The Soulful Leader Podcast
The Soulful Leader Podcast
Ep 184 Emotions Aren’t the Enemy: Turn Your Chaos into Clarity
When your emotions are all over the place, it’s easy to fall for everything and anything. You’re easy to manipulate.
On some level you know this, so you tuck those damn emotions aside, ignore them or try to control them - which only makes things worse. They come out at the most inopportune times.
Sound familiar?
The truth is, emotions are not a flaw to be overcome, they are one of the amazing gifts of being human. They are literally energy in motion, and as such, not only feed us, but are also a powerful path to healing what ails us.
Working with (instead of stuffing, ignoring or controlling) emotions gives you space to listen and to respond rather than just react. It engenders clarity and empowers healthy decisions. It calms the nervous systems and decreases stress.
This is an essential skill for all of us right now for what it can heal - individually, and collectively.
“If we don't feel, we don't heal.” ~Stephanie J. Allen
There is a negative feedback loop running - thoughts and fears and emotions that fester and create inner AND outer toxicity. The good news is that we are the antidote.
It’s a choice inside each one of us.
In today’s podcast, Stephanie and Maren share stories, inspiration and tangible tools to help you shift your internal relationship with emotions so you become your own cure, as well as a kind of “healthy virus” in the world, infecting the people around you in the best, most beautiful way.
When you work inside, it changes, both the internal AND the external. You impact the world around you just by being who you are.
Are you ready to explore emotions differently and find your inner treasure so that you can live it and share it with those you love and with the world?
Listen in and let’s make some shift happen.
- 0:32 Everything conspiring
- 1:28 Clean break
- 5:09 Happening ‘for me, or to me’ choice
- 8:27 If you don’t feel you don’t heal
- 11:36 I got things to do!
- 14:06 Clearing the toxicity
- 19:22 Making it conscious so you can repeat it
- 21:54 It’s not you
- 24:07 Ancient wisdom
- 25:59 We are the antidote
- 28:21 Pain or buried treasure
Please share your insights and questions in one of our Soulful Leaders groups:
Get all the latest episodes, news and updates directly to your inbox. Subscribe here. TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com
Watch the podcasts on our YouTube Channel: @Soulful Leaders
In a world where we have everything and it's still not enough, we're often left wondering, is this really it?
Maren Oslac:Deep inside you know, there's more to life you're ready to leave behind the old push your way through and claim the deeper, more meaningful life that's calling you.
Stephanie Allen:That's what we invite you to explore with us. We're your hosts, Stephanie Allen
Maren Oslac:and Maren Oslac And this is The Soulful Leader Podcast.
Stephanie Allen:Yay! Hi! Welcome to The Soulful Leader Podcast. This is Stephanie. I'm here with Maren, and I'm super excited because we are unpacking a little bit of what we talked about last week, which was about inner mastery, and why, you know, what it is, and why it's important. And it just really occurs to me, boy, isn't it interesting? Like, when you you start to have an awareness of something you want to talk about, then it's like everything in the universe happens to bring up, like, your table of contents about what, what you're gonna, like, you know, really talk about. And that's kind of what happened. Is really interesting. I want to start with a personal story that literally happened...
Maren Oslac:It's kind of like, you know, when you go shopping for a car and you've never noticed that particular car, and now all of a sudden, you're like... Oh, my God, they're everywhere.
Stephanie Allen:I know, I know.
Maren Oslac:It's your reticular activation system actually zooming in on those things that like... Oh, you want to know more about that here, let me show you.
Stephanie Allen:Yeah, it's almost like, be careful what you wish for, because it'll, you know, the universe will provide it. So you want to have some sort of clarity and articulation around what it is you want, so that you know it comes in a way that surprises and delights you instead of like causes you pain and suffering, right? So, you know, I'm gonna start with a little story that just really leads into some of the powerful reasons of why inner mastery has been so important to me. You know, this morning, I had the luxury of, for a while, actually had a luxury of having a morning off that I could do a little bit more of my inner mastery practices. And, you know, just had such a wonderful time. And I went outside to take out the garbage, and I tripped, and I landed in a really funky position that caused my arm to break. And as I'm laying there feeling, you know, am I going to either poop my pants or throw up, or what do I do? Because I'm single, I live alone, and I didn't have my phone on me... help, I've fallen and I can't get up, kind of feeling, I just started to automatically default to the natural practices that I knew and I went, you know, I called my my mom. Thank God I still have my mom. Really grateful. So I call my mom, because that's what we always do. We call our mom even if they're not alive anymore, we still call our mom. I want my mom and in our own hearts. I swear. Anyway, she was able to come over and took me right up to the hospital. And, you know, I live in Canada, and we kind of have this belief system that our medical system takes a long time. Doesn't cost any money, but it takes a long time, and it may not always be the best care. And I think that is a bunch of hooey pooey for me. I'm so fortunate that I went up this morning, and within an hour, I had an x ray, saw the doctor, you know, got the diagnosis, got a cast on it, and I was released, and it cost me nothing. I was very grateful. And the beauty of it is, how I was treated, it was with such kindness. Now, why I say this is because one of the side effects, I like to call it, of doing your own inner work, is that you have space inside yourself to listen and to respond rather than just react and go into I call it the cacapoopooness stories. You know, it's like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? It's my right hand. I'm right handed. Now I have a cast on for six weeks. I can't work, body work, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I could've gone down that dark alley for a long, long time. And I laugh because... it you know, you know, you're making a difference in people's lives, when the very people that I had to call and cancel for today are actually feeding me back the higher story of what I would have told them and for example, you know, the doctor that that looked after me, he said, you know, you got a clean break. If you were going to break your arm, this is probably the best one to break, you know, because it's really clean, you're not going to need surgery, and I'll see you in four weeks, kind of thing. And my client was saying, you know, ha, I wonder what the universe has for you for the next six weeks. And of course, I talked to Maren today, and Maren, of course, reminded me to say, you got a clean break. Like you have a break, an opportunity to then learn or be or do or be available for what wants to happen.
Maren Oslac:And I think it's so important that that that mental shift from this happened to me to this happened for me, which can be so hard when it impacts all of the things that you were talking about, right? So there is a downline impact, and there are so many effects from it's your right hand, you work on people's bodies for a living. There's like so many levels of things that people may not realize that this actually impacts you, or impacts your life, and keeping that attunement, which is because we both do regular practices, it was funny because earlier, when I was talking to Stephanie, I said, my friend Stephanie, happens to be this Stephanie, the thing she always says is, we do our practices when we don't need them, so that they're there for us when we do - and I just want to share like the things that I witnessed when I heard the story today was the first thing I noticed was that her experience with the Canadian health care system was very different than most people's experience there. Absolutely that's not an accident. It is a gift. There's something to be grateful for, and she does regular practices to set herself up internally, and so she literally doesn't live in the world that most people live in. So her experience is not what most people experience.
Stephanie Allen:Yeah, so interesting, because as my mother's driving me to the emergency room, her reality is like, now don't be quiet and nice. Like, you know, you need to let them know that you're in a lot of pain. I'm like, Oh, you mean, don't stuff my emotion and just suck it up and be a nice Canadian. And, and then she said, and also, don't, you know, don't be mean. Don't be, you know. And it was interesting, because there's a sign just as you go into the emergency room area and it says, "we understand your hurt, don't hurt those who are trying to help you". And I'm like, how that's that's so true, isn't it? It's like, hurt people. Hurt people. We don't mean to, but you're I mean 30 years working with chronic pain, with individuals, it does change one's personality. You can't help it. You're sensitive, you're hurting. You don't have a lot of space. You're reactive. I get it, I totally get it. But you know, my experience of what was happening is like, when I went in there, I was like, No, I'm not going to sit down and be quiet. I'm going to cry because it hurts, and I'm going to let those tears roll. I'm going to breathe through it. I have practices that I'm going to do. I'm not over dramatizing it. I'm notlike, OHHHHHHHHH! Like, I'm not, although I felt like that sometimes. But I'm just like, I am present with it. And I was using my imagination, and I know the bones, what they look like in my hand, so I was like, imagining them. They are healthy and free, and I'm breathing to it. I was present, and I was realizing like, the old me would not ask for help. The old me would not have surrendered. The old me would have pushed through. I would have been either a victim... oh, poor me. now I can't work for six months, you know, six weeks or whatever, and I'm like, huh, I'm gonna feel this. I need to feel it. Because if we don't feel, we don't heal. And I think that's a really scary thing in our society, because what happens when you don't feel, you also push it out or inwardly implode. And I mean, you see this, you see this in, you know...
Maren Oslac:...we think that if we push it down, it goes away. Like... oh, it's all gone. I don't worry about that.
Stephanie Allen:Oh, hell no, it does not go away, right, right? I mean, it's so interesting, because I do a lot of, I do a lot of sports. Growing up, I've done a lot of sports, like, not even just, like, regular sports. I mean, I do kind of ridiculous sports, like surfing and and, you know, gymnastics and snowboarding. Like, I don't do like, oh, let's just go for a nice, leisurely walk. Or, you know, I'm usually hanging upside down somewhere or flipping out doing something, and I've never broken a bone until now, and I've been a fairly highly competitive athlete in my youth. Never broke a bone. And I think about all of those times that I was doing these high level get out of your body extreme sports, I think because I really needed to feel. I didn't have a way to really work with my emotional and so that gave me permission to really... I could yell at the sports teams. I could, you know, I could get out my energy. You know that I was suppressing. And of course, I, you know, I don't do that so much anymore. I think I still snowboard, but I don't do a whole lot of the other high level adventure sports. But I know the value of emotionally letting it out. And it's funny because now I can't do my hands on body work, which I will tell you honestly, is such a... we can do physical things to help heal our bodies and our you know, and whether it's cancer, whether it's a broken bone, whether it's a fever, there's a lot of things that physical really, really will help. But what I find the most impactful is when you go in and you actually do the emotional work, or the mental work, meaning, you know the mind, clearing the mind, and what you know, the narrative, right, the stories we tell ourselves. What's the higher story? You know you got it, we can actually get into that level is when you have true, true healing, yeah, and that's what I was feeling today, is like, man, I'm gonna let this out. Because if I don't let it out now, I'm gonna have to deal with it as chronic pain a year from now, 10 years now, and you know what I got? I got things to do. I have really a great life. I got things to do, people to help, places to go, things to learn. I don't want that to be in my way of joy and happiness.
Maren Oslac:So I love that you bring that up because, you know, like last at the end of the last podcast, we're talking about, like, these five kind of areas that we wanted to discuss around inner mastery. And one of them is clarity of purpose. And there's two things I want to say about that. First of all, when you're clear about your purpose, and what you just said is, this isn't going to drag me down, because I got things to do. You're so clear that there's a reason that you're on this planet. And like, okay, so this is a part of my reality. And you know what? This happened for me, not to me, which means, okay, great...now what? From an a higher perspective, instead of, oh, God, no, right? That type of what we're used to when we say, now what? So there's that, that clarity of purpose going into it, and then the result of that inner space clearing the inner mastery when we do our inner work. And you know, you may not even know what that means, and that's what we talk about a lot, and we have a course coming up called Inner Mastery. So it's something that you might be interested in joining. And when we do that inner work, and we become inner mastery, masterful, inwardly that clarity of purpose gets clearer. So it's like this virtuous circle where you get clearer on your purpose, and things go more smoothly in your outer world, and then you get clearer on your purpose. And things go more smoothly even when you have something that's an oopsie, like, oh, frick, I just broke my wrist. Like to have the doctor say to you, well, if you're gonna do it, this is the easiest way to have done it right...
Stephanie Allen:...and this is the clearest break to have.
Maren Oslac:Right? So, like, that's what I mean by it won't be a... I want to say it won't be a perfect life, and yet it will be. Meaning that it's not that there won't be any challenges or any broken bones or any issues along the way. It just that there will be joy with it. That sounds like a really strange thing to say.
Stephanie Allen:Well, you know, it's like if internally, you're full with thoughts and fears and emotions that you don't have an outlet for meaning, you haven't got someone to talk to about it, that can just hold space to listen or you haven't got a practice to be able to move it through you - then it becomes toxic inside of ourselves. It literally backs up inside it does and it creates internal inflammation, and it will impede your healing process tremendously. But then if you actually start to feel your feelings, that's called flow. And if you think of a water or river of flow, when it moves, it purifies it, it cleans the water. So you're able to drink it. It's no longer toxic. Yeah, and just like that sign in the hospital that I saw, you know, please don't, you know, we understand you're hurt. Don't hurt others.
Maren Oslac:You know... take it out on people.
Stephanie Allen:We're trying to help you. We're here to help you out. You know, I realize that, like, we don't have a way to console ourselves. We don't have a way to work with our emotions, so we suppress it, and then it, it gets pushed out or pushed down. And, you know, there's so much that goes on in our world is, I mean, take any, any leader, you know, any leader. I mean, even in the hospital today, like a doctor would have been a leader in that hospital. That was I was amazed. I didn't know this doctor. He happened to be doing a locum, and he came in, he was the most calm, quiet, gentle, the way he held my arm was so kind. And there was a sense of, I already had a sense of peace when he walked in, like it was just like, oh, wow. He really held a healing space. And I could tell how his nurse that came with him, how she spoke to him, and how he spoke to her, there was such an air of respect and kindness between the two of them that, I mean, she even said, oh, anything for you, anything for you, absolutely, I'll totally do that for you. Like you could just tell her heart was so compassionate. And I'm like, that's the key. So when hurt people hurt people because they don't mean to. Healed people create a surrounding, an area, a culture, to actually create great healing to happen. And as we say, you know, we can look out at other leaders, we project onto them. And sometimes we have leaders who who behave badly, and it can give us kind of an unconscious permission to also behave badly. But we can also have really great leaders who, like this doctor that I had the experience, who was so kind and so respectful, and you could tell he was like, he was like, he was like, a healthy virus, because you could tell everybody around him was just being completely infected by him in the best, beautiful way.
Maren Oslac:It reminds me of years ago. There's a movie called Pay it Forward. And you know, it's like, doing small things that other people don't expect, like paying for the person behind you's coffee and then leaving, yeah, I mean, so then it's not like, hey, look what I did, right? It just is like... they did... you're like, I want to pay for the next five people's coffee, and they don't even know who did it right? But it brightens their day, and then they pass it forward, and they pass it forward so you're right, like, how we choose to be in the world, and sometimes it feels like it's not a choice, because, like we're hurting, and all we can do is hurt, and then we lash out and take it out on somebody, or we shove it down and take it out on ourselves, right?
Stephanie Allen:Exactly. Oh, exactly. And those two ways are so dangerous.
Maren Oslac:They are.
Stephanie Allen:And when I look at a leader that I want to support or be engaged with, I would look... to me a good leader is someone who's doing the inner work.
Maren Oslac:They definitely are. They have to be, right? They have to be but that's what we work with, that's what we do, that's what our podcast is about, that's what our courses are on. And the reason is because it does change everything in the outer world. You know, we don't... we don't have to keep chasing all the things out there. We literally work in here, and it changes, both in here and out there, and we become the healthy virus to be paying it forward just by being who we are like that doctor isn't thinking about that. He just is being who he is, who is caring and thoughtful and aware of his surroundings, aware of his patients, aware of his nurse, you know, like bringing that awareness to everything that he does. And it does take practice. It takes practices.
Stephanie Allen:Maren, you've even said, you know, practice does not create perfection, it creates permanence. And I think you know, if we're practicing something unconsciously, we don't even know what we're practicing it's just random. But if we can actually look inside and start to clear out the emotional, the emotional things that we've stuffed in there because we haven't felt safe, or we haven't, you know, we don't even know that it's stuffed in there, but it's creating an infection, or it's creating some discomfort. If we can start to practice to release it, I mean, it's not gonna look pretty. Let me tell you, I'm standing in the outpatients, or I'm standing in the emergency room, and I'm, I'm not sitting, I'm breathing, I'm visualizing inside. I'm pacing. I got my arm up over my head. I'm like.... I'm not like...Ohhhhh and ugggghh... like that, but I am like... breathe. Breathe. Like I am intentional. I am taking care of this the best way I know that I've practiced and what I would tell my client to do, and so I am now modeling it. And to me, that's leadership, whether you're a parent, whether you're a teacher, you know, whether you're any kind of leader, look, any an older sibling, you are a leader to a your younger siblings, like we there's always someone who's looking up to us, right? And who are you when no one's looking? That's the inner master, because that's what will come out. And are you in your cacapoopooness of like, whoa, poor me. Or are you in the I'm so great narcissism, ascpect of it. Or are you like...? What are you? Are you able to to find those dark parts within yourself that are hurting and to create a space and environment for those parts to then be released with love and kindness and to acknowledge them? So, like, what do I mean? I mean, there's a part of me that was inside, and I say a part of me that was like, wanted to say every F word you can imagine, like, everything, and was really, really, really wanting to lash out, and I had to go inside and find that part. I often use my imagination this way, so, I imagine myself like a teenager, because that's often where the big F bombs come from. It's my teenage years. And I go in and I talk to her, and I'm like, Oh man, honey. I know this really hurts. What do you need from me? What do you need?
Maren Oslac:I love that because, you know, it's, we think we are like this. Well, this is just who I am, I'm angry. Well, it's actually a persona. It's not who you are. It's something it's an adaptation that's allowed you to, you know, survive, which is beautiful and wonderful, and it's just a part of you. So being able to have that tool of going in and talking to the different parts of us, even just starting to acknowledge that it's only a part of you, it's not who you are.
Stephanie Allen:100%
Maren Oslac:Stop identifying with it, right?
Stephanie Allen:And if we, if we don't go in and start looking at those parts, we become very fragmented. So then there's all of these parts of you that are fragmented, that are not connected, that are actually draining energy from you, so you're fatigued, whether it's physically and mentally or emotionally. You're short tempered. You're irritated with yourself. You irritate with others. You don't have space in your heart or in your awareness to then say, can I make a true decision that is healthy for me and, like I said, you know, when I when I isolate that part. And I say, I don't say, what do you need? Because that 14 year-old self within myself is going to tell you all kinds of crazy stuff. I say, what do you need from me? Me being this, the centered part that is loving, like, what? Because it says, well, I need mom to do this, or I need the doctor to do that, or I need, you know, I don't know the health care system to be like this. Well, I can't change any of that, right? That stuff. I can't, I can't change it. But if I ask that part, what do you need specifically from me? Sometimes I always laugh, because sometimes a part of that part inside of me kind of does it like a double take and like, what you're talking to me, like, for the first time, you actually are asking me, what you what, what, what I need, really? And sometimes it doesn't know, because sometimes it just likes to complain and that's exactly it. Sometimes it just says, I justneed to complain. I just need you to listen. I can do that. Cool, cool. And this is where inner guidance comes from. It's not about intuition, it's about inner guidance. And that's a lot different, about being open to what wants to happen for you, not based on an intuition of something that you've built practices with and that you just have a real skill with this can come out of, like left field, yeah, go here. Do this like, so interesting, right? And we don't always give ourselves the love and kindness and the empowerment that we actually do have everything we need within us. I mean, those are so ancient mysticism sayings. That, you know, the whole world resides from within you, everything you need. I was like, when I was younger, I was like, What? What does that mean? Like, that's like, how do I get it? Where's the treasure? I don't understand. But often, like, you know, when you have something that breaks, whether it's a limb that I had this morning, or your heart or your mind, or something that's break... it's breaking open. Something is letting go so that you can let come. But we have to practice that presence of hope and possibility. Otherwise, we're going to be emotionally dysregulated. And, my God, we can. We're seeing so much in this world today about people being emotionally dysregulated, yeah, like the drama and the trauma and the performances and how that just keeps escalating, and that it triggers - it's like the domino effect. It's just everybody who reads it, or what, my gosh, if you're on social media, it's just like one trauma story after another, or people even like the false news of like trying to hook each other. And I'm like, it's literally trying to grab your emotional attention so that it can control you. Because when we are emotionally dysregulated, we literally will fall for everything and anything, and we'll say and we are -exactly- we're going to say, do things that we more than likely are not the highest of our truth of who we are. So if we can calm that, yeah, it opens up to clarity of purpose. Who am I? Why am I here? What is the purpose of my life?
Maren Oslac:And it opens us to being the positive virus. Yeah, like we become the antidote. We are the antidote. So it's time for us to step into that, and it does require the inner journey.
Stephanie Allen:100% like I think, how many people do you know suffer from anxiety or loneliness? You know depression? So many people, so many. And that, to me, is a warning sign of that we are full and we need a way to let those emotions out. And if they don't come out in a way with practices and mastery and support system of, you know, lovely, wonderful people around you, it's going to come out pretty ugly.
Maren Oslac:Yeah, and we're seeing that.
Stephanie Allen:And we're seeing that too.
Maren Oslac:So it is, and, you know, it's like sometimes when I think in those terms, I get overwhelmed, and I bring it back to what can I do? And one of the most powerful things that I can do, actually, the most powerful thing that I can do, is do the work inside myself, because, as above so below, like what's inside of me is also what's out there. What's out there is also inside of me. So as I heal myself, I literally, like I said before, become the antidote, and I start to heal the world. And that's my journey. And I think it's a lot of other people's journeys as well. It's just not we haven't been taught that, so that's what we do, and our our clarity of purpose, like we're really clear that that's what we bring to the table. And it's not for everybody, and it may be something that speaks to you, meaning our audience out there.
Stephanie Allen:Yeah, absolutely. And I would say, you know, we could either wait till the worst things happenand wake up that way, or we can choose it. And actually, when things aren't so pleasant, like breaking your arm, you have something that you Yeah, you have something that you can rest in and find the treasure with, yeah, like I talk about this all time. So I had a client the other day, and I said, you know, she suffers from a lot of pain. I said, you know, sometimes when pain, and this is a lot of the mystical, traditional beliefs will say, you know, when pain awakens in your body, and you can't really pinpoint as to, well, I didn't really do anything. Maybe I slept wrong. I don't know. I can't really pinpoint anything. It's often because there's a buried treasure within you. And as our culture in the West, we don't have a process or a path to actually go inward to unveil that treasure hunt. Yeah. And to me, that's what inner mastery is all about, is finding that inner treasure so that you can share it with yourself, with the world, with those you love. And in doing so, it you're right, it becomes a remedy, and it becomes infectious, because then other people will say... Oh, my God, I want I mean, that's kind of what my client said today, I'm supposed to see her tomorrow night. And I said, look, I gotta rebook you. And she goes, what happened? She didn't even see my arm in the cast. I raised my arm. She goes, when did you do that? I said, about an hour and a half ago. And she goes, what are you doing out here? I'm like, Well, you know, I didn't want to miss this event that, you know, we were all at. And she said, Oh my God, Stephanie, only you would be someone who was like, you know, you, you're self employed... my whole life is based on my using both my hands. And she said, and only you, you'll probably completely come up with something amazing in these next six weeks. I'm like, yeah, well, that's where I'm going to put my time and attention. But I've had to have practices. It doesn't just happen. I've had 30 years of practices of me talking to other people, but well now I gotta practice what I preach, and I plan on it.
Maren Oslac:Yeah, we're excited to see what comes out of that, and we'll, I'll keep you posted right. Tune back into the soulful leader podcast, or join our email list, because who knows, we might do a blog post about it, and if you join our email list, you can get our free download and all of that stuff. Yeah, so we would love to have you join us for more things. Like I said, we do have an Inner Mastery Class coming up if you're listening to this. At some point in the future, we might have one coming up for you too. But, you know, check our
website, https://tslp.life or www.thesoulfulleaderpodcast.com. And then subscribe and get notified every time we have a podcast that drops, and then also you can join us on our Facebook group and our LinkedIn group, both of which are The Soulful Leader. So we'll be chatting a little bit more about some more of the benefits of inner mastery next week. We hope you'll join us. Thanks so much.
Stephanie Allen:And that wraps up another episode of The Soulful Leader Podcast with your hosts, Stephanie Allen and Maren Oslac. Thank you for listening.
Maren Oslac:If you'd like to dive deeper, head over to our website, at TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com Until next time you.