The Pit In Your Stomach Is Not Regression

You will never fully escape the emotions that have torn you down and sent you into periods of compulsive scrolling or lack of focus or shame

But you can learn how to not only manage them but use them as a source of power for yourself

I put a piece of content out recently talking about how a week or two into every January I feel like absolutely shit about myself, regardless of how well I’m doing in life

Like without fail I get this pit in my stomach of shame and weird embarrassment and all sorts of other emotions, and to be honest I can’t exactly tell you why it happens.

We could sit here all day and hypothesize “Why does Flint feel like shit a week into every new year?”

But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter really matter why, what matters is that I am capable of handling it

The way of overcoming these emotions is by using a holistic approach that uses your core values to identify alignment as well as preventative, in the moment, and reflective ways of collecting data from misalignments in order to prepare for an act more proudly going forward

It’s pretty simple (though not necessarily easy), if you’re interested feel free to reach out with the word “alignment” I’m happy to talk you through it.

A funny thing occurs though as you move through the levels of being able to handle these moments is that you recognize the moments themselves and the emotions mostly never go away

Like not to speak it into existence, but there’s a pretty high chance that if I felt this way at the same time almost every year of my life, there’s a good chance it will happen again in the upcoming years.

It may not, but it also may.

That’s not a bad thing, it just warrants me separating the fact that I may feel bad or even regress a bit during those moments, but just because that happens, doesn’t meant mean I have lost all the effort I have put into myself.

Overall, I handle these emotions significantly better to the point where they don’t affect the actual actions that I am taking.

This happens so consistently until you actually start to crave the lows, not in a masochistic way necessarily but as tests of where you’re at.

For example, I had a couple days this holiday season where I feel like I could have handled those emotions better, specifically

By saying yes to fewer things and

Having organized certain physical structures before traveling such as where I would work out, shop for food, etc.

Knowing that these two things can help me reserve more bandwidth for adjusting to anything that might pop up spontaneously.

So instead of starting to resent the holidays because sometimes there are strong emotions, I look forward to implementing these next holiday season and seeing how well I can handle whatever may show up.

And in doing this, the thing that was providing me with pain actually becomes a source of opportunity and power, even though the actual emotions or events don’t necessarily change.

Meaning the people you most admire in this life for their discipline or diligence probably feel the exact same anxiety and embarrassment that you feel, it just affects them less because they are more capable of handling it, reframing it, and continuing to take action regardless of (or even because of) it.