Ep 62: Emotional Agility

 In this episode, we're talking about Emotional Agility and what it can look and feel like when you're really partnering with your emotions in real time. You ready? Let's do it. 

Hello, you are listening to the Love Your Life as a Performer podcast. I'm Kelli Youngman, and I am The Life Coach for Performers. I help actors, singers, and dancers love themselves and their lives way more. So keep listening to learn how you can love your life - both on and off the stage.

Hello and welcome back to episode 62 of the Love Your Life as a Performer podcast. Today I want to talk about a concept that I am calling Emotional Agility. And I want to start by saying that this may be a little bit of an advanced concept, but I thought it'd be really helpful for my past and current clients that have been doing the work and really just taking this to a whole 'nother level. Because it really demonstrates the value of being with your emotions, processing your emotions, and being in the practice of feeling your emotions in real time.

So again, I understand that this might be a little bit advanced, but I thought it was valuable to bring to the podcast and to also just give you an insight into what it can look and feel like when you are managing your mind, when you are processing your emotions, and when you're engaging with them rather than, you know, dismissing them or brushing them under the rug, or just having your emotions feel like a burden.

Because truly your emotions are always moving through you, giving you really valuable feedback about where your focus is and when you start embracing your Emotional Agility, I just think it can be such a smooth transition and a way for you to hold space for your emotions all of the time. Without making them good, bad, right or wrong. 

And so I actually want to share a personal story, that has been a personal experience, that I think really demonstrates what this concept can feel like in real time. So I want you to imagine that you're having a morning that's different. Right. For me, that looked like my partner waking up in a slightly quiet mood, something different than, than what I had experienced before and something new, right? It's so interesting how, side tangent, when our brains are experiencing something new, our brains, if it's unknown, will always fill in the gaps. So just to emphasize that we can have all the awareness in the world and we might still land on a thought or a feeling that creates discomfort, unsettledness, fear, sadness, loneliness - all of the things, right? 

So I just want you to imagine my partner having a slightly quiet morning and my brain wanting to make that a problem. Now I have all the tools in the world and I have the clarity to step back and to know that this action, this behavior, is completely neutral until I give it meaning, right? And it doesn't change the experience that I'm having in my body. Which is a little bit of confusion, all of the things, right? Fast forward to me taking a luxurious walk along the water and feeling super inspired and feeling just like, so, honestly emotional too. I was listening to Rachel Rodgers book, We Should All Be Millionaires. Especially for women of color, just her book, it was really freaking speaking to me, um, about the ways that we limit ourselves in our thinking and just, yeah, like getting through all the BS to make more bank. Like I'm all for it. So shout out to Rachel Rodgers.

And like then stepping into this moment of feeling really inspired, right, and feeling really emotional in a different way. And then coming back from my walk and realizing that I actually was a little sad or hurt or, you know, dare I say offended, like my brain wanted to go to this space of being really hurt by the idea of my partner, you know, having a silent morning, but then being really chatty and communicative on a phone call, right? So this is just like one little baby example. But within a span of minutes, I was able to come home, be back in the environment when I realized that I was having this emotional experience. I was able to sit with my partner and have a conversation that felt emotional, that I was willing to feel sad. I was willing to cry. I was willing to acknowledge how I felt. I was willing to process the emotion and be with my body. And I felt it all the way through, right. Had the conversation very calmly process my emotions and then not even five minutes later. I'm like, all right, I feel great. Like I'm ready to tap back into my inspiration. I'm ready to plug into my highest self energy, not from a space of avoiding the feeling rather than leaning in, right? 

And it was so interesting because I've been thinking about this concept for a while, and when I had this experience, it was so clear to me that I've Emotional Agility. And the way that I think about this and the visual that came to my mind right away was this idea of, you know, when a piano player is practicing their scales or a singer, right? And we're learning how to riff and all these things. And the more we practice, the better we're able to transition, right? Like there's a smoothness that comes out of doing the work to become agile? Is that the word? Agile with our emotions in the same way that we might transition smoothly from a grand jeté into a tour jeté, I don't know what in the world that just came from, but like our transition steps, right? Like the linking of moments, the dynamic, the music. experience of our emotions. 

So again, like a piano player practicing their scales so that their fingers can move really agile. Oh my gosh, I need to like Google how to use this word in a sentence. Really truly like creating the agility to move and be with our emotions in real time without making it a problem.

And so I wanted to bring this to the podcast because I want you to imagine and I say this with love, because there was a time in my life where I would like almost have this fear that I was bipolar, because I would go from feeling like so angry or frustrated at something that happened or, you know, be so hurt and not know what to do with the emotions, that then I would like go to have some big release and it would be like this really dramatic cry. And then again, that's not good, bad, right or wrong. But I'm just saying like, it would feel like these really abrupt eruptions of emotions, where then I would feel like the day was shot. And again, this is not good, bad, right or wrong. I just want to show examples so that you can imagine what a different experience of your emotions could be, right? So that you're not having a disagreement and then the whole rest of your day or even your week is rattled because of one conversation or one thought or one misinterpreted action, word, et cetera, right? 

And so imagine the freedom when, you know, there's nothing wrong with you. And that is actually a benefit to have Emotional Agility. I'm trying to think of another example, like for instance, you go to an audition and you're really centered and grounded and inspired and you feel fucking talented and you walk in and you do your work and you get cut. Right. There's no good, bad, right or wrongness in experiencing disappointment or frustration or, you know, surprise or even entitlement. Whatever comes up, it's not a problem. 

And I do think there's like some foundational work you can do to lessen it and to create a different relationship with auditions in general, which is just like a side tangent again. But I want you to imagine that it's like, you have the ability to go from feeling fucking talented and fucking lit up to having the experience of surprise, disappointment, frustration when you don't get kept or don't get a call back or don't hear anything from your agents. And then like having the ability to feel that in your body, to be with it, and then go about your day, right?

And then, even having the possibility of being exhausted, giving yourself space to rest and honor that exhaustion or that, you know, that leaky energy, to look at it and then still feeling grounded and available for whatever comes next. Especially if that's like a dinner with your friend or with your partner or your mom, right? I think so often we avoid things or we brace for experiences because we aren't sure about how we are going to feel in the circumstance. And that's honestly true all of the time, right? We can like prepave and we can create and Create intention for the experience that we want to have and we won't actually know until we're there in the experience.

And so this is, I think, something that creates safety to have new experiences and to know that you're safe and that you have your own back in any circumstance. Because again, someone might curse you out. I don't know. Someone having a bad day might curse you out and interrupt your flow. And I just want you to imagine that you could like have neutrality for their words, one, but even if you were like really insulted by your server at a restaurant or by someone's energy when they called that, even if you were rattled, you could sit with that, process it, and then come back to neutral or find another feeling that you want to access.

Like it just creates so much freedom. And I think structure, maybe structure is the word I'm looking for, almost like this reliability on yourself and your skillset of processing emotions, so that you can move freely. And so that you don't have to feel locked into one feeling for the rest of your day, right?

Again, I feel like there was a time in my life where I had this perception that I was like bipolar and no shade to people who have and experience bipolar disorder, right? But I would be like almost uncomfortable or weirded out that I could go from sad to happy, that I could, you know, process my emotions and then move on with my day. Like, it almost freaked me out. Like, I thought maybe I shouldn't be able to jump from one end of the spectrum to the other. But I think there's a difference, again, when you're doing that out of avoidance or out of discomfort versus when you're in the experience of your emotion and then welcoming yourself, the freedom to slide up the scale or slide down or move here or move there, right?

And I think again, the, the beauty of having Emotional Agility is that life circumstances will happen. Right? Things will come up, things will change, things will shift, things will be delayed. And when we have the ability to look at our thoughts, to process our emotions, and then to move with them, it does create the space to access different solutions, different possibilities, and new ways to expand. 

So again, I just wanted to introduce this concept so that you can, one, normalize that we get to be with ourselves and our emotions, no matter where we are, without making them wrong. We get to allow our emotions to shift. And that's a beautiful thing. That's not good, bad, right, or wrong. That can actually be a benefit of partnering with your emotions. And it can also lessen the intensity, not to say that intensity is wrong because sometimes it's really beautiful to be in the intense grief or anger or frustration, right? There's just so much to learn from our emotions when we're willing to hear them and honor them.

And I think that sometimes those huge eruptions of emotions come from not really acknowledging and witnessing and allowing them to be here when they are, right. The Emotional Agility gives you permission and freedom to release emotions, to allow them to move through your body, for you to experience them without needing them to control your day or to feel like you're at the mercy of your emotions, right?

Because our emotions are always connected to our thoughts, which is what's giving us the experience that we're having or vice versa, right? Our thought feeling combos are always connected and they always correlate. So that's again why it's so valuable to have this next level awareness of your emotions and then welcome in this practice of really being flexible, I don't really love that word for some reason. I have an aversion to it at times. I think because people use the idea of flexibility against themselves to do things they don't want to do. Actually, I do know. That's exactly why. 

And it's not good, bad, right, or wrong to have the, the skill of allowing your emotions to feel really smooth. And I feel like that's the image that I get when I think of Emotional Agility. That you can be with, experience, flow through, transitioning - in a way that is just so even and so, I don't know, smooth, delicious. You get the idea. 

So, yeah, again, I will say, do not use this podcast against you if you're not at a place where your emotions feel like that yet. And remember that we're not ever going for 10 out of 10 perfection in anything that we're doing, right? This is just another way of understanding, relating, and inviting in a new experience of your emotions. And to be willing to look at where am I maybe not allowing my emotions to be that smooth or that flowing? And where am I still creating very rigid structures of how I think my emotions should feel, when they're allowed to be here, when they're inconvenient, when they're disrupting my life, et cetera. 

Okay, so that's what I got for you this week Emotional Agility. And I'm curious to know how you would Rate yourself on a 1-10 in your emotional agility and what do you think would be different if you were really honoring that this process of feeling your feelings could be smoother? That you could allow more safety to create transitions that feel really beautiful, right? Because again when they're not good bad right or wrong, I think we add less Second Layer and it just creates space and possibility and freedom to allow yourself to feel whatever you're feeling in real time and to allow yourself to pivot and transition. All right, I'll meet you back here for another episode. 

Hey, I want to invite you to get started because if this is blowing your mind, imagine the impact of when we actually work together. If you're committed to loving your life as an actor, singer, or dancer, come join us inside of The Performers Plan. You get lifetime access to the program, the community, and high quality coaching for the rest of your career. Go to kelliyoungmanwellness.com/theperformersplan to join us now. I'll see you inside.