interesting to you. It's not going to fully change your life until you really dig in and try to apply it. Okay, because then it has all the meaning and then it really makes a difference. So if you are at a point where you want to do that work, or you're just kind of curious what that even looks like and whether that would help you, that's what I'm here for. So you can go to the website, which will be in the show notes and in the outro that's coming here, and set up a free consult call to chat with me and see how it might apply. Or you can go ahead and sign up right there to work with me one-on-one and really dig in, and otherwise I will see you.

Kevin: 19:14

No-transcript you Thanks for listening to Rethink your Rules with Jenny Hobbs MD. Would you like to learn more about how to apply this to your own life through personalized coaching with Jenny? Visit us on the web at JennyHobbsMDcom to schedule a free consultation. If you found value in what you heard today, please consider subscribing to the podcast and giving us a 5 star rating so we can reach even more women like you.