The One You Feed - Mini Episode: Allowing Yourself to Feel Everything and Post Traumatic Growth

Episode Date: April 11, 2020

You can find all of the most up to date crisis help & support resources that Eric is making available through The One You Feed by going to www.oneyoufeed.net/helpIn this mini episode, Eric shares helpful advice and many suggestions on how to deal with strong emotions during this global pandemic. He also offers a hopeful message about the personal growth that can come from such challenges.Allow yourself to be where you areLower your expectations if you need toBe kinder to yourself and practice self compassion (see Kristin Neff episode)Journaling can be a helpful practicePost traumatic growth - turning adversity into something betterAllowing ourselves to explore thoughts and feelings can help not only cope, but create meaning in our lives7 areas of growth that can come from adversityThe importance of routine and structure in our daysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Man, I cannot believe we're already wrapping up another season of Questlove Supreme. Man, we've got some amazing guests lined up to close out the season, but, you know, I don't want any of you guys to miss all the incredible conversations we've had so far. I mean, we talked to A. Marie, Johnny Marr, Eve, Jonathan Schechter, Billy Porter, and so many more. Look, if you haven't heard these episodes yet, hey, now's your chance. You gotta check them out. Listen to Questlove Supreme on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know that 70% of people get hired at companies where they already have a connection? I'm Andrew Seaman, LinkedIn's Editor-at-Large for Jobs and Career Development. And on my podcast, Get Hired, I bring you all the information you need to, well, get hired. Landing a job may be tough, but Get Hired is here for you every step of the way with advice on resumes, networking, negotiation, and so much more. Listen to Get Hired with Andrew Seaman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. Hello, everyone. I wanted to do another mini episode, and I'm doing it from a particularly windy day here in central Ohio. I just wanted to take a couple minutes and talk a little bit about a few things relating to where we are in the middle of this whole

COVID-19 coronavirus crisis, if that's what we want to call it. And I've got a couple of thoughts that I think are useful, and they are somewhat contradictory, 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 about 40 to 60% of their normal capacity. They're just 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 in 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 Kristen Neff from a couple 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. Or 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. They're a restaurant worker or a massage therapist or a hairstylist, 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. 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. day for five to 10 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 Viktor Frankl has a couple quotes that I love. One says, when we're no longer able to change a 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 post-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 15 to 20

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 that 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, increased 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 to, 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 or 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. 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 as something that confines us. Often we think that way. Well, 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 in 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, our structure 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 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,ing 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 go 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 ourself. 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 structures 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 10 a.m. 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 going to 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 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. both the Personal Transformation Program as well as the Spiritual Habits Program. And they're both really good fits for these times. And access to everything we're doing is at 1ufeed.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.

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 turned out to be a really fun call each week and details on how to access it are at oneufeed.net slash help. I wish you the best during this time. I wish you skills in 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.