Get Good At Feeling Bad, Here's How | Ep 227
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What's up guys, welcome back to build in today I want to talk about something that I have not spoken about in a while, which is getting good at feeling bad. So I'll pose you with this question, which is, what would your life look like if you got better at feeling bad?

Not if you avoided it, not if you fixed it, you just got better at it. And I know that sounds really weird, but I want to explain because this approach to feeling bad is really what has changed my life over the last decade. And it's what has enabled me to reach my goals and to find, I won't say happiness at all times, but joy despite what's going on around me or even how I feel. And the reason that this was

Top of mind for me is that, you know, the other day when I was sitting with one of my teammates, you know, I was talking to him and we're talking about his career and I'm giving him feedback. And he was like, you know, he said something, he's like, well, how was your day? I was like, I dealt with this and this and this, and then this happened and this is going to be, you know, a shit thing. And then this over here and, you know, but like, you know what? I like the calls I'm on today and this, that. And he was like, dude, like he made a point. He said, there was a day when, you know, I saw you go from,

being in content, to going into one-on-ones, to stepping on stage, to stepping out of stage and dealing with a department that you had to completely turn over and you just turned it on for each one. I really thought about that because

I remember in the beginning of my career watching people who could do that and thinking, God, how do they go into these insanely different meetings and insanely different situations and just look completely unfazed? I thought that that meant that they didn't feel bad and that they had some kind of superpower and they just never felt stress. And that's the reason why they were able to show up so amazing in those situations. What's taken me

probably seven years to figure out is that's actually not how anybody ends up showing up well in those situations. It's not how I do either. It's that I got good at feeling bad. I stopped trying to resist feeling bad. I stopped trying to get rid of feeling bad. I stopped trying to make hard suck less.

What I realized throughout this process is that like reality is that most people are fucking awful at feeling bad I mean think about this right like how often do you or somebody that you know have a day and just think like Let me find something to distract myself. I've got to turn this around. I've got to change this. I can't feel this way I hate this feeling, you know numb yourself with alcohol drugs TV sex whatever it might be like that is most of our world, right and

And I get that because we also live in a world that, you know, worships positivity, you know, negativity, being logical, saying you feel like shit, saying stuff's hard is like, oh my God, stop being negative. It's like, okay, well, life is 50-50. I'm just pointing out 50% of it.

right? Nonetheless, we get rewarded for positivity. Like you're scrolling Instagram and you reward people for like, oh my God, my life's amazing. Oh my God, I accomplished this. Oh my God, all these things. We don't get rewarded for being like, this is fucking tough. This feels like shit, all these things, right? And so the same kind of goes with like,

feeling bad. I think that people are always rewarded, they're positively reinforced for feeling good. People are like, "Oh wow, you're in such a good mood. Oh wow, this and that." And so it's like, we feel like there's a problem with feeling bad. What I realized over time is that one, life is 50/50, right? And so there's nothing wrong with feeling bad. If I ever want to feel good, I'm going to have to feel bad. That's the price I pay. The price of feeling good is also feeling bad, right?

But here's the thing that I also realized, and then I figured out these people who I admired and looked up to had figured out. When you avoid feeling bad, it is the same as like trying to outrun a shadow, okay? The harder you try, the more exhausted you get, and the shadow is still there following you. It doesn't go away.

And so what I figured out is it's not that people that show up like that in situations, it's not like me who shows up now like that in those situations feels better. It's that we've gotten good at feeling bad. How do we do that? Is it by avoiding feelings? Is it by suppressing feelings? Is it by, you know, only being positive? No, it's not. It's by accepting those feelings and learning that how to feel bad is a superpower.

Okay, the first time that I really realized this was it was in 2019. I was under a lot of stress.

It was a time in my business that I'd never done before, you know? And so like, I'd never been at that level where I had, you know, 120 employees. I've got a speaking gig the next week. I've got a quarterly I'm running and I was laying in bed and I was just feeling so anxious about all of it. And I just wanted the feeling to go away. And instead I ended up having a panic attack. And then what happened was,

I felt guilty. I felt bad about the panic attack. I thought there's something wrong with me. I thought successful people don't do this. Successful people don't feel this way. Successful people don't get this nervous, right? And I made up all these stories in my head about why this was wrong and bad and I needed to get rid of these feelings because I basically took a practical situation, which is like I had a panic attack and I escalated it into an emotional one where I said, now this means something about me. Now I need to do something about it. Now there's something wrong with me and wrong with my life and I have a problem I need to solve.

And what I learned is that the problem was never how bad I felt, how overwhelmed I was, or even the fact that I had a panic attack. The problem was that I considered feeling bad a problem. I can't emphasize this enough to you guys.

And it wasn't until I realized that about a month after my panic attack, I started studying psychology even more than I ever had, right? Because I wanted to figure out how do I fix this for myself once and for all? How do I equip myself with the tools so I can feel empowered by the situation, not victimized by it? And I learned the reason why all these things were happening to me was because I had a low frustration tolerance for feeling bad.

Anytime I felt bad, I wanted to get rid of the feeling. I thought it was wrong. I thought it was bad. I thought successful people, I couldn't be successful if I felt this way. I couldn't do hard stuff if I felt this way. I couldn't accomplish my goals if I felt this way. And here's what I learned is that learning how to feel bad is a superpower and it is now one of my superpowers.

Bad feelings are not problems to solve, okay? They are signals, like your body and brain are saying, hey, there's something here that I don't like, right? Maybe it is something legitimate. You're like, somebody really crossed a boundary that I set and I don't feel good about it. Maybe it's that you made a decision that is out of alignment with your values and you're like, I feel bad about myself. Or maybe it's just like your brain is making up catastrophic scenarios and it's like, fuck, this is just a thought error and I should ignore it.

Right? Like feelings are not always, they don't always mean something. They might just be like your brain trying to survive, which is what's done for hundreds of thousands of years. Right? And so what I learned is that I really need to get curious about why I feel bad or about the bad feelings instead of running from them. Because when you get curious and you observe, oh, where does this feeling come from? I don't indulge in it. Okay, big difference. I don't indulge in it. I observe it and say, where's it coming from? I build emotional stamina.

Okay, and when I build emotional stamina, that's what allows me to stay calm in chaos, to have hard conversations, to take risks, to go from meeting to stage to Q&A to content to one-on-ones to restructuring a team all in one day. Because I acknowledge those feelings, I don't try to run from them. What I've realized over all this time, and I guess like my biggest takeaway has been like, I don't feel any better than any of you.

I'm just better at feeling bad in some situations. I'm better at taking action when I feel bad because I don't think feeling bad is a problem. And I don't think that feeling bad means that my life sucks. I don't think it means that things are going to be bad. I don't think it even means any kind of prediction of the future. Like when people like thoughts become things, like I actually fucking hate that saying because I can't tell you like how many times I've had like catastrophic thoughts and guess how many times that has come to fruition? Um, never.

So I was like, okay, well, evidence would show that like, just because I have the terrible thought does not mean it happened, right? What I want to break down for you guys is really just like my three really simple steps at how I get good at feeling bad, right? How do you actually get better at it? Now, the first thing and the first step is that I name it.

Now, I think that sounds silly, but it's like, I remember when I was 20 and I had a therapist and the best piece of advice that therapist gave me was like, when you're feeling a certain way, I want you to name it.

Now, why is that? And why is that helpful? And it still helps me today because when you name it, you recognize it's not you. You are not a feeling. You are not depressed. You are not sad. You are not frustrated. You have feelings of sadness, feelings of depression, feelings of frustration, feelings of loneliness. I stop and I ask myself, like, what am I feeling? Is it anger? Is it disappointment? Is it fear? Is it shame?

And when I name it, it does two things. One, it reminds me that it is not me and I am not it, but it is a feeling that I'm experiencing in my body. And it's not permanent either. It will go away and another one will come. The second thing is that it takes away some of its power because, you know, I really love this saying, but like shame can only exist in the dark.

And so when we try and hide these feelings, we try and suppress them, a lot of the times it just ends up making it worse. And so when you name it and you just acknowledge it, it takes away a lot of its power that it has over you.

And so that's the first thing I do is I stop. I think to myself, what is it? I name it. I get really specific with it. Like I rarely are going to hear me say sad or depressed or anxious because I'm like, I feel apprehensive. I feel overwhelmed. I feel like I'm lacking clarity. I feel anticipatory, uh,

feelings of anxiousness. I feel like I try to get really specific because I think also the more general language we use, the worse it can feel sometimes if I'm like, oh, I'm depressed. It's like, well, maybe today I'm feeling a little bit down, but is that depressed? Right. And maybe it is depressed, but if it's not, I don't want to use the word. That's the first thing that I do is I name it. And that takes away some of the, like, I would say,

weight that it carries at times. Now here's the second thing I do, and this has been the hardest step for me. I just sit with it. This is the hard part. Like I always want to distract myself with work, with Netflix, with talking to somebody, with calling a friend, with whatever. I swear to God, just sit with it. Feel it. I promise it's not going to kill you and you can tolerate it. People are like, I can't stand how I feel. It's like, well, you can because if you couldn't stand it, you wouldn't be here, right? And so I

Sitting there, what you teach yourself is like you're training your body and your brain like, hey, this is not something to run from. So that's really beneficial. And then the second thing that you're doing is that you're giving it yourself time to see that feelings do subside. They do change whether you do something or not.

Okay, so this is a huge key piece for me. What I used to do is I would have a feeling that I would like need to compulsively go do something, right? I'm like, I need to get rid of this feeling, distract myself, whatever, which all works well. And it's not a bad solution. You know, if you're going to just say instead of that, I'm going to sulk around, right? I'm just going to say that, okay? If it's sulk or do something, go fucking do something. Productively distract yourself. But the best option, in my opinion, is to sit with it.

Right? We don't distract ourselves. We don't try and like suppress it. We don't try and run from it. We just sit with it. And we show ourselves that there's nothing wrong with this feeling. We sit with it. We digest it. We let it wash over us. And then what we'll see is that whether you want it to or not, that dang feeling is going to change or pass. That's something that a lot of people forget is like whether you want the feeling to stay or not, you don't have control over that. That's not how we're wired.

So think about it, right? Think about some time that you just felt like immense joy. Were you able to just keep it? Were you able to keep it going for hours and hours and days and days? And you wanted it to be there, right? You were like, no, I want to keep feeling this way. I want to keep feeling amazing. But think about how fleeting some of those moments have been that you've really wanted to just soak up and feel for a long period of time. Now, why would feelings of joy be any different than feelings of sadness, scaredness, anxiety?

they're not. And so whether you want them to or not, they do go away. The best thing you can do

is sit with it and teach yourself that there's nothing to be scared of. There's nothing wrong with it. And you can be good at feeling bad, right? You can be good at feeling bad. You don't need to distract yourself. You don't need to do something. You don't need to try and get rid of it. You can just feel it. You can be scared. You can be annoyed. You can be frustrated. And you can also tolerate it. And now the last piece, and this is my favorite one, is turn it into gold.

Okay, so oftentimes when we have a negative feeling, right? I feel frustrated, sad, angry, depressed, whatever it might be. My brain wants to tell me all the reasons this is bad, awful, terrible, and my life fucking blows. And it's an awful thing that has happened to me and I need to be rid myself of it, right? Here's the thing and the question that has changed my life. Now what I ask myself is I ask myself this. I say, how is this good? And if I can't think of a reason for how this is good, then I ask myself the second question. I say, how can I make this good?

How can I make this situation good for me? That question, I have chills like thinking about it. It has changed my life because bad feelings are feedback and they are uncomfortable, but they are so valuable if you learn from them. And if you use them to make your life better, if you think about, they talk about this a lot in business, but I apply it to myself as a person as well, which is like anti-fragile, which is a business that

takes hits, takes market conditions, takes lawsuits, takes losses, and it becomes stronger, not weaker because of those things. I think people are the same way. We can get hit with something and we can either be resilient and allow it to make us better or we can be fragile and we can think of all the ways that it's now going to dictate and ruin our lives. And I have chosen to ask myself the question, how is this good?

because I want to train myself that bad feelings can lead to good things. And if you can think of why this could be good, you can train yourself too to realize that bad feelings can lead to good things. So I hope those three steps were helpful. We're going to name it, we're going to sit with it, and we're going to turn it into gold. Now, why does this all matter? Okay, I am not saying this is easy. It is not. But nothing worth doing is easy.

Getting good at feeling bad means you stop fearing the discomfort of negative feelings, right? And when you stop fearing that discomfort, everything changes for you. Because just because you feel bad doesn't mean you need to cancel something. Just because you feel bad doesn't mean you need to change something. Just because you feel bad doesn't mean you need to change your schedule, that you can't show up well for something, that because you got bad news, you can't crush that speech, you can't record that content, you can't have that conversation.

You can do both. You can take bigger risks. You can push through tough situations and you can build strong ass relationships because you're not running from hard stuff. So my plea to you is this. If you feel bad, don't resist it. Let yourself get good at feeling bad. Don't try to fix it.

Don't try to run from it. Just get good at feeling it. So with that, I appreciate you all. You know, if this hit home for you, go ahead, share it with somebody who needs to hear this today. Maybe I recorded it because I needed to hear it myself. You guys have a great rest of your walk, day, evening, and I will catch you on the next one.