I just needed to cry...

I’m gonna take a page from Brene Brown today and get vulnerable with y’all. 

Last week I got some feedback from someone that I respect that really threw me off balance. 

You can probably guess the feedback wasn’t positive. This person basically recommended I throw out my idea and think of something new. After I’d done a lot of work based on this one idea already.

I managed to keep a straight face and thank her for the feedback, but I’ll admit now, I was mildly devastated. 

And the reason I’m sharing this with you, is because it’s a great example of the impact that emotional energy can have on our overall energy.

When this happened, I was overwhelmed with negative emotions, and right along with that came the negative self-talk (“She’s right. It’s a stupid idea” and on and on...)

And normally when this happens, I get stuck in a downward spiral of negativity, ruminating on all the reasons why I suck (sound familiar?)

And then my energy takes a dive, because negative emotions are draining. And if I let myself get stuck ruminating, it’s just going to keep me in that negative, low energy place.

I didn’t want that to happen though, so I knew that I had to get those yucky emotions out of me. Unfortunately, we can’t do that by force though. In order to get emotions out of us, we need to process them so that they can move through and then out of us.

So in that moment, I realized that I just needed to cry. I needed to let myself give in to how crappy I was feeling and not resist it. 

Normally, when I feel crappy, my instinct is to either resist or avoid it (Netflix binge anyone?).

I’ve learned though, that a good Netflix binge, only prolongs my crappy mood.

After I cried, I didn’t feel instantly better, but my mood stabilized and instead of thinking thoughts like “I suck” and “I’m so stupid”, I was able to actually remember that her feedback wasn’t as terrible as I initially thought. 

She suggested I take another look at my idea, and even though I didn’t fully agree with what she said, I could see her point and realize that I could make adjustments without throwing away all of my work.

My initial emotions blew her statements way out of proportion, and once I was able to lower the intensity of those emotions by having a good cry, then I was able to see the situation more clearly.

And by the next day, I was feeling better and wasn’t having those negative thoughts circling in my brain and dragging my energy down. 

As an entrepreneur (or anyone, really), it’s easy to get dragged down emotionally by negative feedback, or sometimes even just lack of response to what we put out into the world. 

So the next time this happens to you, just know that you’re not alone. And feel free to join me in a good cry to keep that energy flowing.

Also, you can enter your name and email below to download my free energy tracker to help you track how your daily activities affect your energy. You’ll also be signed up to get my weekly emails to help you learn how to be more intentional with your energy so you can get stuff done without burning out!