25 | Organize Your Emotions as You Grow Your Business with Rhonda Farr

00:00:00 – Tracy Hoth
Being an entrepreneur is a roller coaster, at least for me, it has been. I have never quit something so many times in my life, looked into other possibilities of getting a job and come back to restarting. I think if I would just stop quitting, it might be easier. When Rhonda Farr suggested the idea of a podcast episode about the emotions of a business owner, I was hooked immediately, and her conversation did not let me down. It was so good, and it gives you really practical, as you know, if you’ve listened to me, that I like action steps. She gives us some action steps on our emotions, on processing our emotions and how to think about them. So you are going to love this episode. On a personal note, you might have noticed that I have been launching my first round of Organized Coach Academy, and we started when I’m recording this, we started yesterday, and I love it. I cannot wait to help figure out, solve problems and help all of the coaches in there get organized. Several of you have told me you are in on this, you want to be a part, but this just wasn’t the right time for you. Go to Simply Squared Away OCA and get on the waiting list. Get on there immediately. I will give a special bonus when we start the next group in January. The people on the waiting list will get a special bonus. So get on there and let’s get into this episode.

Are you ready to work less, feel more organized and productive, streamline repetitive tasks, and implement systems that allow your coaching business to run smoothly even without you? If so, you’re in the right place. Welcome to the Organized Coach Podcast, your go to source for practical tips and solutions. I’m your host, Tracy Hoth, professional organizer, certified life coach, simplifying expert, and most of all, down to earth fellow coach just like you. No matter if you think you’re missing the organizing gene, have ADHD, or just love anything organizing, I’m here to help you become an organized coach with a business that Discover how Rhonda Farr transformed her coaching business through embracing emotions and harnessing emotional intelligence, ultimately emphasizing the power of connection and growth in society works for you. Pull up a seat and let’s get started.

I posted a question and Rhonda replied to me about organizing your emotions in your business, which intrigued me completely. I am very excited to have Rhonda Farr on the podcast today. Welcome, Rhonda.

00:02:43 – Rhonda Farr
I’m Rhonda Farr. I’m a certified life coach who helps high achieving men in their romantic relationships. Actually, I help them learn more emotional IQ and help them create more emotional intimacy. That’s not something they’re used to even thinking about. It’s the most fun thing that I can think of to do.

00:03:04 – Tracy Hoth
That’s so interesting. Now, do you help women with that too, or you find that your niche is just men, or do you do both?

00:03:10 – Rhonda Farr
I have a couple of women on my schedule. There are a couple of female coaches who just want to learn emotional work, too. I also have a couple of wives of the high achieving men who are saying, “Help me figure this out. What am I dealing with here?” But mostly men – 95% men.

00:03:29 – Tracy Hoth
Oh, my goodness. Okay, then that leads me to wonder, how did you get into emotion work? I mean, I know with coaching in our training that it involves emotions and processing and feeling through emotions, but how did you specifically kind of be drawn to the emotion part?

00:03:48 – Rhonda Farr
Well, this is a great story. It starts out with me on the bathroom floor in the fetal position crying my eyeballs out. Wow. Yeah, nice, right? I had just gotten turned down for yet another contract position as a coach. So I had been trying to start my business since about 2017. That’s when I got certified, and I was a stay at home mom. I hadn’t been successful, especially as an entrepreneur ever. At thaI didn’t even really want to be an entrepreneur. I thought, oh, I’m going to go all in on these coaching tools that I love. When I started doing the work, trying to grow a business, I was like, whoa, wait, this is way harder than I thought, way more than I signed up for. Okay, I’ll have somebody else who’s already done that work. Just save me. Like they’ve already grown the business. They will hire me. I think it was the third contract position I got turned down for, and I invested all this money in the life coach school. I had invested oh, my gosh, so much in this business. Here’s a super secret that might make this it’s not really a secret, but it might make this story more fun. It’s something I don’t love to tell everybody. I had taken out a loan against the mortgage or against the equity of our home to pay for most of this, right? Here I am on the floor crying. I’ve taken this money from my family, from my kids. I don’t even know if I’m going to be able to pay this back. It’s, like, so much. I am crying my eyeballs out in despair. Where does it come in, the healthy part of this, right? So I remember I got up off the floor and I was like, all right, I got to put my money where my mouth is. People have been telling me to feel my emotions. I don’t even know what that really means. I picked myself up off that dirty floor in the bathroom. I’ve got four boys, by the way, if that helps you think of what my house looks like. Sometimes I went into my bedroom, and I remember lying on the bed, and I just remember saying, all right, I’m going to feel it all. Where is it at? I will tell you, the shame, the embarrassment, the fear, the worry, it all started to come in layers, just pulsing through my body until I could face all of it and get up and say, okay, I’m going to keep doing that. I’m going to keep feeling emotions as long as it takes until I figure out how to grow this business. There was a lot in between that and where I am now. But that really is where it started, when I had no place else to go except for to feel.

00:06:18 – Tracy Hoth
Yeah. Why I’m noticing why is that bringing up emotion in me?

00:06:23 – Rhonda Farr
Yeah. Why is it? That’s a good question.

00:06:25 – Tracy Hoth
Yes. I will have to go ponder on that, but I think because I bet so many of us have felt that as business owners, as people who’ve invested money, that shame and discouragement, like you listed those emotions, I think that we all can relate to that. As business owners, as entrepreneurs, as coaches. Yeah, that is a good story. And then you’re willing to feel it, and then what happens?

00:06:56 – Rhonda Farr
I started putting myself out there more, saying, hey, listen, let me help you. Right. Because before I was kind of embarrassed. I was coaching around sexuality, and at this time, I wasn’t really talking to men. I was just talking to anybody who would listen. While I was saying, well, I’m brave enough to talk about this, and I know people need help with it. Secretly, inside, I was thinking that I don’t want the church lady to know, but maybe if my parents asked me. I had all these thoughts and feelings about that, and I had to work through the embarrassment or the insecurities. When you’re willing to feel those emotions, you start stepping out a little bit more and saying, “Hey, here I am. I can tolerate what it feels like for you to not like my message or for me to be embarrassed to share my message.” I felt a lot worse than that. This isn’t as bad as what it was on the bathroom floor that day. Right? When you learn how tolerate emotion, you start putting yourself out there and being louder and being more seen.

00:07:54 – Tracy Hoth
Yeah. When we don’t focus on emotion, when we’re, I guess, avoiding it kind of, then what happens? What have you noticed for yourself but then also helping clients?

00:08:08 – Rhonda Farr
That’s a really good question. What happens when you start avoiding emotion is you need the rest of the world to validate you in order for you to feel okay. For example, if I am not willing to feel that embarrassment, that shame, that fear, whatever, then I’m going to need the people in my life in business. I’m going to need people on the Internet to tell me how great I am so I can believe in myself, right. So I don’t have to feel those feelings of shame and embarrassment. I’m going to need the peers around me to prop me up and recommend me to their audience and give me as a referral to somebody. I’m going to need my spouse, my kids to say, your business is so important and we really support you. Right? If I’m not willing to tolerate uncomfortable emotions, then what I’m in essence doing is saying, I will construct this world that will prop me up, that will validate me externally. I think you know why that’s dangerous, but we can talk about it more if you’d like.

00:09:10 – Tracy Hoth
Yeah, let’s talk about it. I mean, thinking about all of us that are listening can relate to that. So it’s like we’re there creating this world like you said, or we have the option to be like what you explained you did just begin to feel. And it’s funny. Our coaching conference was all about the F line, the feeling. So talk about that, then what happens?

00:09:34 – Rhonda Farr
If I need my audience to validate me so I can feel like I’m a good coach or so I can feel like my message is important, then I’m going to be really worried about how many likes are on one of my Instagram posts. I’m going to be really worried about how many listens or downloads my podcast gets. Now, that’s not to say that numbers aren’t important. There comes a time when we do want to start looking at those numbers. But when you’re in your first six months of being a coach, if you decide if you’re valuable and worthy and if you should stay in this business based on how many listens and how many likes and how many referrals you get that month, you’re never going to get past your first six months. For most of us, it just doesn’t work that way. And so when we make that say something about our value and our worth, we’re in trouble. We have to decide. I’m willing to tolerate invalidation. Right. Not only a lack of validation, but sometimes invalidation. Our partners, they don’t know. They don’t know how important our work is. My husband doesn’t know really what coaching is even about. Like, he can see the fruits of it and some of the things that come from it. He can’t validate me. Right. My client and their results, I want them to get great results, and most of them do, but also most of them have days where it’s really hard and they don’t really see the progress or they can’t really see their own progress. And so that doesn’t validate back to me. Overall, that yes. Oh, Rhonda, the heavens sent you here to them. They have delivered you. Like, if we can’t stand solid in who we are and feel our own emotions, it’s going to be really hard to keep showing up and creating what your clients are looking for.

00:11:19 – Tracy Hoth
Well, what stood out to me when you said that is the invalidate. That part of it. Because I can see the validating and I can see, like, we need to believe in ourselves. We need to do that, but the invalidation or what we interpret that to be, I can totally see how those emotions tied to that would be what we would be avoiding. So I guess that now makes more sense to me.

00:11:43 – Rhonda Farr
Ask me more questions about that because I can see your wheels turning. And I’m guessing people who are listening, maybe their wheels are turning. Like, what does that mean? Because I talk about this so much, I want to fill in any gaps.

00:11:54 – Tracy Hoth
I’m thinking I’m not being validated. And then that brings up the doubt like, oh, this must not be good. Oh, there’s something wrong with me. Oh, I don’t know if I can do this. And then maybe the comparison like, well, they’re getting validated, whatever that is. And I’m not, so I must not be as good. When you said invalidation, it’s like, oh, yeah, those are all the normal feelings that we have. Those are all the feelings, like, that doubt, like, I’m not going to be able to do this. This isn’t going how I want it. Something must be wrong. And all of those emotions.

00:12:31 – Rhonda Farr
Yeah, absolutely. And I will tell you a little while into this, and I started doing my own work. I was like, oh, my gosh, everybody has to know this. It’s such good work. And so I did have a business coach. She’s like, I worked for the life Coach School for a while. People don’t understand emotions. She’s like, you literally could just be the emotions coach. And for a while I did that. But I remember when I started doing that, I had a couple of clients come in and I was so excited. Like, I’m talking about what I love, something I feel actually really good at because I practice it so much myself. And I had two clients. This is when I was just starting to make some money. Had two clients in a row who was like, this is more than I signed up for. I’m not here for this. And so they stopped coaching with me halfway through. That’s what I’m talking about with invalidation. So if I hadn’t learned how to feel my own emotions around that, if I hadn’t learned that this was valuable and it had changed my freaking life already, those types of things, I’m like, oh, gosh, I guess it wasn’t a good idea. Oh, gosh, I probably didn’t teach that well or, oh, my gosh, I guess that people don’t need what I have, right? I should stop.

00:13:40 – Tracy Hoth
Okay, so what you just said there, like, you practiced it so much, so what does that look like? So we’re coaches, we’re having all these emotions. We’re not making the money we want. Most of us are doubting, we’re thinking something’s wrong with us. We’re feeling shame or embarrassment because a client quit or because we had a typo or whatever it is. So then what does practicing it look like?

00:14:02 – Rhonda Farr
I’m going to give you a very systematized way to practice feeling emotions, because I know that’s what you’re all about and I love your podcast. Yeah, I got a little crazy messy brain in my own head. So when I listened to your podcast, I was like, oh, this is so good. It was, like, so calming. So I will give that. But let me tell you in a nutshell what it looks like before, okay, before I get to the systemized way to talking about it, it literally just means that we start to view emotions as messengers, as teachers, as just vibrations in our body that will move through us instead of the big, scary threat that we have been taught that they are. Most of us are conditioned. And when I say conditioned, what I mean is we’ve thought it and felt it for so long that it happens without us even trying to avoid anymore. But most of us are conditioned to avoid uncomfortable emotions. You think about it from the time we are babies when we’re crying or upset. What is wrong with you? Is something going bad or poorly? Like, anytime we show an uncomfortable emotion, we start to label that in our society as a very negative problem. So societally, we condition ourselves and each other to think uncomfortable emotions should be obliterated. Let’s exile those so we don’t have to feel that way.

00:15:28 – Tracy Hoth
Well, that’s so true too. I noticed that when I came into coaching, I’m pretty even keeled, so I don’t have a lot of that. Now. Who knows if that’s just how I’m made or if I avoid it really well, I don’t know. But I do remember as a parent, like, learning that as a parent was so impactful. And I remember thinking, I would always tell my kids, it’ll be fine, it’ll be fine, it’s okay. You don’t have to worry about blah, blah, blah, like that. The first time I said, tell me more about what you’re feeling, they noticed. Like, they’re like, oh, wow, mom’s just not wanting me to be okay. She’s wanting to hear about what I’m feeling. So that, as a parent, was one of the most impactful things when I learned about coaching and emotion work.

00:16:15 – Rhonda Farr
I love that example, because you think of a child who’s really upset and crying, and you’re like, no, you’re fine, or, no, I don’t have time for you. They usually get louder and it gets stronger. But like you were saying, when we turn to them, we look them in the eyes and we’re like, I see you. Something’s going on. Tell me what you’re feeling. They’re like and they’re kind of calming, and it still hurts, right? But it’s like, oh, somebody’s seeing me, somebody’s listening to me. I have their attention.

00:16:46 – Tracy Hoth
I never put that together. Like, thinking about that with your own emotion. I mean, I’ve said that before. I just haven’t thought about it in that way. When you turn to it and you say, what are you feeling? What’s your message? What do you want to say? How is it going? Oh, my gosh, that’s so good.

00:17:03 – Rhonda Farr
Okay, so this gets to the systematized part that we’ll put some language around. That’s what we’re talking about. Like, how do we start doing this is we have to start seeing emotions as just information, and we have to notice our own bias to get rid of emotions, especially uncomfortable. But to be honest, Tracy, some people, especially the clients I work with, they’re really kind of immune to positive emotion too, right? Because it almost feels like an obstacle. It makes them look silly or irresponsible or something. So for some people, they may literally have to open up to what most of us would call the higher vibration or more positive emotions too. When we numb one side, we often numb the other side of emotion.

00:17:46 – Tracy Hoth
Now, when you say that, do you think and see in your work, like, what I was saying earlier? I feel like I’m more even killed. I don’t feel like do you feel there are just people that have bigger wavier emotional lines? Right. I mean, that part is there’s not something wrong that I’m more even cute, right? Can you just reaffirm me there?

00:18:10 – Rhonda Farr
I see you, Tracy. I hear you. You’re just like, no. Yeah, I just want to model what we were talking about with the kids. Like, tell me more. You’re doing great. Yeah. Being kind of funny with that, but no, I think you’re right. And I don’t know if you’re into personality types or anything like that, but if we talk about, like, Enneagram fours, I don’t know if any of your audience knows about the Enneagram personality types. They’re definitely the more emotional ones, right? There are some others that are a little bit more emotional. I think that’s true. I think it’s true.

00:18:40 – Tracy Hoth
But we all could do work on both sides of it to do that. Okay, so go back to what we were talking about. What’s the language? What’s the organization part of it?

00:18:51 – Rhonda Farr
Okay, so I think if we want to really be systematized about this, number one literally is just starting to check in with our emotions each day. And this is not my app. I’m not affiliated with it at all, but there is this cool little app. It’s called how we feel. And it’s for sure on Apple, and if it’s not on Android yet, I’m sure it’s coming. But you literally get all these choices of emotions, and you can even set it to ask you, like, once or twice a day to check in with how you’re feeling. And I think if you’re somebody who is so reluctant to feel anything, that might be your first step to just check in and pause and say, how am I feeling at this moment? And start putting language to felt sensation in the body.

00:19:39 – Tracy Hoth
That’s what we didn’t really talk about. When people think of feelings, they think of maybe something bigger. But felt sensation in the body is a very good definition of what does that even mean to name a feeling? Like, what’s a feeling? It’s a felt sensation in the body.

00:19:57 – Rhonda Farr
I’ll be a little ‘coachy’ from our life coach school language, just for a moment. Maybe your audience already knows this, but an emotion starts in the brain, usually, and then it will send a vibration out to the body. So if we have a thought, like, I hate them or they’re stupid, right? Like we might have anger or resentment or whatever flow into the body. A sensation that starts in the body and goes to the brain is a little bit different. Like pain. If somebody punched you in the arm, you’re going to feel that and then it’s going to signal to the brain that says, oh, that’s pain. So it works both ways. I do want to make a little caveat here, because anybody who’s been through trauma, capital T, lowercase T, whatever, I want you to know that even then, when a traumatic event happens, it usually starts in the brain, right? Like, this shouldn’t be happening. Your body sometimes will freeze, then your nervous system will do what it needs to do to survive. And you may have heard, if you’re familiar with trauma, that we store it in the body. And so some of your listeners might be like, wait, isn’t that still an emotion? But it’s stored in my body. What? Right, yeah. So over time, definitely emotions can be stored in the body, but when that traumatic event happened, we have to have a brain and a nervous system in that moment that creates that trauma, like the amygdala. This is getting way too brainy here, but the amygdala is always scanning for safety or danger, right? And if you’ve been through something dangerous, like a traumatic experience, your amygdala is scanning your whole environment. Is there anything that’s remotely close to that? Right? Like if I got bit by a dog as a child and I hear a dog barking two box over, my amygdala is going to be like, hey, there it is. It’s going to yeah, danger. My body is going to feel like that thing is happening again, right? When we say trauma gets stored in the body, that’s a little bit different than what we’re talking about with just your everyday run of the mill emotions.

00:21:57 – Tracy Hoth
So we’re checking in and we’re saying, how do we feel? What’s happening in my body right now?

00:22:03 – Rhonda Farr
Yeah, what’s happening in my body? Can we give the emotion a name? There’s some research that shows if you literally do nothing but just put language to what you’re feeling, then it helps the body to relax a little bit. I’m going to give you the rest of the system, but for those of you, you just want to put your toe in the water, I would just say pause and check in with what you’re feeling and start naming it.

00:22:32 – Tracy Hoth
Love it.

00:22:33 – Rhonda Farr
Okay, you ready for the rest?

00:22:35 – Tracy Hoth
Yeah. Let’s go.

00:22:37 – Rhonda Farr
If you want to go all in on this, here’s what we do next. We name the emotion, what am I feeling? And I’m going to make up just for a generic example today. So let’s say that my child is not doing well in school and their homework is not being done, and they have a poor grade. This is totally made up if any of my kids are listening. Okay. So what I might do is I start by okay, here’s the triggering event. I saw a report card or a progress report, right? And I saw this letter. So if we’re going to use life coach school talk, we might call this the circumstance. What I like to do then is go straight to the emotion, which is a little bit different. But I’m just going to ask my body, okay, what am I feeling? I might feel angry or I might feel really afraid about their future or whatever it might be. And I’m going to see if I can name it. Here’s the next thing that I like to do. I’m going to say, what does my body feel like when I’m angry or when I’m afraid? Whatever I’m feeling. And this is what we’re talking about. We’re starting to get familiar with the language, not only of the brain, but the language of the body. When I feel afraid, my shoulders kind of want to hunch over like this. And when I feel afraid, my shoulders kind of come up, and I want to curl in on myself, right? It’s like I get tense. There’s actually some research that tells us back in the caveman days, we had to protect the jugular, which means shoulders up and cave in on our vital organs, right? So biologically, there’s a reason we do this, right? But we want to start getting familiar with our somatic sensation, our felt sense in the body. Because sometimes what we’ll do is we’ll notice our shoulders are up and we’re protecting kind of curled in on ourselves, and we’ll be like, oh, what’s going on? Like, we might notice the felt sensation before we even know we’re angry. So that’s why we want to start tracking both. Okay. What was the circumstance? Can I identify the emotion I’m feeling? What is my body posturing? Or what does my body feel like when I’m in that emotion? Then the next thing we want to start asking ourselves are, what are the thoughts around this? Again, this is Coach speak, but it’s really important to start, like, what is the meaning that I’m making of his grades or my child’s grades? Right? They’re going to live in my basement forever with two kids and a wife, or they may never leave home. Even if we don’t have to take care of their family, or I just might be embarrassed. Like, what if they don’t get into college? Right? I start letting myself go crazy with the stories, and I just want to take a deep breath and say, all right, there it is. That’s the story that we’re working with here. That’s the language of the brain, like the intellect part, right? And here’s the next part I want to ask myself, and I’m going to tell you. All these little pieces succinctly at the end so we can have your listeners go through it if they want to. Here’s the next part. What’s my urge when I’m in that posturing and in that emotion and that story is playing in my head? That meaning is going crazy in my head. What’s my knee jerk urge or with my kids? It’s like I want to go in there and set it straight. Like, I’m going to crack the whip. You will do this or you won’t have a phone or no video games. Right? What’s my urge in that moment? And do I like who I’m being in that space? What are your questions so far? There’s one more piece to this, but it’s the hardest piece, so I want.

00:26:22 – Tracy Hoth
To no, that’s good. I love that. I don’t know that I’ve ever had heard anyone say that part of it. Like, what’s your urge? Because that is so good to be aware of that. I mean, to notice it, to ask yourself that. Because I could see in a situation, withdraw is my urge. Beat myself up is an urge that might come from that. And I’m thinking of business examples too, like hide, don’t put myself out there anymore. So the urge question is so good.

00:26:56 – Rhonda Farr
Yeah, absolutely. So when we figure out what our urge is, we’re going to know like, these are our condition tendencies. That’s what we call these in the somatic world. And when I say somatic, I just mean we’re taking the body into account with the brain and the mind. Okay? So when we can track through, like when my body feels this way and my stories and my narratives are on overdrive around all these fear based things, and my urge is to just break through this, then we get to decide, is that the stance I want to be in when I’m approaching this person that I love? Is that the stance I want to be in when I’m trying to create content for these clients that I am so passionate about? Or is that the stance I want to be in when I’m trying to be creative in my business and grow this new thing that I am actually really invested in? And if the answer is no, then we might want to do a little bit of processing first before we approach. So here’s what I like to say. When we can see all these things and we get to decide if that’s what we like. Or that’s who we want to show up as, or not. If the answer is no, we want to regulate ourselves first before we approach that next thing. So here’s the last part of this. What can I do for myself to regulate myself? Because we want to say, well, if they would get different grades, or if my clients would validate me, or if my business bank account had a million dollars in it, that’s what I need, right? That’s what’s going to regulate me. We want to ask ourselves, what can I do for myself to regulate myself? And sometimes that’s hard to get to. Tell me what your thoughts and questions are about that little piece, regulating ourselves.

00:28:53 – Tracy Hoth
Well in that. I took some training in PQ – positive Intelligence. And yeah, the training to do that piece of it was so good. Labeling something was super helpful for me just to look around and label things or breathing or all the different little exercises that I did in that training was really good. Do you have specific ones that you recommend for regulation?

00:29:19 – Rhonda Farr
So I think for different people, different things are going to work really well. It could be as simple as I need to take a few deep breaths and go for a walk and just clear my mind, or some people like to exercise or run. It could be different types of meditation or whatever. I think we need to experiment a little bit with that. But here’s what I’ll say. For me, it’s usually some way of processing the emotion, though, right? Which dancing, moving our bodies for each person, it’s going to be different. For me, I like to lean into the emotion and learn from it. So for me, if I can feel all this is going on and I can look at what I’ve written down, like, okay, I saw his report card, and I got really afraid or really angry. And I want to think that he’s going to be in my basement with his two kids and wife in ten years and all that. I can look at it and I can just tell myself, like, okay, that is where your brain goes when you see these grades. Why are we so afraid of that happening? And I’ll lean in, and sometimes I’ll just close my eyes and take a deep breath, and I’ll feel that fear or that anxiety, and I literally do it like you and I were talking about with the child. Like, I see you, I feel you. You’re welcome to be here. And I’ll even describe it like the felt sense of the body, like, okay, you’re in. My chest feels like you’re vibrating like a ping pong ball, like moving around. And I’ll just describe it. And here’s the question I usually ask myself, what do you want me to know? Why are you showing up today? And it’s usually something protective when we’re dealing with emotions, it’s usually something like, I just want you to know that you want to show up for him and be the best mom you can. I just want you to know and remember that you do want to show love and support during this time instead of let it slide. You probably don’t want to go overboard like your knee jerk urge was. But we do love this child and we are invested in this. And so usually if I calm and listen, the emotion will tell me what the core value is or what the protective nature of it is. And then it’s like, oh, okay. Then I’ll just remind myself, you know what? No, I am a good mom, but I can show up and create that connection and that support without coming in and ripping the roof off and bringing the hammer down.

00:31:44 – Tracy Hoth
Yes, that question, what do you want me to know? And the times that I’ve really sat and processed emotion have been so interesting like that. It taught me something. I realized something. So yes, why don’t I do that more often? Take the time to actually do that thinking in businesses, if a coach is listening and thinking about their business, when you sit and you have doubt, what do you want me to know? When you feel discouraged, what do you want me to know? How do I feel it in my body? For me, because I’m very logical, it seems more purposeful to ask that, not just to sit and feel it in your body. And I even have clients where they’re like, I don’t really want to do that. But if they had this purpose, like, no, it’s going to tell you something and you’re going to get a realization that’s really impactful or important. Yeah, that’s good.

00:32:40 – Rhonda Farr
I’ll give you one more purpose if this resonates with you or your listeners. Again, like I said in the beginning, there’s some research that shows if we can just put language to what we’re thinking and feeling, it’s really helpful for us to move forward without that holding us back. So again, if we’re writing this down, we’re putting the written language to it. But also now if you want to communicate, I’ll keep using this example with a child with their grades. I could go and tell a friend, like, if you’re venting, you’re like, my kid’s doing this and it’s so hard and blah, blah, blah. I could do that and that would be, quote, honest. But after I go through these steps, my conversation with somebody that I want to connect with might sound like this, like, hey, my kid, they brought home this grade. And I will tell you, I felt that surge through my chest and I really felt the fear that he might be living in my basement forever. My mind just made up all these stories and my urge was to go in there and say these words. But you know what? I really figured out that fear was my own, and I really just want to love and support that kid, and I’m really trying to lean into how to best do that. How can I connect with him in other ways so I can put language to it without a lot of blame, without all of the anger and shame and drama. This is really helpful in relationships. I know we’re talking about this in business right now, but once you can take full responsibility and see what’s going on for you, you get to communicate in a way that is like next level.

00:34:13 – Tracy Hoth
Yeah.

00:34:14 – Rhonda Farr
Well, it’s so much more emotionally mature, right?

00:34:17 – Tracy Hoth
Yeah.

00:34:17 – Rhonda Farr
Imagine this with your business partner or some cohorts that you’re with that you’re frustrated about. You could say, you got to do this and that, or you go through these prompts and you can say, when this thing came up, my body felt like this and it was this emotion. And when I feel that way, I’m noticing my urges to do that. But I know that’s not exactly how I want to behave. What I actually like to do is this, to have it so thought out and so much self confrontation. That’s what I call this. You’re self confronting when you’re doing this that you’re able to be so much more confident in your communications as well.

00:34:55 – Tracy Hoth
Yes. That’s so good. It’s so deep and meaningful. I love how you’ve said that. I mean, you can hear that you’ve practiced it. Obviously, you help people do it nonstop, but just how you’ve talked through that is so good. As a parent, I would want to teach my child that two of my boys well, both my boys now are married. I just want them to know it like all of us. I need to start practicing it myself. And being that example and thinking of our businesses and the relationship that we have with our business. We always talk about this relationship. I mean, it’s going to help that relationship.

00:35:37 – Rhonda Farr
It’s so good. I’m telling you, when you can lean into these emotions and learn from them, that’s how we kind of unravel that, oh, we have to avoid them. Most of my clients think emotions are obstacles in the way, but when I’ve taught them how to lean in and learn from them, they’re like, oh, my gosh, this is kind of a superpower. It actually adds to my skill set and makes me stronger.

00:36:04 – Tracy Hoth
What about when someone has a fear of learning about themselves? Like, they don’t necessarily want to learn all that stuff and go that deep? What do you offer suggests with that?

00:36:18 – Rhonda Farr
Well, most of those people say no to me. They don’t make it past the consult call. But I do think that’s valid because if we’ve been through experiences that feel unsafe to approach, I actually do recommend for those people or those potential clients that they do get some help, like with a trauma informed therapist or some actual deep dive into finding safety in the body. The last thing I want to do as a coach is open up to deep rooted emotions when it feels unsafe for that client to hold and tolerate those feelings. I want to be very sensitive. I’m actually glad that you asked that question. If somebody’s going through these journaling prompts and it brings on a super overwhelm of emotion, I would ask them if they feel safe enough to do that. And if the answer is no, to maybe pause and go do similar exercises with somebody who is trained. Here’s a good rule of thumb on this, too. If the situation at hand seems to incite an overreaction or a severe underreaction to the situation at hand, that’s a telltale sign that there’s some deeper, perhaps trauma going on or deeper stress response. I’ll give you a tiny example of this in my own life. I teach an early morning class to a big group of teenagers. It’s before actual school hours, and most of them would probably prefer to be in bed and not be there. And I was teaching something recently, and one of the kids just made a remark like, oh, my gosh, why don’t we just move on? Or blah, it’s a teenager at, like, 630 in the morning. Of course they’re going to say that. But my body had this whole reaction, and later that day, I was leaning in like, what’s going on here? What is the meaning I’m making of this? What are the thoughts in my head about this? I realized I was afraid that kid was going to go say something to their parents, and then my peer group would have thoughts about me. It immediately sucked me back to, like, five years ago when there was an extremely difficult situation with a peer group that lasted for years. I thought, oh, my amygdala right. Without me even knowing it, is scanning everything and saying, that’s relevant. That’s not you’re safe here. Oh, you’re not safe there. And my mind had picked up something as simple as a teenager little snarky remark under their breath that made me feel so unsafe. And intellectually, I knew I’m like, why do you feel unsafe around this? But my body just couldn’t. And so I had to stop and go through this process, and I’m like, oh, so if there’s a severe overreaction or underreaction, it’s a good sign that there’s a deeper stress response or maybe even perhaps some trauma going on there.

00:39:07 – Tracy Hoth
Yeah. And you can see that then going back to what you said earlier, your emotion is trying to tell you something in that situation.

00:39:14 – Rhonda Farr
Exactly. And so when my emotion told me that, like, oh, this is related to that thing, I was like, oh, okay, now I get it. Thank you, Amygdala. You’re trying to keep me safe. I was able to take a deep breath and calm down and walk back into class the next day and be okay with it. But if I don’t lean into that, then my body’s screaming at me saying please listen, I’m trying to keep you safe. And I’m like, oh, yeah.

00:39:40 – Tracy Hoth
As an entrepreneur, I can totally see thinking of all of us as a community how that would happen because entrepreneurship will bring all those things up in some form or another. So what a great opportunity for all of us and learn about ourselves, learn about some situation like that in our past which we may not even have put together as being something that we felt unsafe in.

00:40:09 – Rhonda Farr
Yeah, and back to your question before I kind of went off on that tangent about being careful with the trauma, I do think just using these journaling prompts that I outlined is a very good way to do it more safely because when we feel into the body sometimes that does get even more scary. But just putting pen to paper and putting that written language like okay, here’s the emotion, name the emotion, this is what I’m feeling and here is the somatic felt sense in my body. I’m going to write that out right? And here are the thoughts that come up when I am feeling this emotion and write that out. It’s a more safe way to just put pen to paper and then we can be more objective about it. I will say feeling into the body, that’s a little harder for most clients to actually let themselves viscerally experience it.

00:40:58 – Tracy Hoth
Yeah, I have an example. Coming home from a swim meet one night, and I was in the car for 15 minutes. And so I had this uneasiness and I just sat there and felt in my body, kind of did a body scan went through and it was so interesting that I had kind of like a vibrations in my thighs which I would never have noticed if I hadn’t sat there and done that. And so that’s why it can be really entertaining is not the word because it didn’t feel good but it can be like a really learning experience about what emotions and I didn’t name the emotion ahead of time because I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. But I noticed at several different times that year I did more stopping to feel it in my body and notice certain emotions don’t feel the same in the same places. Like there’s one that tingles on the sides of my back, that one on my thighs I have felt since then I named that one Dread. It’s just really interesting how your body feels when you take the time to listen to it and go through it.

00:42:07 – Rhonda Farr
Yeah, and I will say for me I don’t know about for everybody, but different, excuse me, the same emotion might feel a little bit different for me at different times too and I think it’s all normal and some of my clients will even be surprised I don’t know if you’ve experienced this. When they lean into one emotion that it gives way to another and then another, and they’re like, oh, it just keeps changing. I’m not good at this. And I’m like, no. When we witness an emotion, often it will kind of transmute into something else, and that’s actually really normal for it to keep changing. Yeah, there’s no wrong way to do this.

00:42:43 – Tracy Hoth
Well, that’s what I was kind of trying to say is even if you just get the first few times you’re listening to your feeling in your body, even if you just get that you felt something in your thighs, like, great, you made a discovery that you wouldn’t have if you wouldn’t have taken the time to do that.

00:42:59 – Rhonda Farr
Yeah, exactly. I’ll say this last thing about that self confrontation model, about naming the emotion and your somatic feelings and all that, if you can only name two of them, great. You named two of them. If you can only name one of them, great. And for most people, that last part of this, which is, what do I need for myself to regulate myself? How do I need to regulate myself? Some people don’t ever get to that point, by the way, or at least it takes them a long time. I will be honest, sometimes when I do this, I’m like, I’m not sure how I can regulate myself right now. So I’ll sit with what I do know and that’s okay. There’s no wrong way to do this.

00:43:40 – Tracy Hoth
I love that. What a good point to end on. So those journaling prompts, can we get a copy of those?

00:43:47 – Rhonda Farr
I will prepare a little PDF, and it’ll be called the Self Confrontation Model. I can send that over to you if anybody it’ll be simple and basic, but if anybody wants to see it written out, I’m happy to do that.

00:43:58 – Tracy Hoth
Perfect. Okay, so tell us more. How can people find you, especially successful men, that want help with their emotions?

00:44:06 – Rhonda Farr
People can find me at Rhonda.com. You can find me there. I also have a podcast. It’s called the Intimacy Podcast for the Million Dollar Man.  I’m also on Instagram. You can just search for Rhonda. You’ll find me there too. I want to go back for a minute as we’re wrapping this up, but I just wanted to say another answer to your question. It just popped in my head. What if we’re afraid to know ourselves? I would say go through this self confrontation model, these prompts with a positive emotion, like name the emotion as excitement and what does my body feel like when I’m excited? That often feels safer for people to start there too. Thank you for having me. It’s so fun. I love your work, so thank you for letting me be a part of it today.

00:44:45 – Tracy Hoth
Okay, talk to you soon. Bye, everyone.

00:44:50 – Tracy Hoth

If you’re finding this podcast useful, you must check out the Organized Coach Academy. It’s my course where I walk you through every step to get your business organized, to get yourself organized, to save money and time, to prepare, to hire someone to do all the things that you want to do in your business with ease. Check that out at SimplySquaredAway.com/OCA. Also, I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times, but I would love it. It’s my way of knowing that you’re enjoying the podcast. If you leave a written review, I have lots of freebies for you. They’re linked in the show notes. You can find them in my bio on Instagram at @Tracyhoth and until next week, have a beautiful day.