Transcript:
Hey everybody. Gail Kraft here from The Empowering Process Podcast and today we’re going to talk about The Dark Side. What we specifically will cover are a few examples of the dark side, what are these powerful emotions, and the message these feelings are sending you. This is actually one of my favorite little mini courses that I give, The Dark Side.
And it’s all about exploring your archetypes, finding your most prevalent archetype. Looking at the positive, what’s the strength of that characteristic of yours and what’s the not so strong characteristic of yours. And from that not so strong what are some of the prevalent negative qualities of that character?
But what does this tell you? And it’s not just that characteristic. When we explore the dark side and we accept that’s who we are we allow ourselves to become whole. And when we allow ourselves to become whole, we allow ourselves to be completely powerful.
We are able to release some of the things that hold us back and it’s who we are.
We were raised and told to not get angry, don’t raise your voice at me, children are to be seen and not heard, when you grow up, you’ll understand, and platitude after platitude after platitude. We were trained to suppress those emotions rather than to explore and understand them, not act out on them. When we suppress them too much they explode, and we do act out on them.
So, let’s talk about a few of them and what I mean when I talk about the message these emotions are telling us. And one that we just talked about is that of anger.
When we get angry, what is happening?
First of all, any of these emotions, when they come up, I’m going to ask you to identify immediately “okay I’m feeling that.” Accept that you’re feeling it. Name it.
Then step away from it. Actually, take it out and take a look at it, right? Step away from what that emotion is so that you can now kind of have a conversation with it. Because when you’re angry the message your body is telling you is that you are feeling powerless.
That you have some expectations either expressed or not expressed that have not been met. And when these expectations aren’t met your personal being, if you will, gets offended and you get angry. Sometimes a little bit angry, sometimes a little lot angry depending on what that expectation is, whether it’s been unmet on a regular basis, whether to you its egregious or not.
But the fact is that when you are feeling anger, step away from it and take a look at what expectation is not being met. And is it really all that important?
For me, I’ll put this into practical use, there have been times, I’ll admit, where I have been ridiculously angry at something and I will, before I blow up, go somewhere to release that anger. How do I do this? Sometimes just a power walk, sometimes a drive down the street rolling down my windows and screaming out. And I’m going to swear here guys, sometimes I’ll swear, and this was actually when I did this, I laughed about it afterwards and had to tell some people, “I can’t believe I did this”.
I screamed out the window, “F!** you and the horse you rode in on too”. I don’t know where I heard that or how it was ever used before but right after I said it, I burst out laughing. Was that anger release? Of course, it was. It was ridiculous, right?
But the point is then I felt better. Then I was able to explore how we make decisions from an emotional state. Then I was able to explore what specifically happened that triggered that emotion and was my trigger real or was my trigger exaggerated because it was as a result of other expectations, other experiences.
Because a lot of times our emotional reaction is disproportionate to what’s going on because there’s other underlying things going on. Then once I realize, “here is the trigger, was that real, was that expectation a genuine expectation, was it expressed?” If not, then I need to express it.
And does it really matter that much? And usually, it doesn’t matter that much and so I let it go. Because it really doesn’t. When I took a look at what’s my values, what’s important to me in my life, what is my purpose. I have my own personal mission statement, if you will. Does it align with any of that? Are those being intruded on in any way? No, then let it go. That’s anger.
Another that you might feel, another dark side emotion, that we will explore is that of anxiety. And when you’re feeling anxious the sense of anxiety usually comes up because your life is not in balance and you might not feel like you have control or influence or impact on what is going on.
For many of us that imbalance and that feeling of anxiety gets suppressed. I will give you a quick story of the first time I realized that I did that. I think I was 16. I was going to school; I was in school by 7:30 which meant I was up and out of the house by seven.
Right after school I was out by one, I was in work at 1:30. I got out of my service job at nine o’clock at night, went home and did homework, went to bed, got up, and did it again. And on the weekends, I worked the weekends and I fit in there: friends, hanging out with friends, dating.
Needless to say, there wasn’t a lot of sleep going on here. There wasn’t a lot of relaxation and my life was way out of balance. But at 16 who understands what that means? Until I had a breakdown and I started crying uncontrollably and for three days I was rolled up in a ball in tears not understanding why I was crying.
Fortunately, afterwards my family sat down with me and explained pushing, pushing, pushing beyond expectations. And I learned to understand those triggers of those signs that I’m going too far, and I need to back off. I did that a couple more times in my adult life, but I now know that exhaustion puts me in a state of anxiety. Because you’re on this wheel, this hamster wheel, and that never stops so get off the wheel.
Another one is fear. And so, fear is an indicator that there is something important to you that you are not doing. Here’s a different spin on fear guys. We talk a lot about fear throughout these podcasts, right? Fear only shows up if you are wanting to, thinking of, planning on doing something that’s important to you.
Because it’s going to require a change. And your subconscious is holding you back. Think about the fear next time you get it. Step away from it and say, “What is going on? What is it that thing” never mind analyzing the fear? Let’s not analyze the fear in this exercise let’s just look at the fact that you’re not doing something that is important to you.
How important is it? How? Because if it supports your mission, your personal mission statement, if it supports your values, if it supports your why then it is important that you do this thing. If you don’t know any of those things you need to give me a call and I will happily coach you through identifying those particular items and creating your personal mission statement.
Very powerful tool. Fear. Something important to you and you’re not doing it.
Now, jealousy. Jealousy is something– man we discover that as teenagers, for sure, don’t we? We are jealous of our friends. We are jealous of our significant others or almost significant others. We are jealous on so many levels.
Those emotions come up in the teen years. And if we don’t learn how to manage them or what they mean they can continue and continue and continue. What jealousy means is that you’re very insecure in a particular area. And I have another story for you.
This is about my second husband and he is a jazz musician. Amazing drummer, very, very talented. I was with a bunch of ladies and we went down to the jazz club he was playing at one night. And a singer who he frequently performed with showed up.
And so, during the break she went up to him, “How you doing?” she literary wrapped her whole-body in a hug around him. The other ladies at my table were like, “Gail, Gail, do you see what’s going on? Gail.” and honestly guys maybe something was broken at the time, I don’t know, but I didn’t care.
I said, “Listen, he’s coming home with me tonight. She can throw herself on him as much as she likes. I’m not concerned.” and I honestly was not concerned. There was no insecurity about that relationship. I knew who he was, he knew who I was, and we had chosen to be together, and I knew that was fact.
So, if you’re feeling jealousy, that twinge comes up, don’t suppress it. Don’t say, “Oh I shouldn’t feel that way”. It’s telling you that you’re feeling insecure about something. So, check the data. Is there a reason for me to be insecure? Is this something that I’m projecting onto the situation or is the situation really that?
And if it is, how do I change that? Or is it a situation I no longer want to be in because of that insecurity? Jealousy is just telling you how you’re feeling about a situation, right?
Then my favorite, apathy. I recently wrote a blog that I’ve touched a little bit on when I just felt nothing at all, apathy. Right? That happens when you’re burnt out, you’ve tried and you’ve tried and you’ve tried, and you just throw the towel in.
You just can’t do it anymore. If you’re feeling no feeling about something that’s almost as bad to make a decision from there as it is from making a decision from anger or fear, right? Because now you don’t give a crap anymore. You don’t care.
So, when you’re coming from or feeling that non-feeling, right? Apathy is a non-feeling. When you’re feeling apathetic again acknowledge it, name it. Then ask yourself what are the things that have occurred that led me up to not caring anymore.
And are these things that important to me really? Check your values. Check your mission. Check your why. Check, check, check. And if these situations you’re examining infringe on your values, your mission, your why, then it’s time to make a change in the situation you’re in.
If it does not meet any of those, then ask yourself are you even in a situation you want to be in to begin with. Because if none of the things that are important to you are being infringed on, why are you feeling apathetic? And it’s okay to ask yourself why.
That’s why you have the dark side. It’s telling the light side to wake up. Everything is not hunky dory, right? Any time you feel resistance It’s telling you “I don’t want this.” So, if you know what you don’t want it’s telling you, “this is what you do want.”
But don’t turn your back on the resistance. Understand the message the resistance is telling you and then how you respond to that message. You have the ability to respond in so many ways you want to understand them. When you do this, you are stronger in your purpose, you are stronger in your power, and you are constantly reminding yourself how to be present in the moment.
So that you make conscious choices that are specific to where it is you want to go. I’ve enjoyed this little discussion on the dark side. That’s just a piece of the modules that we go through. The training is an amazing session.
And if you would like to experience that training with me let me know. I’ll start another one up if I have enough people interested, I will reach out to you. Leave a message. And if this podcast brought anything up for you, please leave a comment. If you know someone who might enjoy this as much as you did share it out. Like it, comment, share. Let me know whether or not I am reaching you because that’s my whole purpose is to reach you and talk about what’s important to you. Gail Kraft, The Empowering Process podcast. Thank you very much and have an amazing day. Bye-bye.
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