Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome to the podcast. I’ve got a couple of things I gotta tell you about. I have free Mother’s Day coaching available now until May 7th. I’ve already had some amazing sessions and it’s been so fun. Even if we cry a little, if you are dreading Mother’s Day, I’ll help you make a plan to be ready for it and have the best day you possibly can.

And if you’re okay with Mother’s Day, but you’ve got something else going on, bring it. Let’s get you some answers in direction. That’s the great thing about the self-coaching model. It works all the time. So go in the show notes and sign up for a free 45 minute session. Like I said, we can talk about Mother’s Day or we can talk about anything you’ve got going on.

There’s no strings attached. I just wanted to give this as a gift for you for Mother’s Day ’cause I know it can be hard for some people. And the other thing I have going, coming up in May is drop the mom guilt for good masterclass. This is for everyone because we all have some level of mom guilt, but especially if you still blame yourself for what happened with your baby even a little bit or maybe a lot, it’s a heavy weight to carry.

But I’m gonna walk through this with you step by step in this masterclass and show you how to let go of the guilt so you can free up that energy to use it somewhere else. It’s time. If you’ve got mom guilt, let’s let it go and let’s learn how to not. Do it to ourselves anymore in the future. And speaking of emotional energy, that’s what our topic is today.

I love talking about this because it’s something we really neglect and misunderstand, and so I know this episode is gonna be so helpful and make a difference right away. And that’s what I love when I learn something new and I can just immediately apply it. That reminds me, I really want to reach all the angel moms who need these coaching tools in their lives, and the best way to do that is for you to share.

People are much more likely to try something if a friend recommends it, right? And so if you have learned and felt uplifted and empowered by this podcast, or if you loved a certain episode, Please share. Maybe you’re in a support group and someone has a question that I have answered in an episode. Just go ahead and share the episode.

You can even grab a link on your podcast app and share it on Facebook or. In a dmm. I recently had a client ask me for permission to share and I was like, yes, please share. Please tell people about this work and this different way of looking at grief and life after loss. ’cause I just wanna help everybody and I know that you do too.

So I really, really appreciate it. Okay. Back to emotional energy. Your emotional energy is something you need to pay attention to. In our busy, constantly moving world where every day is expected to be the same, it’s even more important for you to learn how to do this. Most of us don’t really pay attention to it until we’re on the edge of a burnout or a meltdown, and at that point, it’s really hard to get back to a good level because we have nothing left in our tank to get there.

We also may notice the days when things are good, we’re getting things done, we feel especially like ourselves. But we also don’t pay much attention when our energy is high like that, and we can end up overextending ourselves saying yes to everything, and then we cycle back to burnout again. The other problem with this is that we think we should be that high emotional energy all the time.

And so when we aren’t, we are wishing we were, and immediately we are resisting reality and adding to our suffering because our emotional energy is going to be fluctuating all the time. And our goals shouldn’t be to be riding high all the time. What I wanna offer to you. Is the goal of being in tune with where you are and finding more of a flow.

We’re not trying to be a busy beaver just working nonstop. We’re aiming to be the river, sometimes flowing slowly, deep and wide. Sometimes fast and bubbly, but always moving forward. The first step is noticing it and tuning into yourself. Where are you in your cycle? Where are you in your grief, are there any milestones coming up that are on your mind?

What mental loads are you carrying? How are you feeling physically? What do you actually want to do versus what do you think you should do? This step where we ask ourselves questions is so important because most of us believe that our emotional energy is based on things outside of us, our boss, our family, where we are in grief, what’s on the news, what we saw on social media.

But when we let all of that affect us without looking inside, we are completely powerless. I wanna encourage you to listen this week. Listen to the people around you and notice all the times they attribute how they feel and their energy level to the circumstances in their lives. It is everywhere. And notice how many times you do it as well.

Don’t judge it. It’s the way you’ve been trained unintentionally, but it’s not true. People can’t drain you. The news can’t bring you down unless you let it with your thoughts and not managing your own emotional energy. This skill is so necessary, especially in grief. When you are right in the first days after a loss, the grief takes over for a bit.

I call this the grief fog, and for most people that I’ve seen, it lasts about a month. It’s that time where you feel like you aren’t really even living this life. It must be a bad dream. And you look around and see the world is still spinning and you kind of can’t believe it, your world has stopped. I know that this time is painful, but I also think it is a blessing.

It’s like our bodies and our hearts know that they need to slow us down so that we can focus on what really matters, which sometimes comes down to continuing to breathe in and out. Remember in Sleepless in Seattle when Sam is on the phone with a radio host and she asks him what he’s going to do and he replies, well, I’m gonna get outta bed every morning, breathe in and out all day long.

Then after a while, I won’t have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out, and then after a while I won’t have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while. This is exactly what I’m talking about. This statement right there shows that Sam knows how to flow with his emotional energy when things are intense.

All we can do is the basics, and that’s okay, but with time and intention, we don’t have to stay in that survival mode forever. I’m gonna give you an analogy. It’s not a perfect one, but I think it will really illustrate how we can choose on purpose, how we want to spend our emotional energy. Let’s say that each day when you wake up, you get a hundred dollars.

The dollars are your emotional energy. You have a finite amount and once it’s gone, it’s gone. If you start your day worrying about an ongoing problem, you are gonna pay some dollars right away. If you encounter a trigger and react to it, that will take more money. Sometimes we give all that we have to that trigger and we don’t recover for the rest of the day.

If we are pregnant after a loss and scared, it’s gonna take some energy. If someone we care about is struggling, we may put some money towards that. For most people, they spend a lot of time paying out and not much time putting money in, and they don’t have much control of their finances. It all just happens to them and they wonder why they’re broke at the end of the day and then they blame it on their life.

If this sounds familiar at all, it’s okay. Nothing has gone wrong. You just need a financial advisor to get you back on track in Spoiler alert, that’s me. The first thing we need to do is an audit and see where all of your money is going. As I said before, most people aren’t really paying attention and the money is just disappearing, and they always feel broke.

But do you know what costs you the most every day? But do you know what costs you the most every day? It’s an unmanaged mind. It’s like a toddler with a Sharpie. It’s just gonna run around making a mess. And in our case, it’s just gonna be throwing those dollars all over the place. Worrying is something we give a lot of energy to, but worry is never useful.

Being mad at people for how they acted or what they said is incredibly draining for you, but the other person doesn’t feel that anger. You do. Staying stuck in indecision takes so much energy and doesn’t move you forward. Hating yourself for various reasons is a total energy suck that may be constantly running in the background.

We spend so much energy on things we can’t control. Instead of learning how to manage our minds and a feel our feelings, it’s exhausting and you don’t have to do it anymore. Yay. Learning how to manage your mind and your emotional energy so you can actually decide on purpose where you spend it is exactly what I help my clients with every day.

If you’re feeling stuck and burned out, come to a consult call with me. There’s a link right in the show notes. You just pick a time, show up on Zoom, and we talk about what’s dragging you down right now, and I’ll show you how by working with me one-on-one for three months. We can completely make over how you are spending your emotional dollars so you can start feeling amazing.

Even on the grief days because you’ll know exactly what to do with that. It’s not what happens outside of us. It’s not our circumstances that steal our energy. It’s not paying attention to where it’s going and thinking we have con no control, but you do have control. I’m gonna give you a small example from my life.

Today. We are going up to the mountains for just a quick getaway with the kids. I thought my husband would be off today and he could help get things ready, but this morning he told me he has to work right up until when we were planning to leave. And I know from experience, he doesn’t always get home when he says he will, uh, just because of the nature of his job.

Now, if I let my toddler with a Sharpie brain go, here’s what it offers me. First bring up all the trips where this has happened. We have plans. I expect help. He has work. He gets home late, and I have to do everything right away. My energy is not awesome. I’m upset and frustrated, and I have all the evidence of why it’s his fault.

Then I carry this story with me all day. I do all the packing and cleaning and preparations, but I’m not happy. Even when we leave, I keep it with me. I’m grouchy. Then everyone is grouchy because mom is grouchy. The kids are kids, but I am already out of emotional energy. So when they complain or they’re loud, I get frustrated so much faster, snowballs into not much fun or me faking the fun, but really spending a lot of my emotional energy, feeling resentful and wishing things were different.

It is completely disempowering. The only way for me to feel better is to change the past and the present. What I want is to be able to go and have fun with our family. My brain thinks that would be easier if I don’t have to do all the prep work, but the reality is it’s kind of on me this time if I wanna have fun and I manage my mind.

I can allow for a little disappointment that plans were different than I expected. I can recognize that it was probably a mistake on my part. Maybe he even told me he had to work today and I forgot. But even if that’s wrong, my circumstance is now that he is getting home right when we were planning to leave, then I get to decide what I want more to have him help pack up and then we leave later, or I do it and we leave as planned.

Both are fine. I get to decide. I can even question the thought that it’s easier with his help. Maybe I’m wrong about that. Instead of repeating the story of how he isn’t there, I can remind myself that I do a great job by myself. I’m fully capable of getting everything ready. I can also allow the kids to pack for themselves and not micromanage it.

It’s only one night if they forget pajamas or a toothbrush, we can figure that out. That takes a huge weight off my mind. Then I can remember that my goal is fun. I don’t wanna be grouchy, I don’t wanna spend a lot of time thinking about this. I just want to do it because I have practices so much. All of that happens really quickly.

I’m used to plans changing. I’m used to doing things on my own, and I’m used to redirecting my mind. I can see the toddler brain for what it is and just take away the Sharpie, and that is a key to learning to flow with your emotional energy. You guide it, you notice where you are spending it without thinking and decide if that is something you want to continue to do and then you stop.

You question your beliefs that anything and anyone can affect how you feel. You notice the days where grief or a big project or a certain child needs more of your energy and you focus it there, you adapt and you drop the guilt about doing it. There is such an energy shift when you change this, like if you are pregnant after loss, so many people feel a shift where.

They need to change the way they were doing things. Maybe they don’t wanna spend their energy in online support groups anymore because it isn’t serving them. Then they feel guilty for leaving people behind or even feel like they’re leaving their baby behind. That’s the toddler brain way to do it, and it’s a no win.

The managed mind recognizes that reading stories of loss does not help. Very much while they are pregnant again, you can confidently choose to no longer put energy there and redirect it to what’s more important. Right now they can know that those friends they met online will be okay. They allow a bit of sadness and they may miss them, and that’s okay, but there’s no drama, there’s no guilt, and the energy is completely different.

Even though the actions are the same, that is the key. It’s the way we think about it, the way we make decisions that’s gonna affect how we feel and what our result is in the end, you can replenish your energy by taking care of you and loving you and managing the way you are thinking. At first. It will take some effort to do this.

It will feel clunky and unnatural, and that’s okay. You’re learning something new. You’re actually changing neural pathways and responses in your brain. But once you know how it becomes second nature, like Sam said, after a while, you won’t have to think about it. Your emotional energy is so precious. Use it wisely and don’t waste it that way.

You can really focus it where you want to and it’s gonna feel so much better. That’s all I’ve got for you today. Thank you so much for being here. Don’t forget to review the podcast and I will see you next time.