The Difference Between What is Real vs What is True | ep62
About this episode:
Perhaps you witnessed my meltdown in my Instagram stories last week when a really big coaching account released an inspirational reel in which the main message was “Your overwhelm isn’t real.” This coach went on to say that overwhelm isn’t a real thing and that it’s something that can easily be solved by writing down an 87 point to-do list.
87?! I wish I was making this stuff up 🤦🏻♀️
There were so many things wrong about this message but the one I want to focus on today is the harmful notion that feelings aren’t real.
Love, your feelings are real… so incredibly real.
You don’t need a PhD in psychology to know this is true. When you are caught in any emotion or feeling, it is a very real experience. You are experiencing the physical and mental effects of it through your body.
There can be nothing more real than this. Whether it is joy, anger, overwhelm, sadness, frustration- your feelings are very real.
However, when it comes to our emotional states there is an important difference between what is real and what is true.
What is real is how you feel. But what is often not true is the thought that is creating this feeling or the thoughts that this feeling makes you believe.
So yes, the feeling is real. But the thought that is the foundation of this feeling, or the thoughts this feeling elicits in you- those are not true. Our journey is to honor whatever we are feeling because it is the key. It is the key to our healing, growth and transformation.
Our feelings contain so much wisdom. When we can acknowledge them, sit with them, and get curious about them, we unlock so much within us. We unlock the stories and myths that we are holding onto and that is where our healing begins.
If a client came to me to talk about overwhelm, I'd walk them through a process in which we would figure what is real (their feeling), and what is not true.
This process includes acknowledging the feeling, and then asking the feeling questions to help unlock what is underneath it all. *If you want to hear more about this process head to the podcast.
A quote to take with you:
“Once we find the truth- that’s when we uncover different feelings (notice I don't say better... no feeling is better than another... just different).”
This week, I invite you to…
Take a moment and identify a feeling you are having. Once you name it, write it down.
Now, see if you can identify the thoughts that are creating or feeding this feeling. Start writing whatever comes to mind.
Want to dive deeper through journal prompts?
If you want to be in the know and get each Mindset Monday straight to your inbox complete with journal prompts to take you even further, get on my email list.
About your host, Shirin Eskandani
Hi, love! I’m Shirin.
Coach, speaker, writer, and life alchemist.
I teach you how to trust your intuition again, tune out all the BS, and let your heart lead the way.
Because once you strengthen your inner GPS, decisions become easier, boundaries become clearer, and belly laughs become a daily thing.
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME:
I’m a certified life coach (accredited through the International Coach Federation)
My husband and I met on Instagram and we live in Brooklyn, NY with our plant babies
I have a masters degree in Music and was a professional opera singer for twelve years. I worked all over the world singing on stage at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera (more on that later…).
I believe in the woo just as much as I do the work (internal and external). No amount of crystals and affirmations will make up for a lack of a healthy mindset and aligned action.
I love all the Real Housewives franchises. Don’t make me choose one… seriously, don’t.
+ Read the episode transcript here
Welcome to wholehearted coaching the podcast. If you're looking for more purpose, more passion, more joy in your life and you have come to the right place. Let's create your dream life while living your dream life. Okay, love. Hi love. Welcome to wholehearted coaching the podcast. This is where we take a deeper dive into my mindset Monday post, which you can read on Instagram at wholehearted coaching, or you can get the full post plus journal prompts. When you sign up for my email list, you can do that in the show notes. Or you can head to my website wholehearted dash coaching.com. So today's episode is one that I have been thinking about for a while. And I have been trying to figure out how to phrase this idea how to talk about this idea. And honestly, it's been something I have been really wanting to share with you. But I just really didn't know how to do that. And this week, I figured out how and I figured out how, because of an incredibly ridiculous and harmful and toxic post by a pretty big coach on Instagram. I'm not going to name who they are. But what we're going to do in this episode is look at this post as a case study. You know what happens often within the coaching world. It's not the coaching that I do. But it's the coaching that we often see this is the type of quote unquote Tony Robbins coaching that I really dislike and I think is incredibly harmful to us. What happens in this type of coaching is that the focus is so much on shifting our mindset to get to goals that we totally skip over the feelings, right? The feelings are this noise, this unnecessary part of the whole thing, and especially quote unquote bad feelings, right like sadness and overwhelm and frustration in that traditional world of Tony Robbins coaching, it almost seems like you should not feel those things because those things are what get in the way of what you want to be doing in the world. And so you want to use these mindset tools to bypass all of these feelings. So you can have the goals that you want in your life. But the truth is, our feelings are so damn necessary, and vital and important. Our feelings are so incredibly necessary in our transformation and in our healing. And the key to so much of our healing is in the feelings. So today's episode is about how we can use our feelings to unlock our wisdom to unlock our healing. Because y'all the feelings is where the gold is. So today's Mindset Monday reads, know the difference between what is real and what is true. The feelings are real. What is not true is the beliefs, the stories, the myths that are feeding this feeling. Honor your feelings, unlock your wisdom. That's how we find the truth. So let's talk about the post that really got me so incredibly angry. Now, as I said, this was a post on a pretty big coach's page. And it was a real, and it was just an audio with images on it. And pretty much the thesis statement of this reel was overwhelm isn't real, that overwhelm is not a real feeling. It's a made up feeling. And that overwhelm can be solved by simply writing down a to do list. Okay? And this person was like, yeah, you just write down your to do list, you write down your 10 things for the day, your 47 things for the week, your 87 things for the next two weeks. And this person is saying this and I'm like, first of all that to do list with 87 things sounds hella overwhelming. And how dare you tell me that overwhelm is not real. If you are listening to this, you know what overwhelm feels like in your body. You know exactly what it is like whether it is in your belly, whether it fogs up your mind, whether it tightens your throat, that feeling of overwhelm is so incredibly real. And here is this coach telling you that that is not a real thing. Now, there are so many things that are wrong with this message. But the thing I really want to focus on is this gaslighting, this dismissal of overwhelm being real, of a feeling being or We live in a culture and societies and communities that already negate our feelings, right, that dismiss how we feel either that they're not important, or that what we are feeling is not true that it's not valid. And this is a narrative that we really need to shift and change within our communities within our households. Feelings are real, what you are feeling is very, very real. When you feel sadness, or overwhelm or frustration, you know what that feeling is like in your body, the experience of that emotion is incredibly real. I once read that emotions are just energy in motion. And I love that definition, because we know what that feels like, right? That energy of frustration through our body, that energy of overwhelm, or that energy of sadness, or joy, whatever that is. And so, this person, this coach, saying that your overwhelm is not real, is really negating a truth of yours, right? That you are feeling this thing. But there is something that is not real, not true in this equation. So love, your feelings are real, you are experiencing those feelings in real time, you know what it's like in your body. Now, while your feelings are real, your thoughts that create those feelings, or the thoughts that those feelings generate in your mind as you're experiencing them. Those are on true. So this is what I talked about the difference between knowing what is real, the feeling, and what is true or not true. What is not true is often the thoughts that are at the foundation of your feelings. So I want to go deeper into this. Now I learned this idea first from Brooke Castillo, and I don't think she originated this idea. But to me, she was the one who really like taught it in a way that seems so understandable and accessible to me. So what Brooke Castillo says is that it is not our circumstances that make us feel a certain way. It is, instead our thoughts about a circumstance that make us feel the way that we feel. So for example, let's use the example of age here. So let's say two people are both turning 40. This is the same circumstance, they're literally turning 40 on the same day, same exact circumstance, Person A thinks, Oh, my gosh, this is amazing. I have lived 40 years, I am so incredibly grateful. And I cannot wait to see what the next 40 years has in store for me. So that's Person A. And then there's Person B, who thinks How am I 40 years old, I haven't done anything with my life, I am so behind. So those two people are having the same circumstance. But their perception of that circumstance is what is changing their experience of that circumstance. It's what's creating the feelings in that circumstance, right. So Person A who's incredibly grateful that they are at the age of 40, they're probably feeling excited and joyful, hopeful. And person be who is really focused on how perhaps, quote, unquote, behind they are, how they can understand that they're here, they're probably feeling despondent and incapable and feeling like down on themselves. So what are we really seeing here? It's that the thoughts are what create the feelings for us, the feelings are real, we are experiencing those feelings in our bodies. But the thoughts, those are often not true. So then how do we find our truth? The answer is in our feelings, all of our feelings, all of our emotions contain so much wisdom. So if I had a client who came to me and they said they are feeling overwhelmed, what I would ask us to do, what I would get us to do, the journey I would take us on is to acknowledge and embrace that feeling. Not to say you you're not feeling overwhelmed, you just haven't written a to do list down. No, it is to accept that very real feeling. And to then get curious. So what is getting curious about our feelings look like? So some of us are really somatic and physical. And so with a client, I'll ask them Where do you feel it in your body? What is that feeling? Like right is overwhelmed heaviness? Is it heat? Is it pressure? Is it butterflies? And then I get us to ask the feeling questions. And now if you've been here in this podcast community for a while at wholehearted coaching, you know that I love to ask feelings questions because that is where the keys lie. That is where the goal is. And so when we start to ask the feelings questions like, what do you think of this person? Right, so what do you think of Shurin? Right? What are you worried about? What do you fear, that's when all of the untruths come through. So oftentimes, let's say a client is feeling overwhelmed, and we start going through this process of inquiry, untruths pop up, like, I have no idea what I'm doing, I am behind everyone else. And no matter what I do, I cannot catch up. If I do not do all of these things, I am a failure. These thoughts, these beliefs, these myths are what are making you feel overwhelmed and also exacerbating the overwhelm because of course, what ends up happening is we always have like a thought, I always call it this, the umbrella thought the base thought, so maybe your base thought is I never know what I'm doing. So I never know what I'm doing creates overwhelm for you. And then once you're in that feeling of overwhelm, we go into this spiral of thoughts, right, that support the original thought. So I never know what I'm doing. I'm always behind, I'm a failure, look at this person. And so then we fall into this spiral, which makes the overwhelm even more overwhelming. So if a client came to me and said, I'm overwhelmed, and if I gave them a to do list, do you think that that is actually going to help with their overwhelm? I mean, maybe it's a band aid solution. But what happens when that weak, they can't finish off all the things on that to do list? What happens when they find that they need to add more things to that to do list, know the wisdom, the gold is in finding what your untruths are, and then finding the truth for yourself. Because once you can find the truth, then we start to generate and create different feelings. So let's say that the core thought the belief is I never know what I'm doing. And with a client together, we're like, Alright, so you're really believing, I never know what I'm doing. And when you believe I never know what I'm doing, it makes you overwhelmed. And when you're overwhelmed, you cannot get work done, because it always feels like you're behind. Right. So this kind of loop is one that we have all been in. And what we really have to start looking at is the thought that is the most important thing here the on truth. So maybe the truth that comes up for me and a client is I may not be where I want to be. But I acknowledge my growth. I am exactly where I'm meant to be. I am doing exactly what I can do with everything that's going on in my life. I am doing my best and my best is enough just by saying these thoughts, Do you sense a shift in your own body? That different feelings are being generated? Right? So if you started your day with the thought, all right, you may not be exactly where you want to be. I am growing, I am trying. And that is enough. Now, I would imagine those feelings would maybe shift from overwhelmed, to acceptance, to maybe calm to groundedness, to presence. All of these feelings are feelings that allow us to do different things. I don't want to say better things, but just different things. And we could only get there with a client by looking at the feeling looking and addressing and saying yes, your overwhelm is real. Now let's figure out what the untruth is that this overwhelm is founded on that this overwhelm is feeding you. That's where the gold is love. The feelings are the key. I cannot stress this enough. Honoring, accepting acknowledging your feelings is going to unlock the motivation, the feelings, the happiness, the fulfillment that you have been seeking. It's not bypassing it. It's not saying it's not real and creating a damn to do list. It is sinking into accepting, embracing, hugging that feeling and saying, What do you have to tell me? And is that the truth? JOHN Weiland says, The feelings are real, the story is bullshit. That's what we're talking about today, the stories so often are bullshit. And I really recommend listening to my two episodes on myth. And magic myth is all about the stories that we hold on to the beliefs that we hold on to. And in that episode, I talk about why we hold on to those myths why they're so important to us. And magic, that is the truth of who we are. So if you want to go even deeper into figuring out how you can unlock your magic, and why your myths are there, and why they are important, check out those two episodes. But this idea of real and true love this, for me was a game changer. Right? That Yes, it is real, this overwhelm in my body is real. But is it true that I never know what I'm doing? No, that's that's not true. Yes, this frustration in my body is real. But is it true, that I'm not where I should be? Now, that's not true. And when you start asking yourself these questions, and no longer gaslighting yourself, that's when you unlock it all for yourself. And again, the key, the Wisdom is all in the feelings. You know, for me, this idea of real and truth is also something that can be applied to our greater society. Right? So white supremacy is not true. It's a bunch of bullshit, right? We know that. But in our world, the effects of white supremacy are very, very real diet culture. That's a bunch of BS, right? That is untrue. But the effects of diet culture in our lives, that is very real. When you start seeing the world through this lens, when you start seeing your experience of life through this lens. It's almost like the matrix, it's it's like, you took the pill that shows you this dimension that is just a bunch of BS. But we can't just say, Oh, this is BS. So let's just throw it out. Let's not look at it. No, no, no, no, we have to actually explore it. Because once we start exploring the stories, that's when we can find what our truth is. That's where we can start changing things for the better. I want to end this episode with a quote from a really incredible book all about feelings. It's called permission to feel by Mark Brackett and this book is just such a great deep dive into feelings and emotions and how we can start to actually recognize how we're feeling, get really clear on how we're feeling and how we can transform our feelings from a really scientific perspective. I love it. I cannot recommend it enough. But I want to end this episode. With just one of the quotes from this book. I could literally quote the entire book for this episode. But that would be very long. And that will be an audio book. So the quote reads, understanding emotions is a journey, possibly an adventure. When it's finished, we may find ourselves someplace new, someplace unexpected, somewhere, perhaps we had no intention of going. And yet there we are wiser than before. Maybe wiser than we wish to be. But there is no other way forward. Love your emotions, your feelings are real. They are valid, and they are necessary. They are the key to your healing. Because they uncover what you're holding on to the untruths, the stories, the myths that you are holding on to and that is when we can start to create the truths that create the different feelings. That is the beauty of knowing the difference between what is real and what is true. Until next week, I will talk to you that thank you so much for joining me this week. If you liked this week's episode, please share it with a friend. comment and rate this podcast until next week. See you later love