Chaos to Calm – Knowing what I feel leads me to calm

After having the opportunity to attend and speak at the AED Women in Equipment conference in Denver, Amy shares her thoughts on work/life balance and how understanding our emotions will help us get our needs met.

Transcription:

Hi, I’m Amy with Iluma Learning and I am coming back from quite a few trainings that I have been traveling to attend, and I’m enjoying some of the last warm days here in Santa Fe before we hunker down for winter.

And as I am considering what we’ve been covering during our trainings, I’m really curious about how a certain theme keeps coming up and it’s around, how do we move toward getting out of our distractions and being a lot more present, just being in the moment. And so I was with AED and the Women in Industry conference that was held in September in Denver. And I loved working with so many smart women who are making this industry better. And one of the things that we talked about is how do we move from chaos to calm? How do we get some work life balance? And some of it is just a couple of keys around how do we get in touch with what we’re feeling so that we can ask for what we need?

It’s a strange phenomenon, but just the simplicity around getting in touch with what I feel. So maybe it’s, I’m feeling really annoyed right now, or I’m feeling frustrated. I’ve got a whole list here. Uncomfortable, agitated. I feel rattled, I feel really restless. Maybe I feel disconnected. Bored, distracted, kind of indifferent. Maybe I feel stressed or burnt out, weary, worn out, vulnerable, feeling fragile or feeling really guarded, or feeling tender about something. When I can start to use more language around how I feel, it’s going to give me an indicator about what it is that I really need. If I’m bored, do I need something else that challenges me? Like really challenges me if I am exhausted? Do I need some rest? Do I need to maybe look at doing things in a different way? So it really leads us toward figuring out kind of what it is that we need and the ability to ask for what we need is as important as getting the need met.

Now, I know that may seem crazy, but what I want us to just focus on in this little video is just starting to think about me getting in touch with what I feel. Now, here’s what’s incredible about it. You’re gonna avoid feeling at all costs. I do it too. We want to avoid feeling because we are afraid of how much it’s gonna hurt, how much it’s going to be unpleasant, or that we’re gonna figure out something that we don’t want to know. So if we can start to trust that the more I can just be present and in the moment and really just take a deep breath and start to go, how do I really feel here? And start using some new vocabulary of feeling words. I’m going to get closer to knowing what I need. And when I know what I need, I can ask for it more later.