In this time of unprecedented change, it's important to acknowledge our feelings and be in tune with them. This self-knowledge and understanding open doors for the way you live your life as these might just be the very things stopping you from doing the things you need to do. Amy Vetter shares how her own story of dealing with her feelings when times were tough as she was growing up. Learn how she went on her own journey of self-discovery to allow herself to acknowledge when she needed support from those around her, and how it changed how she went about her business and relationships.

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Feeling Our Feelings: Allowing The Support You Need

How We Deal With Our Feelings

We are going to talk about feelings and how we handle those feelings throughout times of stress and throughout times that are good. We’re recognizing how those feelings even have come to be in our lives. The whole point of this is about our belief systems and how we got those belief systems. It’s about what transpired in our lives and how we step back and look at those stories. We’re going to see how those stories have affected us throughout our lives and how we deal with our feelings in times of stress. What we need to do to see if the way that we are handling ourselves is the way that we were programmed to or was it something that we determined as the way we wanted to handle it?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this because I know I interview many different leaders in many different professions. I understand their stories of how their belief systems came to be and how that affected them as adults. I know in my own life, there had been times that have affected how I moved forward and how I’ve dealt with stress. There had been times where I was feeling things but not necessarily allowing myself to feel things. One of those times in my life that affected me for many years was when I was young. I was in high school and my mom lost her business. When we look at our lives with the pandemic and so forth, there are things that you can't predict what the future looks like. It was the same thing at that time in my life where we had a certain type of family life, a certain type of spending patterns, and what we were used to.

My parents got divorced and their credit had been maxed at that time from some decisions that my mom had made in the business. The business failed as well. Everything in our lives changed from that point going forward. There was no vision of what the future was going to look like. That's a hard thing to get your head around sometimes when things are so different. They're not the way that you're used to. You can't say that they'll go back to the way that it was. At that time of my life, my parents were not going to get back together. We lost our house and everything inside of our house because of the financial turmoil. We had to sell everything in the house in a house sale to start paying off some of the credit issues that were happening from the business. I started working three jobs at the time. My brother started working as well. All of it contributed to the things that we needed to do in order to make it through the rest of high school and going into college.

Intentional Decision

Having had that experience, when you're going through hard times, I’ve been thinking a lot about that because of how hard these times are. You have to have some sort of like, “This can't be forever. I’m going to have to push forward.” You have this moment where you think about, “Do I give up and hide under the covers or do I keep pressing forward not knowing what the other side looks like?” You have to make the intentional decision to do that. While you're doing it, sometimes you can't feel anything because there are no feelings about it. I know at that time, I couldn't feel. I didn't have time to think about my feelings and how it was affecting me. All I knew was I needed to survive and my family needed to survive. We were doing everything we could to make it through. I had the goal of going to college. I wanted to still go to college. I kept pressing through and kept my head down because if you start thinking about everything that's going on around you, it can take you down.

When I reflect back on that and compare to the times that we are in, one of the errors that I made was to not feel. That became a pattern in my life for a long time of making sure I’ve got to make it to the next step. I keep my head down and make sure that I didn't feel anything because if I felt it, it might hurt too much. I wasn't sure where that pit and how far it would go. I didn't allow myself to think about it. It wasn't until in my 30s when I started doing yoga and doing some different types of things that I had never done before where it was forcing me to look at how I feel and sit with it. I allowed myself to go through those feelings, to go through any grieving of times that I lost or things that I pushed forward and did. Maybe those were the right decisions for the time, but not necessarily the right decisions or the same decisions that I would have made had all else been different.

I wanted to talk about this because we might be in that spot where we're trying to push forward. We're working and running on that treadmill to keep things going, which we need to do. I do think we need to feel and allow those emotions to come when they come and allow them to flow through us as they need to. Sometimes we have to put guardrails around it because we don't want it to overwhelm us or be a tidal wave. It is important that we don't shove those feelings down as we're going through it too. What we don't want to do is have this impact the people around us, our families, or change the way we are as a person if it's for the worse. We can evaluate. There are learnings from all of this where we've learned something good about ourselves that we want to keep.

Maybe there are things that are happening that we might notice a change in our personality or the way that we interact that we may want to pause and evaluate. Is that the person that we want to be? If you allow these things to go on for too long, even if it's out of sheer fear, anxiety and stress, it can start becoming who you are. You don't want to lose the essence of the type of person that you want to show up for in life, the type of person that you believe you are. What that means is you have to take a pause, feel and allow yourself those moments to be sad, to grieve if you need to grieve, but also to look at what opportunities and good things that have happened because of this as well.

I know a lot of times what we talk about as far as trying to change your feelings is to not think negatively or to think from a gratitude perspective. I’ve also been thinking about this as well. Sometimes gratitude might be a strong word when our feelings are so hard. We don't want to pretend we have more gratitude now. It can change our energy to think about what we're grateful for. One of the things we can practice is how do we support our heart and protect it during these times as well. We might be feeling so much that opening our heart or trying to think of something more positive might be too much.

That might create too much emotion within us, rather than thinking about our heart space and understanding what do we need, what does that heart space need right now? If it needs protection and if it needs support, be okay to admit that. Rather than trying to pretend that you can go at it alone or you don't need anyone to help or you’ve got this, allowing your heart and your feelings to be supported during this. We have to track back and look at those belief systems that created that. If we've always believed that we don't need anyone or we don't want to owe anyone, which was definitely me. I bootstrapped it. I wanted to make it on my own and show that my circumstances weren't getting in the way of the goals that I had and so forth.

It took me a long time to understand of how much I did need that support of people and supporting my heart in ways that I did not expect. It can be mindfulness practices or yoga practices. Even if it's a hobby that helps fill that heart space to support it, but it's something that fills that up where you don't feel like you've got to do it alone. I would even say as a leader when we need to be supported, sometimes we have to speak up. Sometimes we have to be transparent that we can't always do it alone. We are going through things that not everyone understands because they're not seeing all the aspects of the business, the services that you're responsible for, the job you're responsible for, and all the different decisions that go into it. Also, how many hard decisions have to be made right now?

As a business owner, as a leader, there's never been a harder time of no prediction of what that future looks like for your business, for the services that you offer or the products that you offer. It's unprecedented because we can't sit back and business plan. All we can do is look at, “I can make a plan for what I know now.” In order to do that, we can ask for support. Our heart, our feelings, we can be transparent about how we are feeling. When we are, the way people will reach out and help if we allow them to, creates gratitude. It creates that space of, “I am not alone in this.” That takes work. If it's something hard for you to do to speak up and be transparent about your feelings or let somebody know that you need something, and it could be a spouse that you need to let know. It might not be someone at work and you're not used to letting your spouse know or a significant other of the support to your heart that you need. This is the time to understand why. What created that for you?

When we can better understand why, then we can take one little step, one toe in the water, and speak up. Try it with one person or someone that you feel safe with. Even say, “I feel uncomfortable. I’ve never done this before, but these are hard times. I am feeling sad and scared about the work that I do or the life that I have. I need your support and this is how I need it.” With my businesses, it's been an important opportunity to sit with each of the teams and be very transparent about where the state of the business is. What we need to do as a team in order to survive these times. We don't know how long these times go and we certainly don't know what the future will look like. It probably will not look like where we left off.

Knowing that and knowing that I don't have all the answers even if I want to and knowing that I have a lot of feelings welling up inside of me over not knowing those answers, then it's important that I tell people, “I need your support,” and ask for their support. When you open that up and you come in open-hearted to say, “I need protection. I need support,” it's amazing how people will step up to help you in that situation. Some of the best ideas come from those opportunities that you allow other people to support you, but also to participate in the solution as well. Everybody's got a different perspective. At least in all of my career life, if someone's dedicating time to their job or to work for you or to work for your business, they most likely want it to do well because they're a part of it. They're a part of contributing to the success of it.

If you don't give them the opportunity to try to help, they can feel a little upset that their feelings weren't considered, their contribution wasn't considered or the fact that they could help come to a solution with you. All of you can support one another. Part of doing that, it's important to understand from a business and a leadership perspective. When I talk about my story that I walk in with, that I hold in my body, that I have to overcome, everybody that comes into that room is holding their stories. They’re holding how they respond to things. They’re creating those fears and anxieties because of their stories in the past. It's important as leaders or running businesses to understand that we're not alone. Everybody that is working with us is feeling that fear and anxiety and having those stories of what is creating that fear and anxiety as well.

Opening Up

The hardest thing to do is to sit and understand what's happening for them. Why they might be feeling fear and anxiety and what's contributing to that as well. What are their feelings? Be open to what those feelings are. That's the mindfulness practice of not judging the feelings and what they say. It’s not applying how we feel to what they say, but being present, silent, and compassionate to their journey so that they can be silent, present, and compassionate to our journey. When we start putting that into practice, we become human. That's what feelings are all about. Sometimes we have to put up this armor in our day to get through the day or to get through different things that we're disputing so that we get certain goals that we want or certain initiatives to go the way that we want. At the end of the day, we are human with feelings and each person walks around like that.

When we think about how do we protect each person's heart in these situations and make sure they feel whole, protected and nurtured, how can we ask to feel protected and nurtured as well? We're in it together, we're supported, and we allow ourselves to feel. What can come from it is not only closer relationships with one another but also opportunities that we didn't discover on our own. We discovered it because we were all together, contributing together, being human together and feeling our feelings together. What I'd like to do to end this is take a moment and be silent with ourselves. Pick a word or an emotion that you're feeling, but feeling where you're kind to your heart, that you're supported, and wrapping your mind around that theme. I'd like you to close your eyes and settle into the space where you are.

If you're sitting in a chair, taking both feet to the earth, bring your hands on your thighs. What I'd like you to do is to sit tall. Maybe you're feeling supported on the back of your chair and noticing your body. Noticing whether it feels heavy where you sit. Noticing how you are supported. I like you to take your right hand on your heart and bring your left hand on top of your heart. Notice as you breathe in and out, your heart is being supported. Slow down that breath as you inhale and exhale. Settle into the space and notice any words that come up for you around how you feel. You might notice any energy or color that might come up for you as you continue to breathe into that heart space. Knowing that you are enough, that you are supporting, and that you're allowed to feel. You're being kind to yourself in order to be better for yourself, so you can be better for those around you.

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