Clearing Space for Humanness: Discover Your True Self

Welcome to today's video. Today, I'm going to teach you how to actually step back into your humanness, how to feel and process your feelings and emotions, understand them better, so that you can go out there and actually be more human. Let's dive in. I'm going to teach you from my own past struggles, because this is something that I really struggle with for a really long time. And I always like to say it on the podcast, I am in no sort of way a perfect human. I am just another flawed individual trying to figure out this whole life thing. And as I start to figure more stuff out, I start to share more stuff with you guys. I always like to use myself as a guinea pig. And one thing that I learned is that I had picked up a defense mechanism early in my childhood, my teen years, and I kind of carried with me for a little while. And one thing that I notice in other people, because the fact that it's like, oh, I can see this in myself, I. I know how to work through it. Then I start to see it in other people, is that one thing that I notice in this defense mechanism that we all kind of build in ourselves is that we tend to block out a lot of feelings and a lot of emotions. And for me, I blocked out a lot of my feelings and a lot of emotions for years and years and years. And, you know, I think having a alcoholic father and, you know, things that came from it, and him saying he's going to pick me up sometimes and never showed up, um, stuff that I experienced before the age of 10, before my parents got divorced, just kind of made me start to block out some emotions. And I think a lot of people do this, you know, Then there was him passing away at 15 years old. And, like, four days later, I went back to school and I told nobody. I think I just learned, not purposefully, it wasn't something I did consciously in any sort of way. I just learned not to allow myself to feel my feelings and then just to have things happen in my life, and then just to go on about my day pushing the all away. And to the point where actually, you know, at one point in time, there was one day where I actually wondered. I was like, do I just not have any feelings towards anything at all? Like, I had pushed them away for so long that I was just kind of numb to feelings. I was kind of numb to everything. And I had to go on this path of, like, rediscovering my humanness. And so I think a lot of people do this. I think this is something that we all kind of naturally do. You know, a lot of times, you know, you can have something really bad happen to you, like somebody. Somebody that you really love dies and it hurts so much that what you would rather do is be busy instead of actually feel it. Like, we've all heard someone do this before. We have done this before, right? Someone is going through a lot of pain. They're going through a lot of grief. And instead of actually feeling it and processing it and letting go of it and releasing it, they say something like, well, I just need to keep myself busy right now. AKA I don't want to let myself feel the pain. We all know someone who's done this before or have personally done this, right? I'm just. Yeah, I just got to. I just got to keep busy right now, which basically means I need to stay busy so that I don't feel my pain, I don't process my emotions. But if you don't feel it, if you don't process it, it stays with you. And I realize that some of the most emotional people in the world actually do this because their emotions could be so strong. I had someone that was in a coaching group of mine about three or four years ago, and she was like, you know what? Like, I just don't feel as deeply as others. I don't. I don't understand when people feel deeply about this. And by that time, I had been coaching her for about six months or something like that. And I said, no, that's bullshit. I think that you actually feel deeper than others and you are afraid of it, and so you've learned to shut it off. And, you know, there's childhood traumas and things that came about that made her be that way. But she, after I had said it, she's like, oh, my God, I think that you're right. It's not that I don't have the emotions. It's that the emotions are so strong, I don't know how to handle them. And I've just learned to repress all of my emotions. And so when you look at being a human being, a human is this incredible experience. This whole life thing is fucking crazy, right? It is amazing. It is hard, it is beautiful. It is a shit show. It is all of these things. And one of the beautiful things about being a human, about being born into this body that you're born into, is that you get to experience feelings and emotions. And that's one thing that most animals and most living beings on this earth don't really get to Feel, they don't really get emotions, they don't really get feelings to work through. And there's a lot of highs in life and there's also a lot of lows. And one thing that I have realized is you can't experience the highest of highs if you don't allow yourself to experience the lowest of lows. The amount that you restrict the low in your life and the way that the amount that you'll allow yourself to experience and you restrict those low feelings, you will also restrict the high feelings in the exact amount as well. And so if you really want to feel the highest of highs in life, you also have to let yourself feel the lowest of lows when they come in. And I remember for me, about, you know, let me think, what year is it? Yeah, about 13 years ago, I remember I was going through something that was really, really tough and it really, like, hurt so bad for months and months and months. And I remember, even though I was going through so much pain that I was going through, I remember taking a step back in my mind and being like, this is crazy that I can feel this much, like, even though this sucks and it's painful and I don't want to be going through it, how beautiful is it that I have the capacity to feel this deeply towards anything? Children throw temper tantrums when it's a very heightened experience. Now, mind you, children don't process the world the same way that we do. One of the biggest things that I see that parents make huge mistakes of is treating their 3 year old or 4 year old as if they're a 27 year old and they're processing the world the same way. They're not. What can be traumatic to them is absolutely nothing to us. And so, you know, children will throw temper tantrums. And at a certain age, it's fine, it's not a big deal when they're a newborn, but at a certain age, the parents are like, I've had enough of this. And most people's parents just say, hey, enough of the temper tantrums. And they make them stop. And I think that we subconsciously learn that those feelings and those emotions and expressing those emotions are bad. And so we learn, okay, I feel this feeling of, I need to let go of this emotion, but I'm just gonna hold onto it. And we kind of learn that, you know, I'm not blaming anybody. Children do what they do, parents do what they do. But I just want you to become aware of maybe your children, if they're throwing a temper Tantrum. Now, obviously, they might be trying to get what they want, but maybe there's also emotions running through them that they're trying to get rid of. And so the. The important thing to really think about is that most of us have been taught to repress and depress our emotions instead of express them, right? So when we depress them and when we repress them instead of express them, it can lead to depression. There's just so much emotion that's inside of our body. We don't know what to do with it. We don't know how to release it. And it's just easier to do almost nothing. So what do we do? We're in this situation. Some of you guys listening are like, man, I completely relate to that. What do I do? Well, you've got to give yourself permission to feel again. That's the first thing. Give yourself permission to feel, to have emotions and to be a human and realize there's nothing wrong with it. Coming from somebody, me, who cut off his feelings for a very long time, I'm giving you full permission to feel again. And when you take, you know, I always love to use the example that Wayne Dyer always uses. When you take an orange and you squeeze the orange and you put a whole bunch of pressure on that orange, what comes out of it? Orange juice does. When you put pressure on that orange, whatever's inside of it is going to come out of it. Well, when you have a lot of pressure put on you, what comes out when it's getting to be too much, when life is just boiling up and things just feels like you're spinning a million plates, you don't know how to keep it all together. What comes out of you? Is it anger? Is it sadness? Is it just rage? Is it crying? Is it confusion? Lots of times the circumstances in your life that are causing so much pressure, that are making you feel like you're under pressure, they're not causing the feelings of anger, sadness, rage, crying, confusion, any of that stuff, but it's getting to a threshold where you can no longer hold onto these feelings. There's so much pressure on you or feels like there's so much pressure on you that whatever's inside of you is going to come out. The same way that whenever you squeeze and put pressure on an orange, orange juices come out. Orange juice comes out. Why? Because orange juice is what's inside. Well, whatever comes out of you when there's a lot of pressure put on you is what's actually living inside of you at all points in Time once again, the circumstances of your life don't create those feelings most times, but that pressure is what helps you release those feelings. You know, when you go on to. If you ever happen to be a type of person, wants to go and, you know, go on a psychedelic journey, do spiritual journey, something like that. When emotions come up, one of the things that they always say is, they say what's coming is going. So what is coming up in those journeys is actually what your body's trying to get rid of. What's coming is going. It's trying to release all of that stuck energy that you have inside of you. So we all really need to make space for our humanness again. We need to make some space to be human. Allow yourself to feel allowed. Allow yourself to be again. So how do you do that? Well, I'm gonna give you a couple different tips. Number one, I'm actually gonna give you a huge tip. And this is coming from someone who's very busy, you know, has the podcast that he runs, has a whole other side business with 30 employees. Stop being so fucking busy. Like, stop being so busy. A lot of times people are keeping themselves so busy and so distracted, so they don't have to feel anything. And so they will be working all the time. They'll be busy with their children, they'll be on their phone all the time. They'll be distracted, they'll be watching. Like, give yourself some space. Give yourself some silence. Like, give yourself an opening for you to finally get back to feeling again. Don't be so busy. That's the first thing. The second thing is allow yourself every once in a while to throw an adult temper tantrum. Now, don't do it around anybody else, but I'm just gonna give you permission to do this, okay? We all need to get better at expressing versus repressing our emotions and repressing them and not allowing them to come out. Now, I'm not saying that you need to take this and direct it at somebody else, but allow yourself to express all of the emotions in the moment or as close to the moment as possible so it doesn't stay with you, because if it stays with you, it will eventually come out, and it'll usually come out at the wrong time. So the problem is, a lot of times it comes out, your emotions and your things that you've been repressed for so long come out on the people that you don't want it to. So, you know, you might get a little bit stressed. Things are going off at work, and then what happens you blow up on your children when you get home. But that anger is probably misplaced from something that happened to you years ago, a breakup that you didn't heal, from something that your parents did when you were 12 that you never fully expressed. And your children are basically just collateral damage for your feelings that you never let yourself feel. Think about that for a second. A lot of times your children, your spouse, the people that you're closest to, that you love the most, become collateral damage for the feelings that you've been depressing in your body, in your life for so long, and you never let yourself feel. It's not their fault. So what do we do? What do we need to do? We need to be able to have an adult temper tantrum every once in a while. Everyone's out of the house and you've just had a stressful day, Children aren't there, wife isn't there, and you just really need to get something out of you. Whatever it is you need to do to have an adult temper tantrum, to work out as tough as you possibly can, to scream as loud as you possibly can into a pillow, to punch your bed, to beat a pillow against the bed, to go to a kickboxing class, to run until you start to cry because it's so. I don't know what it is, but whatever it is for you, figure out what feels the most authentic for you to be able to get that out. Whatever it is that feels best for you in that moment, do it right. Just make sure you get it out of you. Make sure, first off, that you're safe, and second off, that no one else is around you that can make them feel unsafe. And then whatever it was, it won't come out at the wrong moment, at the wrong people. And you could say, you know what? I'm not going to hold on to this anymore. I'm not going to hold on to this anger that I have towards this person, towards my father from when I was nine years old. I'm going to allow myself to feel it and express it. It might be screaming, it might be crying, it might be screaming, I'm crying. I don't know what it is, but. But you have to allow yourself to get back to feeling your feelings and feeling your humanness. And one of the things that you'll start to notice is as you allow yourself, start to release a lot of these things, if you think you're the type of person has a short temper, you don't have a short temper. You'll notice years down the road when you start expressing all this stuff that you don't really have much of a temper, the short temper was just a buildup of all of these emotions that you never let yourself feel. All this anger from your childhood and your teenage years and being bullied that you never let yourself feel. You didn't have a short temper. You just didn't process your emotions correctly. You're not a sad person. It's just maybe you didn't process those, that sadness when you were younger. And so allow yourself just to kind of reconnect, give yourself permission to be a human again. Because I promise you, you can feel at a much deeper capacity than you know. And as you start to get better at expressing your emotions, you'd also start to understand your emotions a whole lot more. And that is for a whole other episode. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a massive favor. There's a lot of people in this world right now that are going through the exact same thing and need to hear this. If you could share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it, Rob Dial, Jr. R O B D I A L J R I would appreciate it. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it and from Grassroots, and so I want to continue to help more and more people. And the way that we do that, obviously, is from more people finding out about it, from you sharing it. So if you like to share it, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. I just had a friend text me this morning who lives in Rome, Italy, and he's in a group text with his volleyball group. And a lady that's in his volleyball group shared one of my podcast episodes inside of their WhatsApp and he sent me a screenshot and he's like, this is awesome. Like, she loved the episode. She sent it to 18 of her friends that she plays volleyball with. So whatever it might be for you for sharing it, I would greatly appreciate it. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.