00:08 Hi, I'm Denise Simpson, a master life and leadership coach who helps women step into their authentic and feminine power. So they can lead like visionaries influence with grace and create a, a legacy of contribution and service. You'll hear about real leadership clients with real problems, navigating their success in life, business, and career. If you are ready to become a masterful leader, then this podcast was made for you. So let's get started.
00:47 My friends. It is so good to be back. I am happy to be with you this week. So much is going on right now in my personal life. Things that I wanna share with you, things that are private behind the scenes, but I, I think necessary to share with you the leader. I have been feeling all kinds of anxiety and some depression, but mostly anxiety. I like to think of anxiety as not being able to confirm the future. Meaning you have no control. You have no end to a project or a goal. You, you can't see the future that you want to see because there are many missing hearts to that realization. And depression to me is looking back and feeling resentment, feeling bitter, feeling, regret, feeling all the unprocessed emotions of trauma and so forth. So depression looks at the past and anxiety looks at the future, and it's been interesting.
02:05 I've kind of been in limbo, but the last few days have most definitely been anxious and anxiety driven because my husband is in Poland. He volunteered to help the refugees from the Ukrainian and Russian war. The that's happening right now. And I talked a little bit about this on the last episode. So make sure you go listen to that other one. Um, after this one that I share about his bravery and I share how his brain is automated, right? Automatically turns on this switch when he needs to go in a battle when he needs to handle chaos or walk into trauma, he is fully prepared and he's emergency medicine physician. He's also spent 32 years in the military as a special forces physician. So pretty, pretty important person and has built these skills and, and has formed this very special neurology. And so he has been there for a few weeks now and I, the last few days have been feeling a lot of anxiety and fear of not seeing the end to this, not seeing, you know, the future clearly for he and I, he being back in the states, being safe, you know, under my security, like that's even possible, but my brain wants to have him close.
03:46 My body needs to have him close, to feel safety. And so my nervous system is so freaking triggered right now. So much anxiety happening, especially the last few days. So what I've done is I've limited my watching of television, my reading of the news articles in regards to this, to this war limited at all. But I, I give myself 30 to 45 minutes a day to consume what I need to consume and at least be up to date to, to what's happening at that real real time moment. And I also get to talk to him. So thank goodness he does keep me posted as well, but I have to keep functioning. I have to be here for my clients, for my leaders. I have to be for my students. I have to be here fully capable and ready to serve, but there's this undercurrent of anxiety.
04:45 That's there. It, I go to bed with it and I wake up with it and it is with me throughout my day, but I am purposely picking a certain hour of the day and it's usually around 5:00 PM to watch the latest happenings. And I give myself 45 minutes. I turn it off. And then I go and cook dinner. And I either wrap up my day or I prepare myself for my evening phone calls with my clients. So I stay intentional with my brain because if I let it go into default mode, all of the unresolved trauma that, that I'm still processing from, from childhood and other interesting things in my life will pop up. It'll come in full force. And what I noticed the last few days was the rage and the anger coming through. So usually when someone feels fear, the way our nervous system reacts is to, is to get angry is to lash out because the nervous system in the brain doesn't know how to process fear.
05:54 So it gets mad. I get mad and I want to rage out. And let me tell you, it's been very interesting here in my house because I have the two puppies and the two boys are doing their own thing. They don't live here. So they are busy with their lives. And I have been very in trustingly watching my own behavior, watching my own actions and the results I'm creating, which have been toxic. For example, I want to numb out the rage and the anger. I want to suppress the fear. I want to blame people, blame the government, blame rush, just pointing the finger at whoever I can to relieve some of that anger. And so I'm watching myself do that and I'm giving myself space to be able to do that. And as I've been watching myself, I have been really realizing that there's things I haven't fully, I don't know if I ever will and that's okay.
07:03 But I thought it was important for me to come on here and share with you what is happening to me and my brain and how I'm still showing up to serve my people, to serve my clients. So in time of crisis, my husband goes to battle in times of crisis. I want to numb out because the rage is too too much. The anger is too much, again, all stemming from fear, fear of not knowing what he's doing, not knowing if he's safe, not knowing if he'll come back to me. So here are these thoughts that are creating very strong feelings of a fear. And because I don't wanna feel fear, my brain wants to turn it into anger and rage.
07:51 And so as leaders in times of crisis, in times of chaos, we learn those skill for ourselves. This is the best opportunity. You'll never have another opportunity like this, right? It's in the moment of the crisis where you get to stand back and be an impartial spectator of your own mind. You take a 30,000 foot view, you fly high up into the sky and you look down at how you're behaving, what you're thinking, what you're feeling and what results you're creating. There is no better time than now, than right now in the middle of a crisis in the middle of chaos, in the middle of uncertainty. And a lot of my clients went through this. When the pandemic first started, it was chaos. News was all over the place. Our brains were unmanaged. Our brains were unregulated, you know, on average that's like normal, right?
08:55 And then you add the crisis of a pandemic. And as leaders, we need to be objective, stand back, be an impartial spectator so that we can really look at the evidence and make decisions from a logical and an emotional place, right? Cuz we still need to include the compassionate part of leadership, but this way you're not swimming in the pool with them. You're not drowning with your followers. You're standing at the, at the edge of the pool and you are helping people out, right? You are getting a life RAF and you're putting people in it because you're steady because you are, you know, you have steady footing. And that's what I am doing for myself right now is to be steady and to have grace and to watch my brain do what it wants to do. And you know what? I let it, I let it do what it needs to do.
09:53 And then I have to come back online, meaning online in my brain, consciously online because when my brain wants to go into default mode and, and feel all the fear and the rage and the anger, I let it and I just stand back and I go, okay, do what we need to do. Okay. I'm gonna check in in about another hour. If I need more time in this emotion, whatever the emotion is, I'm gonna sit with it a little longer. And maybe I give myself another hour after that. And yesterday was the first day I was able to get my footing back the few days before that. However, oh, really interesting. Really, really interesting. And so I share this with you in hopes that you understand that you too can do this, that you too can process what you need to process and not be ashamed to do that.
10:54 Not feel like you have to be happy and joyous all the time. That's the biggest we have ever been fed is that we should not feel emotion or worse. Hurry up and feel happy. Don't stay here. Don't be depressed. Don't go into this black hole. You gotta move quickly. Move quickly. I mean, how many of our mothers are and our fathers, especially mine who said, don't let them see you cry. You're act like a boy. You're one of them do not ever let them see you cry. Now here's the thing. Our parents were well intended. Mine at least were I think so. I think they, they did the best they could with the neurology that they had period. And they, they wanted to protect us. They said these things to protect us. They told us to do these things, to protect us because they had experienced certain things because they had, you know, ingrained a neurology of, of suffering and pain and they don't, they don't wanna see us suffer.
12:00 And we do the same thing with our children, right? We, we parent from the capacity of parenting that we got, Ooh, that's good. We parent at the capacity of the parenting that we had think about that we are who we are because of how we were raised because of our culture. Because society, because of what our parents instilled in us, what values they shared with us, they demonstrated to us, some were explicit. Some were implicit, some were conscious and we're unconscious. We are who we are as adults because of our childhood and of course life experience. So here we are adults trying to recover from our childhoods, right? A lot of us are, I am, I'm certainly one of them, but here I am taking responsibility because I have agency because I have autonomy because I wanna be free of all of those beliefs. I weren't mine to begin with, but were embedded in me as a child.
13:10 I have agency over how I wanna live today. How I wanna think today, how I wanna treat my followers, how I wanna treat my family, how I wanna create this legacy, my personal legacy. This is why this is important for us to take a closer look at our emotions, processing what we need to process and taking this impartial spectator approach so that we can have better emotional regulation. I'm not saying do not feel a thing. I am not one of those people. Again, advocating for you to feel as happy as you can, as quickly as you can, because it is so and comfortable to stay in the rage, to stay in the anger, to stay in the sadness, to stay in the pain. I understand that it is freaking uncomfortable. Of course, we wanna be quick to numb the out of our brain so that we don't feel it.
14:09 Or we wanna just quickly jump from anger to joy in a second, no way it's not possible. And if you think you've been doing a good job at this, Hmm, take a look at your surroundings, take a look at the results you have created. How are your intimate relationships right now? How is your, how are your personal finances? Are you happy with them, your career, the choices that you've made, the decisions you've made from the neurology that you have, have they been fulfilling or have they been riddled with pain and suffering start looking at what you've created, because that will tell you exactly how you've been or have not been processing your emotions. I implore you leader to take this opportunity to sit with whatever emotion comes up for you. And if I'm triggering the hell out of you right now, I'm sorry. But it has to be said, we cannot live a full thriving life, feeling the joy and the fulfillment that we want.
15:20 If we have not dealt or processed the dark sides of our brain, the pain, the suffering, the anger, the resentment, and all the things that we have pushed down into our shoes. We have suppressed them. We have repressed them. We have numbed them. How many of you have role models that have demonstrated what processing emotions look like? Like none, nobody. I don't know a single person in my family that knows how to process pain, anger, sadness, sorrow. Honestly, these aren't conversations that you have with your parents. These aren't conversations that you have with your children. Maybe today. I hope you are. I hope you're talking to them about letting them feel what they need to feel and to tell society, to shut the F up because society wants to keep you controlled. It wants to keep you in your place. It wants to keep you sedated.
16:21 It wants to keep you numb again. Going back to what I was told as a child. Don't you ever let us see, let them see you sweat. Don't you ever let them see you cry. No daughter of mine eyes. Okay. And there I was holding all of this fear and anger and sadness when my perpetrator crossed the boundaries of my body. Yeah. Yep. Didn't feel a thing. I disassociated from my own brain and my body, because that's what I was taught. Don't let them see you sweat. Don't let them see you cry. Okay? Okay. And that all of that trauma was held in my body for so many years until I did the work to unravel unravel all of that pain.
17:13 And so this is important. This is what we get to do in coaching. We get to explore the dark corners of your mind. The ones that you have not wanted to shine a light on they're there. You've been thinking that you've been, uh, stabilizing them and regulating them and putting them in the corner. But unconscious, you are taking actions from neurology that has been impeding your fulfillment and your joy and the, and robbing you of the opportunity to live this life as amazingly as you want it to be and has been keeping you from creating what you've wanted to create in your life. The key is to feel all of the emotions as they come mom, because the worst thing that can happen, my friend is that you have a negative emotion. That's the worst thing that can happen. You have a negative emotion and listen, we learn how to process these emotions as leaders, especially leading our families, our children, because how we in impact them is how they'll impact their children and our world. And as a leader, you influence and inspire and yes, impact your followers. It's important that we leaders do this work and that we open ourselves up to any emotion that comes through and have the tools to be able to process them. And I get to show you how to do that in coaching and here on this podcast.
19:01 So my friend, I share what is happening behind the scenes in my life in hopes to inspire you, to open yourself up to whatever comes your way. And especially if you are in a moment of crisis or, or chaos or uncertainty sees this opportunity to feel what you need to feel to sit with those emotions in your body, identify what you're feeling, where in your body is it vibrating from? You know, for me, anger is right at the pit of my stomach and I can identify it now because of, of all the work I've done throughout the last 25 years on my mind, on my emotions, on the results I've created, because of those emotions, I'm able to quickly identify an emotion and it may be hard for some of you because a lot of us are disassociated. We have pushed emotions aside. We have numbed our minds.
20:02 We have just put them in the corner and not dealt with them. And so what I want for you to do is take a moment, a feeling of anger, a feeling of overwhelm, a feeling of sadness, whatever comes up for you to throughout the day, feel it process. It looks like you sitting down with it, it'll come up and you'll feel it you'll you'll feel it in your brain. You'll feel it in your body. Sometimes it's it's right in the middle of your chest. For me again, it's right at, in the gut of my belly, it's, it's in the solar PLA access where all of my power resides and the, for me, power looks like love. And it looks like anger, but feel it mostly in my solar plexus. And I call it out and I call it out and I feel it. And I put my hand wherever I'm feeling it for some of you, it's on your shoulders for some of you, it's the crown of your head for some of you, it's your throat or your chest, your heart center of you.
21:07 It's your lower back for some of you, it's your right hip or your left hip for some of you it's in your groin for some of you, it's in your, your, your legs, identify where you're feeling the vibration and put your hand over it. That's what I do. I put my both hands over my belly and I just sit and I breathe into it and I breathe into it and I let it be there. I don't rush through the emotion. I don't go and watch television to numb my brains out. I don't go to the, to the kitchen or to the refrigerator. Like I used to, to numb my brains out with food. I don't do that any anymore. I sit with it and sometimes I talk to it and sometimes I say, go ahead, I'll be right here. I'm just gonna sit here and I'm gonna breathe as deeply as I possibly can.
22:02 And it it's almost like a meditative state where, when, when thoughts try to pop in like, oh, oh, I gotta go eat the cookies. Okay. Oh, you know what? I gotta go do laundry. Okay. Let me stay busy. Oh, okay. You know what? I, let me go tend to the kids. Oh, you know what? I gotta go feed the dogs. No, I push those thoughts out of my mind, just like you do in meditation. And that way you're focused on your breathing. You reengage with your breathing, you reengage with a part of your body. That's feeling that particular sensation of emotion and you let it pass. And guess what an emotion usually lasts about 90 seconds. It's your thoughts about it that keep it longer, understand that. And what you can tell yourself is this is transient, this emotion and the feeling in my body, the physical feeling that's coming from this neurochemical release in my body because of this one emotion.
23:06 I'm feeling it in my belly. And it's transient. If 90 seconds comes and goes and still there, I'm gonna give myself some more time. And then some more time if needed. But the reason why these emotions pester and why they ruminate in our brains and in our bodies and why we hold on to so much anger is because we don't know how to process these emotions. Let them be transient. We have children raise. We have organizations to lead. Don't hold onto this. This is part of the processing. When you process this, they become transient. They don't latch into your neurology. That's what I hope for you. Moving forward is what you do as, as you are processing negative emotions.
24:00 All right, I know this was heavy and I know this was a lot for some of you, but I'm here for you. As you are learning how to process your own Mo emotions and your own mind. I want the best for you. Your children deserve the best. And so do your followers. But my darling, it is you. It is you, who is my primary concern. It is you who I ultimately serve. You come first. You lead the self first, because if you don't have the capacity to lead yourself, what makes you think you're gonna be able to be an impactful influential leader in your own family, in your organization? You can't, you won't, you won't have the capacity. You come first. And this is the first step to processing emotions. If you need help. And at some point in our lives, some point in our careers, we need to ask for help.
24:57 There's no shame in asking for help. Ask for it from a psychiatrist, from a therapist, from a pastor, from a priest, from someone who is objective, not who is your family member who want, who only sees you for what they've processed in their own minds about you? No, no, no. You want professional help you work with me. I am as objective as I possibly can be. Although I am here to ultimately serve you. I have these tools because I, you some every day and I'm able to show my leaders and my clients how to use it for themselves. So reach out, get the help that you deserve. All right, my friend, I will be back with another episode next week. Take good care. Hey, before you, I have a special gift to share with you. It is my exclusive guide on the 15 values of a masterful leader. That's right. These values are what drive. Every decision you make, they motivate every action you take as a leader. So don't lead this to chance. You gotta know what 15 values masterful leaders use to develop their, I inspire their followers and impact their organizations. So head over to my show notes, grab this exclusive guide as AP it'll be delivered in your email box as soon as possible. I'll see you inside.
