Welcome to episode 50. I am so pumped that I’m here at episode 50, and I’m grateful for all of you for being here and following along and learning with me, and I have a couple of things I have to tell you about.

First is my retreat is going to be open for enrollment. Really, really soon. So if you are interested in coming to my retreat, it’s April 14th through 17th in Park City, Utah. All you need to do is go to Smooth Stones coaching.ck.page, and that will take you to a form where you can put your name and your email address and you’ll be on the list to get all the information about the retreat first.

I am so excited to tell you what I have. Been putting together and I’m so excited to see people in person. I actually just got back from a retreat that another friend of mine who is a coach did, and it was just so fun. Everybody got covid tested, so it was really safe and it was just so fun to see people and get to hang out with other women and it was awesome.

So I really want you to come if you don’t know what you’re getting for Valentine’s Day yet. You gotta tell your husband that you wanna come to this retreat in April as you’re present, because I think that when you invest in yourself and you invest in your own mental health and your happiness, everyone around you is going to benefit.

If you don’t remember that website, just go in the show notes. If you’re not sure what show notes are, it’s just on the episode. If you swipe up, there’s just a little summary of the episode and some links. So, It’ll be right there for you. The second thing I need to tell you is that I do have some spots open right now for one-on-one coaching.

If you’ve been thinking about coaching, or maybe you’ve talked to me before, but it just wasn’t the right time, why don’t you let me know that you’re ready to start. I have a three month program inside that program. I teach you all the tools you need to live. A beautiful life after loss. And what I want to give you in this program is true joy.

And when I say joy, I don’t mean you’re gonna be happy all the time, but I do mean that you are going to stop filling that hole in your life and you’re really gonna find a way to just enjoy being a human. All that, that is the happy and the sad, and the hard, and the amazing. That’s true joy to me, and that’s what I want for you, and I want you to know that it is absolutely possible.

You just need the tools and the skills to get yourself there. Again, go in the show notes or go to smooth stones coaching.com. You can sign up to talk to me and see if it’s a good fit at this time to get started. Alright, I am so excited to talk about today’s topic. I think it’s gonna be so. So helpful for you, and it’s been something that’s changed my life.

And what we’re gonna talk about today is one of those skills I was telling you about, which is called Becoming an Emotional Expert. Now, we talk about emotions a lot here on the podcast because they’re so important. Emotions drive everything that we do. When we are a child, we think that emotions come from what happens to us.

So if someone takes our toy away, we just think that that makes us. Sad or if someone gives us a cookie that makes us happy. We are emotional beginners when we’re children and we’re actually taught this, like that emotions come from other people and that we can hurt other people’s feelings. And we shouldn’t do that, and that other people can hurt our feelings.

And so we’re taught that from a very young age. Probably by the time you’re one, we start saying That’s not nice and you can’t do that, and that hurts somebody else’s feelings, but that actually isn’t true. As we get older, we’re gonna realize that. That isn’t the case anymore, and so I want to explain this by using an example.

Since we’re coming up on Valentine’s, I’m gonna tell you about myself. So I used to think that it was my husband’s job to make me happy on Valentine’s Day. He needed to know what I wanted, probably without me saying anything. I thought that the more effort he put in, The more loved I would feel. I thought that he could make me feel special, and then if everything didn’t go the way I had planned in my head, but had never actually told him, then it was his fault that I was sad and that I was disappointed.

And so what would happen inevitably, although I have to say my husband is amazing. He’s not super into Valentine’s Day. It’s fine. That’s just who he is. But for a lot of years after the inevitable disappointment on Valentine’s Day, I would cry or I would give him the cold shoulder, or I would tell him like that.

I was so disappointed because he didn’t do anything, and then I would even wait for him to fix it. This was. My favorite thing, looking back, I’m wondering why I did this to myself, but I would kind of think, well, I was sad and he knew it and I told him, and so I would think, well, maybe he’ll make up for it.

So not only was I kind of disappointed on Valentine’s Day, I would like keep that going for a while, like maybe another week just waiting for him to fix it. And this was awful. It was awful. There was no escape from feeling terrible unless my husband changed, right? So the only way for me to feel better was if I did a better job maybe telling him what I want, or if I, you know, I would start even telling myself, well, I’ll just lower my expectations.

But really, I still was expecting all those things, and I felt like when it didn’t happen, Then I had no choice but to be sad, but then I learned that I create my own emotions, and this is what I teach you guys, right? We create our own emotions with our thoughts. Our emotions don’t come from what other people do or say, no matter what the occasion, and it was.

Like a light bulb, mind blown, whatever you term you wanna use. It was incredibly empowering. I realized that I didn’t have to be miserable on Valentine’s Day, that I could create the experience that I wanted, and that was the hugest gift, and that’s what I wanna give to you guys today. Is the gift of knowing that you are in charge of your own emotions.

And a lot of people, their first reaction is, well, I don’t wanna be in charge of my own emotions. I want the people around me. To treat me the way that I expect them to, to act the way I want them to act. I want my husband to spoil me on Valentine’s Day. I want the people in my life to acknowledge my grief.

I think this is a huge problem in grief, and I’m gonna say this with a little bit of tough love. But when you are in grief and you expect people to show up for you in a certain way and they don’t, then you are the one that is miserable. You have no power. And so we spend a lot of time and a lot of energy being really, really upset with people who maybe don’t even know what we need ’cause we’ve never actually expressed it.

But also there’s people that we might have told them how we wish they would show up and they’re just not gonna be able to do it. There’s no way to repair those relationships or to feel better when you’re waiting for them to change. I know this is hard. If you’re fresh in your grief, it can be really hard to wrap your mind around it.

’cause you just want people to acknowledge you, to acknowledge your baby, to acknowledge your pain, to support you in the way that you think that you need. And there is nothing wrong with making requests. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not saying you should just let anyone treat you anyway. What I am saying is you.

Create your own emotions and why this is the best news is because that means that no matter how the people around us show up, we don’t have to feel stuck and sad and disappointed. It means we can feel however we want. We can feel love and fun, and maybe even just feel. Not really emotional, right? We get off the emotional rollercoaster and we stay on kind of flat ground for a while.

’cause that emotional rollercoaster is so exhausting as we start from a child and we grow up. We know teenagers are like this. Teenagers are like figuring out all the emotions. So they’re kind of like testing it all out. But they definitely blame their emotions still on outside circumstances and other people.

If somebody at school said something they didn’t like, the world is kind of ending. But as we get older, and as you are here listening to me, I want you to know that becoming an emotional expert means that you recognize that you emotions. Come from your thoughts and you control your thoughts. Looking at things this way does require more effort.

The first step is we gotta become aware and you’ve gotta try it. If you’re not sure if what I’m saying is true, I want you to test it out. You are welcome to disagree with me, but I’m telling you this is very, very empowering and you are gonna feel so much better if you try it and if you keep working at it and you recognize and you take a step outside of yourself.

So we wanna use our higher brain. Which is our, the part of our brain that can think about our thinking, use that higher part of our brain to notice, wow, I’m feeling this way and I’m thinking this way. And just get a little bit farther away from it so that you can. Study it and get curious about it. The next step is taking full ownership of your emotions.

So once you’re aware of what’s going on in your head and you see that you’re trying to blame your emotions on things outside of you and the people around you, you gotta take that ownership back and say, I am the creator of my emotions, the positive ones and the negative ones. If you’re feeling frustrated, Or sad, like I was like disappointed in people or if people are making you angry, right?

A lot of times we’ll be like, well, this guy cut me off and I just, I’m angry because of it. No, you own your emotions. That is becoming an emotional expert. You don’t have to blame it on anyone else. And I’m telling you, this will help you so much because you are gonna. Feel so much better, even if you’re upset because you know that it’s coming from you and there’s no judgment about that right there.

There doesn’t have to be any judgment. We don’t need to be mean to ourselves. We don’t need to tell ourselves that we’re doing it wrong. You’re doing it exactly the way you’re supposed to be doing it. You are learning and you are growing, and you are maturing emotionally. And the last thing that we want to do is take that control and use it for our benefit.

So decide on purpose no matter what happens. I am gonna be okay. I’m going to be happy. I’m gonna let people act the way that they act and it’s not gonna affect how I feel. This even goes for the people who are closest to us. They might be upset and we don’t have to be upset about it. They might be disappointed in us.

And we don’t have to be mad that they’re disappointed. Our feelings don’t come from their feelings. Our feelings come from us and our thoughts. So what happens when you can do this and as you practice it and you be kind to yourself all throughout the process, knowing that there are gonna be times where you’re not going to be able to choose your emotion on purpose, but you are gonna be able to look at it later and kind of see what happened.

Then you are gonna spend so much less energy on what everyone around you is doing, and you’re just going to create the experience in your life that you want. And that is the best. And sometimes people think that, well, if I don’t have any expectations of the people around us, or if they don’t create my feelings, then what’s the point?

Like, why even interact with people? Well, their reason is because we want to. That’s the kind of person we wanna be because that’s the kind of spouse we wanna be, or the kind of mother we wanna be. We just get to choose. But our behavior and our emotions are not based on what other people do. They’re based on who we want to be.

And just like I talked about in our New Year’s episode, it’s. Who do you want to be? It’s so much more powerful to create your own identity and create your own emotions on purpose than to just be blown around by everything that’s happening in your life. I know you guys have felt this. I have felt this too.

I’ve been in that moment where I just felt so stuck, and I think this is why so many relationships, no matter what type of relationship, but so many relationships. Break down and don’t survive is because nobody told us this truth, that we are responsible for our own emotions. We’re just going around waiting for everyone else to make us feel things, and it’s so disempowering.

I have to tell you now that. Valentine’s Day is coming up and I’m actually feeling really chill about it. Some years I have just found something I wanted and got it for myself. Sometimes I send a link to my husband and he might get the thing. He might not, but I can still feel love and happiness on that day no matter what anyone around me does.

I get to choose. That is a beautiful place to be. So I wanna just recap. When we are children, we are emotional beginners and we get a lot of messages that are not really correct about how we can hurt other people’s feelings and other people can hurt our feelings. And it’s okay. Our brains are not developed.

But as we become adults, we have a lot more power than we think we do. Our thoughts. Create our emotions. It’s not the fault of people around us. This skill takes effort and practice and you might have some questions and that’s okay. That’s exactly what I do in my program. I help my clients recognize where they’re letting other people control their emotions.

Then turn it around, bring it back to themselves so that they can be empowered in whatever circumstances they are in. This work is absolutely worth it. You can be so much happier. More empowered and more free even in grief, even in life after loss, maybe especially in life after loss, because it’s so easy to just want other people to take care of our emotions when we’re feeling raw.

But it’s not their job. It’s our job. And when you are an emotional expert, you’re gonna be able to do this for yourself and your life is gonna. Feel so much more in control. That’s all I’ve got for you today. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review. If you love this episode or you’ve been listening for a while, I’d love if you’d leave a review.

It means a ton to me. I read them all and I know it helps people find the podcast. My retreat is coming up. I would love if you would come. I’m only taking 10 people. It’s going to sell out quickly, so if you’re thinking about it, get ready. I’ll see you next week.