Decide to Practice Self-Kindness by Allowing Space for Your Feelings
In Episode 9 of The Business Mamas Podcast, I introduced a Framework for Enhanced Well-Being - Focus on Beliefs, Relationships & Making Heart-Guided Decisions.
Up to this point in the podcast, I've been focusing on beliefs and relationships. By having empowering beliefs and empowering relationships that naturally leads to being empowered to make heart-guided decisions. When you have empowering beliefs and empowering relationships with yourself and others, you are setting yourself up to value yourself, to know your truth, and then to honor yourself and your truth by making heart-guided decisions.
The heart-guided decision that I want to talk with you more about today is the decision to practice self-kindness by allowing your feelings. This is something that I have definitely not always practiced. I think that people probably fall into a couple of different categories when it comes to how they relate to their feelings and their emotions.
I think that some people can tend to get stuck in negative emotions and feelings such that they feel like they have trouble getting out of those feelings. I think other people, and I fall into this other people category, can be on the path of being so goal-oriented and so driven that they can tend to bypass their feelings and not even allow their feelings to have space.
Since I fall into the category of people that tend to bypass their feelings and not give them space, that's what I'll speak to here. For as long as I can remember, I've always been driven and goal-oriented. When I set my sights on something that I wanted to do, wanted to accomplish, or wanted to be, I figured out how I was going to get there and then I just went. I really didn't take a lot of breaks along the way; I just kept focusing on my goal.
In a lot of ways, it’s a superpower to be that focused, and I feel really grateful that I have the ability to focus and tune everything else out so that I can keep moving forward towards a goal that I have in front of me. I know that a lot of you that are listening are also this type of person. We've gotten to a certain point in our careers and in our lives because we have that amazing ability to focus.
Something I have come to notice about myself is that my ability to focus and tune everything out can sometimes also involve me bypassing my own feelings. Giving my feelings more space has been a really powerful practice for me.
I remember that shortly after the passing of my grandfather in 2019, I was feeling a lot. This makes sense because my grandfather was an incredibly important person in my world. He meant everything to me. He was a regular person in my life that I had very constant contact with.
In processing my grief after he was no longer with us, I wanted to give myself space to feel. I think part of having this intention was because he was so special to me and I was accustomed to appreciating him and taking in his wisdom as part of my regular life experience. When that changed and when I knew that his presence on this earth was no longer going to be something I could count on and come to, I wanted to still give myself time to be with his memory, to be with what I had learned from him, and to honor him by spending my time honoring him.
I conscientiously gave myself time to think about him and to think about what I had learned from him. The way that I went about doing that was that I signed up for grief counseling through Hospice. I set aside an hour every week for 10 weeks where I left the rest of my life. I left my work, I left my other responsibilities and I went to spend an hour with a grief therapist processing this loss.
It was such a gift for me because, in that time, that hour a week that I spent for 10 weeks, I was there with my feelings and I got to create a space where I wasn't rushed and where I just got to enjoy his memory and be with those feelings of the loss, of the joy, of the gratitude, of having been able to live so many years of my life with him as a guiding presence in my life and in my world.
You know what?
It felt good.
It felt hard to be with those feelings, but it also felt good.
What I realized was that by giving myself the gift of sitting with those feelings, it led to a lightness and a joy and that I naturally, when I felt into those hard feelings and those sad feelings, my body naturally released and moved into the joy and into the gratitude.
The more I said to myself and to my being, it's okay that you're feeling sad. It's okay that you miss him. It's okay that you wish he was still here.
The more I gave myself that love and that compassion, the more naturally the sadness lifted and it shifted into a light feeling, a joyful feeling and inspired feeling where I felt like, oh my gosh, this is my opportunity to grow into the person that is more like my amazing grandfather that I'm spending this time appreciating.
Since this time in 2019 where I really, for the first time in my life, set aside a big chunk of time to just be with my feelings, I've been practicing it more and more. Even though I don't have the hour a week of grief processing that I was doing back in 2019, I still have an awareness about how I can make space for my feelings in a way that I never realized was possible before.
I'll give you an example of how that manifested in my work life. I hope that this might be relatable for you as well. In my work as a criminal defense attorney, I oftentimes would get these feelings of worry and concern for my clients, for the people who had entrusted me with very important advocacy and decision-making, in their criminal cases that they were facing.
It was not uncommon for me in the past to feel worried and feel concerned. What I started doing when those feelings of worry and concern would come up for me, was to pause and allow myself to feel. I remember practicing this with one particular client that I was worried about. I paused and I breathed and I told myself it's okay.
I told myself:
“It's okay to feel worried. It's okay to feel concerned, breathe into that.”
I gave myself a few seconds just to breathe and just to tell myself this is okay, it's okay that you're feeling this way.
What happened was magical. It was this magical transition in my body of feeling a tightness that comes in my chest when I'm worried, in my chest, in my throat and it lessened and lessened. Then the feeling in my body, that tightness was gone. It then transitioned, the feeling transitioned to a feeling of gratitude and of joy. I felt grateful that this particular client, that I was worried about, trusted me because I knew that I was doing everything that I could to take care of the situation and my best was going to be good enough.
That feeling of gratitude and appreciation for myself came up for me and it was actually quite fast. This happened in probably less than a minute altogether. Then I went through my day after that point feeling light and grateful and empowered. Instead of carrying this anxious feeling and sort of just trying to ignore it or bury it.
By giving myself that time and space to feel those feelings, I awakened something beautiful.
I’ve also been practicing this in my life outside of work. When I’m helping my children on their school assignments and something is difficult or frustrating and they're having emotions come up, I've also been practicing asking my children to feel their feelings.
I ask them:
“What is that feeling that's coming up for you?”
I acknowledge the feeling that is coming up for them, which in this context is oftentimes sad, mad, or frustrated.
Then, I say to my children:
“Okay, it's okay to feel that way.”
I tell them:
“Can you tell your body: Body it's okay to feel frustrated right now.”
“Say it again. Body it's okay to feel frustrated right now.”
“Let's make a safe space in your body for you to feel those feelings and then just sitting with that for a little while.”
Doing this and encouraging them to breathe is something we’ve been working on.
I'm experimenting with this for myself and also with my children. I have seen both for myself and also in working with this with my children, that it's opening us up to feeling greater peace and greater self-compassion. I think that practicing self-kindness by allowing your feelings is something that I would encourage you to try if you haven't tried it before, especially if you're like me and you may tend to be so focused on a goal that you can just ignore how you're feeling and push on through.
I think by trying this practice out, you could open up a new level of peace if you think, gosh, do I carry around feelings of worry, feelings of concern about what's going to happen in this type of situation? How is this going to turn out? If that's something that you do experience, I would encourage you to practice this and experiment with it and see if by allowing yourself the space to feel, by reminding yourself and telling your body it's okay to feel worried.
It's okay to feel sad. It's okay to feel whatever feeling that's coming up for you. By giving yourself that permission and that time to feel those feelings, I'm really excited to find out from you what happens in your body. Do you feel that lightness and that peace and that natural transition into a more present and peaceful state that I have found by implementing this practice?
I hope that you'll try it. I hope that you'll let me know what you think about trying this practice out and I hope you have a wonderful day.
If you enjoyed Episode 20 and this blog post, I would love it if you shared the blog or the podcast with someone you think could benefit from them. I would also be incredibly grateful if you could leave an honest rating and review of The Business Mamas Podcast on Apple Podcasts as that helps more people find the show and it helps me in sharing this message of practicing self-love and self-care with more people whose lives I know could be enriched by hearing it. Sign up to download my Morning Routine Guide and receive my twice-monthly newsletter at The Business Mamas Podcast.
Until next time and with gratitude, Kara Stein-Conaway, @karasteinconaway on Instagram.
