Be Like A Child And Let Your True Feelings Show

Now, how does it make you feel when you visualize yourself saying, no, advocating for yourself and making clear what you want? It probably feels scary, right? But doesn't it also feel a little bit empowering? You're listening to the Circle C Project. Welcome to the Triple CE Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity. Clarity, boost confidence, build courage, so you can live lifeless. I'm your host, Ryan Spence, the big lord, dropout, life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip hop and big hairy, audacious goals. If you're tired of living the life you think you should want and ready to start living the life you want, this podcast will help you get from where you are to where you really want to be. So now we're friends. I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat, and allow me to guide you towards living. Living a life that's lit. Hey, welcome to episode 98 of the Triple C Project. I'm going to kick off this week with a question for you, something for you to ponder on and ruminate as you listen in. Question is, where are you suppressing your true feelings? And I ask this question because we are conditioned as we get older to suppress our feelings, to not really say how we feel. So here's what I mean. When you go into the office and someone says, how are you really? The answer is fine or really busy surviving. You know, they don't necessarily want to hear that you're having a really bad day or a bad week or you've had a row with your spouse or you're feeling a bit shit about work, really, or you're back saying, oh, you know, that's not really why they are asking. Sometimes they might be, but generally they're not. It's. It's a polite. It's polite conversation. It's small talk, right? That's what you do in polite society. That's what we're conditioned to do. But we're rarely allowed or permitted or give ourselves permission to really express how we feel because we fear what people will think about us, what that expression will say about us. And you've only got to look at celebrity life and people who speak up or get annoyed or act, quote, unquote, badly in particular situations, and the vitriol that they get sometimes leading to cancellation, to see that it's frowned upon, to fully express the way you feel, particularly if the way that you feel isn't that great, you're not that happy, you're a little bit pissed off. And a couple of months ago, back in February, I wrote an article on substack and I thought that I would share that here because there's a difference between when we are children and when we get older. When we are children, we have no fear about showing how we feel. And as we get older, that kind of gets squeezed out of us. And it got me thinking, if it didn't, and if we maintained that level of awareness and expression, would we be less likely to end up in situations that don't serve us, in situations that are toxic, in situations that bring us down, in situations that really aren't where we want to be? Because if you're in something and it's not working for you, and you just say it's not working for me, I'm out. Express yourself authentically and honestly, then you're going to be able to extricate yourself from situation that don't work for you far more quickly and far more easily. But instead what we do is we stay and we suppress those feelings. And the suppression of those feelings is a contributing factor in the stress and the energy drain that we feel. So I'm going to read the article. I'm going to just read it rather than try to redo it for the episode. And this is also going to be, in some form, it may change slightly a chapter in the new book that I'm writing based on the Triple C project. So you're getting a little bit of a sneak preview here to to what is going to be in the book. So the article is called connect to your inner child and let your inner feelings fly. And I'm just going to go ahead and read it for you. And I hope, whether you're a parent or not, I hope that you find this helpful and it gets you thinking about where you're not showing up and displaying your true feelings and where you might like to start doing that and what might be different if you did. Okay, here goes. Have you ever been awakened by a scream? A scream so loud and forceful that you believe the screamer must be in intense pain? If not, be grateful if you have. You must, like me, be a parent. My 6 year old awoke this morning and emitted such a scream. He wasn't in pain though, at least not physical pain. So what was the reason for this rude awakening? He woke up to find my wife had already got out of bed to get ready for work and he was pissed. It's annoying as hell being woken up by a blood curdling cry. But until his mum got back into bed so he could get up with her, he would make his displeasure Known and continue screaming. Amidst all the fuss, I resigned myself to the fact that I was never getting back to sleep. So I took my 8 year old downstairs for breakfast. I got him the bowl of granola he politely requested, then prepared and gulped down my protein shake while taking some much needed coffee. All was well and I mentally declared that my 8 year old was now my favorite child. Then he asked for toast. Now, maybe it's my fault for refusing to eat bad bread. You see, I've got myself in a position where my kids will only eat fresh sourdough bread from my local bakery. Now, when I was a kid, I ate what I was given. I ate standard supermarket loaf, additives and all, and we didn't have much money and I knew no different. But my Singapore born bougie offspring have specific bread requirements and won't settle for anything less than, as they call it, crunchy toast. And they chomped through it at such a rate that I now have a loyalty card for the bakery. Anyway, I thought I was prepared for the toast request, but when I went to get the bread from the cupboard, the loaf was almost done. Still, there was just enough bread for the little prince to have. Two slices. Or so I thought as I slid them in the toaster. Boy, was I wrong. The toast popped up. I spread on the requested vegan butter and Marmite and presented the plate to His Royal Highness. Then all hell broke loose. You would have thought I'd taken the contents of the rubbish bin and served it to him by how he reacted, screaming and jumping up and down like a deranged kangaroo. What was my crime? One slice of toast was smaller than the other, for fuck's sake. By that point, I'd had it with my darling children. I took my coffee. Can you believe all of this occurred before caffeine had touched my lips? I took my coffee to the living room, shut the door, and employed my yogic skills to prevent the rage bubbling inside of me from spinning over Good fucking morning. I was mad with both kids then and told them in no uncertain terms how ridiculous and unacceptable their behavior was. But once they were safely deposited at school, I returned home to my Zen den and reflected on the morning shenanigans. And I saw that in their own way, they were doing exactly what what I invite my clients to do. Okay, disclaimer here. No, I don't invite my clients to throw tantrums because they didn't wake up next to the person they wanted to or because their toast was the wrong size. But I do invite them to Express their feelings fully and advocate for what they want. And in the calm after the very, very big storm, I could see things differently. My 6 year old was annoyed and probably anxious that his mother wasn't next to him when he woke up. That's what he expected and that's what he wanted. When he didn't get what he expected and what he wanted, instead of doing what we're conditioned to do, which is shrug it off and suppress our feelings and pretend everything's fine, he made his feelings known clearly and forcefully stating what he wanted. My 8 year old expected toast of an equal size. That's what he expected and that's what he wanted. And when he didn't get that, he let it be known he wasn't happy and argued his case. He didn't simply state, he didn't simply say, okay, it's not what I want, but I'll just eat it anyway. To be polite, he raised hell. Both kids let their feelings fly. Now, don't get me wrong, the behaviour exhibited by both kids was pretty awful. And there are valid reasons that explain that behaviour to some degree. Reasons that I won't go into here, but don't believe for a second that I'm in any way condoning it. But what I am doing is sharing this because I want you to momentarily put yourself in a child's shoes and think back to a recent situation where you did something you didn't want to do because you felt you should or you had to. Maybe it was taking on a task at work, doing a favour for a family member or a friend who never does anything for you, or going to an event with a friend when you'd have much rather stayed in your nice cozy home and ask yourself, why did you do it? Were you trying to be polite? Maybe you were trying to enhance your career prospects. Maybe you were just trying to keep the peace and maybe you just didn't want to upset your friend. Now ask yourself, how did it make you feel to do that thing? Did you feel unhappy, resentful, angry? And did you then express those feelings or did you suppress them because that's what you're supposed to do? Suck it up, get on with it. Were you scared of what people might say? Okay, now I want you to replay that scenario again that you just thought about, but play it again and look at it through the lens of a child. And if, like me, you were a good child who never did anything wrong, of course, use my kids as your model. How would you have dealt with that situation differently? If you Were a child, would you have done the thing you didn't want to do? Or would you have stood strong and boldly said, no, I don't want to. Now, how does it make you feel when you visualize yourself saying no, advocating for yourself and making clear what you want? It probably feels scary, right? But doesn't it also feel a little bit empowering? I bet it does. And you see, this is what happens when you find yourself. You get to know yourself on a deeper level. Your wants, your needs, your desires, not anybody else's. Yours. And you get to know what it feels like to live life lit. You get super attuned to the things that dampen that spark within you. And with that knowledge of self comes strength and courage that allows you to push past the fear of disappointing people, ditch the Persona of the perpetual people pleaser and be intentional about what you say yes to and what you say no to. This doesn't mean that you never do anything to help anybody else. And this doesn't mean that you just continue along on this individualistic path because there's always going to be trade offs. But what it does mean is that you're intentional when you say yes and you're intentional when you say no. And you know exactly why you're saying each of them, because it aligns with what it is that you stand for, what it is that you believe, the values that you hold dear. And so here's what I say to you. The next time you're asked to do something that makes your heart drop, or you're asked to accept something that you know you don't want, ask yourself, what would my inner child do? Play back that visualization. Go through the questions that I've just mentioned and ask yourself, what would my inner child do? And then do that. But maybe leave out the screaming and the bouncing part. Okay, so that's the end of the article. And I really hope that you see how this can be applied in your own life. We all have situations where we do things that we don't want to do. And sometimes there really isn't any choice, there really isn't any kind of option or there is a choice. But the repercussions of all the consequences of making the particular choice may be graver than we want to bear at this moment in time. And that's fine. But there are lots of small things that we do which we really don't want to do, but we agree to because it's the done thing. It's what's expected of us. You don't make a fuss, you just keep your feelings to yourself. Particularly here in the uk, that's kind of the culture. So instead of doing that, I want you, the next time that something comes up to think and ask yourself what would your inner child do if they're presented with this thing that they didn't want to do and determine how you're therefore then going to respond. And the thing is, it's like anything, you build the muscle. So when you get used to pushing back, when you get used to saying no, well, the more you say, actually should I say, the more you get used to it and it starts to become a lot easier and you'll find that you become a lot happier, you create a lot more space and time for yourself and you also start to become known as someone who sets boundaries where people won't ask you to do a particular thing because they know that you won't do it. And so it actually becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. So I'm going to leave you with that for today. Ask yourself what would your inner child do? And as I say, when you find yourself, you get super attuned to the things that dampen that spark within you and I want to help you to find that spark again. Because once you have that spark, once you have that reason for getting up every day, once you can see what it is that you're working for, where it is that you're trying to get to, it fills you with an energy that is unmatched, is unrivaled. You start to just feel like yes, I know exactly what I want to do and I'm going to try all of these things to make it happen to get there. So this is why I'm holding these Find your spark sessions and find your spark session is one off session, one off coaching session one hour plus five days post session support to really get that engine roaring again, to really get that spark re lit within you. It's not going to solve all of your problems and completely transform your life in one session. That's kind of not what it's designed for but it's designed to get that the sort of the wheels turning designed to start to get you to see that things could be different and start to get you to think differently about what's possible for you, about what you can achieve, about where you can go. The link is in the description of the show to check out the session and book your session too. There's promo price until the end of the May and I'd love to see you there. I'D love to help you find your spark and get you to a place where you can start to do what it is that you want. Create the life that you want instead of living the life that you think that you should want. That's us for this week. Thank you for being here. As always, drop me an email, let me know what insight you took away from the show, how it helped you in a particular situation to let your feelings fly. Hit me up at hey@iamrinespence.com or find me on the socials Instagram am underscorespence or over on LinkedIn Ryan Spence. You'll know it. You'll know when it's me. You'll see my photo smiling out at you from a nice blue background. Okay, thanks again for being here. Until next week, stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life Lit. Thanks for tuning in to the Triple C project. In the spirit of the Triple C is the three things that you can do to support the show. Head to ratethispodcast.com Triple C or over to your favorite podcast app and leave a review. Reviews really help people checking out shows to see what they can expect and how this show can help them. Second thing you can do? Share Share this episode Share a previous episode with a friend. Someone who you feel could benefit benefit from what I'm throwing down on this here show. And number three, head to iamrinespence.com get on the mailing list. I'll be sharing news about the show, news about what I'm up to. My new book Start writing soon. So to be the first to be in the know, you need to get yourself on the list. Really appreciate you being here. And until next week, stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life lit.