Do you feel defeated when overloaded with issues and obstacles?
Do you struggle emotionally with your business commitments?
Do you lose your focus when something upsets you?
In the 60s through about the early 90s, Hollywood cultivated a stereotype of women crying inappropriately and going into hysterics at work. Thankfully, that silly reputation died out, although an unconscious bias still exists against forceful women who are labeled a certain way when they assert themselves with an emotional charge.
I’m not here to debate that topic. I’m sharing the following information because I’ve been asked several times about this topic and I want to help you succeed by USING your strong feelings.
How do we use our emotions (instead of numbing out to them) to fuel us instead of depleting us?
Who the heck wants to go through life numbed out? Not me. Believe me- I tried everything to numb out in my 30s at the height of turmoil in my business. But not anymore.
Intense, raging, sobbing, freak-out kinds of emotions aren’t the enemy IF you know how to harness and then channel that energy into something constructive. I have extraordinarily strong emotions, but I’ve never been accused of being hot-headed, hysterical, or overly emotional at work.
When you find yourself emoting something that isn’t entirely appropriate for the scene:
think about a rocket.
You know, the kind that goes into space? As a high-powered CEO, those big, intense feelings you experience aren’t something you figure out how to handle. They’re something you use to launch yourself right into an upgrade.
When a rocket is thrust into space, it requires that all energy is directed toward lift-off.
As an entrepreneur, you didn’t tiptoe into your business game. If you’re successful, it means that at some point you passed a point of no return. You took a stand, and the power behind it consisted of your emotions. If your start-up was anything like mine, it was some combination of determination, resolve, passion, and terror.
These emotions were like jet fuel- launching your business game past the part of your brain called the amygdala, responsible for fear and keeping you “safe”. In this case, you used your feelings to launch out the atmosphere of your mind into the space of possibility and uncertainty.
Getting your business off the launch pad, there was an infinite number of points along the trajectory things could have, and did, go wrong. But you had a blueprint, and without overthinking it you made a choice. Then, you launched.
Beyond a certain point in the atmosphere, parameters change. Spaceships go from dealing with Earth’s gravity to suddenly having to maintain their own.
To launch a business, you first have to get beyond the pull of gravity.
Beyond the atmosphere of the mind and your habit of controlling objects in space. (This is one of the things that causes stressful emotion.) Not adapting to the shifting natural laws of this altitude takes most people out of their business or takes their business out.
When your business system really takes off and is sensitive to your every intention, it’s like you’re no longer an ordinary civilian. You have a superpower: creating by aligning your intention with your feeling world.
Being sloppy, moody, or controlling at this altitude becomes highly inconvenient and expensive.
Reactions of the fight, flight, or freeze variety keep us blocked from the possibilities that exist in the quantum field. Through the practice of mindfulness, we can unlearn false cues and retrain ourselves to use the adrenaline load for something constructive. This helps it dissipate more quickly, as it was designed to do after a threat.
Remember that moment when you just knew you would make it happen as an entrepreneur? For me, it was like a rocket ride, which turned the problems into opportunities, the fear into excitement, the letdowns into lessons. Like that feeling you had when you were launching, only this moment matters just as much.
So, where will you use your emotions as fuel today?