7. The F word that sets you free

There is this one word that gets you immediate relief. You're annoyed, angry, sad, or even mad; it doesn't matter what state you're in, this F word will set you free. 

I know you've a specific word in mind...but let me surprise you. I'm sure it's not what you're thinking of. Tune into today's episode and learn how you can release negative emotions and bring back peace into your body, mind and life.

Transcript

Nadja Hagen [00:00:14]:
Are you ready to go from am I good enough to is this good for me? Welcome to the Self Love Sessions podcast. I'm your hostess, Nat Yahden, and I'm the self love coach for ambitious women recovering from people pleasing and starting to love the heck out of themselves. The most important relationship is the one you have with yourself. It sets the tone for all other relationships in your life and your overall quality of life. It's worth cultivating. In the Self Love Sessions podcast, I share nuggets of wisdom on setting healthy boundaries, prioritizing your needs without shame and guilt, and building relationships that enrich your holding life, starting with the one you have with yourself. Let's dive into today's episode. Welcome to the 7th episode of the Self Love Sessions podcast.

Nadja Hagen [00:01:19]:
Imagine you are sitting in your car and you are on your commute on the way back home. The day has been a long day. It has been a stressful day. You are hungry, you are tired, and you are longing to get finally home. It's just not your day. Traffic is jampacked and it takes hours to get home. And then suddenly the driver in front of you cuts you off and you are so annoyed. How can this idiot behave in such a way? This is so disrespectful.

Nadja Hagen [00:01:57]:
You are so annoyed and you want to scream it at his face. The effort. The effort that normally gets beeped out because children are not supposed to hear it. You want to scream it at his face, and I hear you scream it right now, following my story. But it's not the effort I'm referring to. What, Nadia? What do you mean? I refer to another effort. I refer to forgiveness. Yeah, you heard that, right.

Nadja Hagen [00:02:31]:
I'm talking about forgiveness today. Why? I tell you, you can scream at this driver as intensely as you want to, but what happens afterwards is that you are still annoyed and you're still angry about him and you're still mad at him. So nothing has really changed, apart from you losing your cool, which probably isn't something you are super proud of, right? But when you use the other f word, when you use forgiveness, you can change the situation completely. This doesn't only apply to the driver who cuts you off or other people who annoy you. This applies to every single situation in your whole life, from early childhood to being a grandma. You know, as long as you are carrying your anger, your resentment, your heavy and loaded emotions with you, it's no matter where you're going, no matter what you do, they are still there with you. So you are still feeling angry. You are still wrapped and caught in the cycle of heavy emotions.

Nadja Hagen [00:03:43]:
But the other person, our example, the driver who cut you off, probably doesn't even know that you exist at all. And if he would probably not care about you being angry, and even if he would, it wouldn't change a single thing. You get the point, right? So the only person that is hurting is you. You are going through the rest of your day and you are annoyed, you're angry, you are mad, and that changes everything. The situations that are still to come on this day will all be overshadowed by your heavy emotions that are still sticking around. And you know, I'm sharing one of my most important nuggets of wisdom with you here in this episode. Forgiveness is not for the other person. Forgiveness is for you.

Nadja Hagen [00:04:37]:
You do it for yourself. Because whatever you do, wherever you go, you are carrying your emotions with you. The positive, the negative, the light ones, the heavy ones, the joyful ones, and the sad ones, they are still with you. You can't run fast enough so that your emotions don't catch up. Seriously, ask me how I know. I've tried it out many, many times and I didn't succeed a single time. So you will never be fast enough for your emotions. You can numb them away for a certain amount of time, but they will always pop up.

Nadja Hagen [00:05:14]:
And I know that they pop up at the moment that's the least favorite. So when you're feeling still annoyed about being cut off in traffic, this is your emotion for the rest of the day until you process it and face it. And forgiveness is one way to process emotions. Let me explain this in more depth. Forgiveness doesn't mean necessarily and always that I forgive the other person of doing what they did or saying what they said. First and foremost, forgiveness means I'm forgiving myself because I'm the most important person in my life. I'm forgiving myself for making this comment or this behavior mean more than it actually does. When I come back to my traffic jam example, how important is it in relation to your life that another driver cut you off? I mean, seriously, this is so unimportant.

Nadja Hagen [00:06:17]:
And I'm sure a week later you won't even remember this incident. So you are getting annoyed about something that is just tiny, something that just happened. We don't know why and it just doesn't matter. And you let this incident steal your joy, your peace and your happiness away from you. Is this really worth it? My answer to this is a definite no. And that brings me to the second important point. Here we are the ones who are giving meaning to the things that are happening. So in case of my driver example, you are the one giving the meaning that this person has been disrespectful towards you or behave inappropriately.

Nadja Hagen [00:07:03]:
This is your meaning. You are choosing to attach this meaning to this situation. So let's flip the coin and look at it from the other side. The first thing that could have really happened is that the other driver just didn't see you. So it wasn't intentionally. And that means the other person is completely innocent and you are getting annoyed about something that just happened and was just bad luck for both of you. Doesn't make sense, right? Another thing could be that the other person was super, super stressed. Maybe they had kids around the whole day and they didn't get their work done, or they had a fight or a discussion with their boss.

Nadja Hagen [00:07:50]:
Or maybe this person experienced something really heavy during the day. Maybe the other driver just got fired. You just don't know what is going on in another person's world at this moment. But we as humans, we want to give meaning to everything. So we choose the meaning that's the most obvious one to us. But that's not necessarily the truth. Sometimes it is very, very far away from the truth. So how would you feel, how would you behave if you got fired today and you're on the way back home and you need to tell your family, and maybe you are the only breadwinner? You see things feel differently when you look at it in this way.

Nadja Hagen [00:08:33]:
So what I want to highlight here is that you do not know what is going on in the world of the other person with their feelings and in their mind. And you are attaching a meaning that indicates something negative towards you, which in most cases is just not the case, just not the truth. And you're wasting your lifetime with staying attached to a heavy emotion instead of putting things back into a bigger frame and reframe it accordingly. That's one thing. Another thing is, even if the other driver has seen you and cut you off intentionally because he just doesn't care at all, you don't have any gains from being annoyed from staying attached to heavy and negative emotions. You're just harming yourself, but not the other one. That's the third point. So I know emotions are coming and going, and emotions are designed and supposed to flow through us.

Nadja Hagen [00:09:39]:
It's okay to feel annoyed when something like this happens and to be annoyed for a minute or two, or even five minutes, but we need to process these emotions and we need to let them go. Because otherwise they will just stick around. And we don't want heavy emotions to stick around longer than necessary. And forgiveness is a great way to process emotions. I would like to share with you how you can use forgiveness as a practical tool to process emotions and to let go. Because telling yourself, oh, I'm just forgiving the other person, probably he hasn't meant it like that won't do anything. If you're still feeling annoyed, then you're actually lying yourself, which builds resentment towards yourself. I don't want to go deeper into this hole, but it doesn't make anything better.

Nadja Hagen [00:10:31]:
So forgiveness only works when we truly feel it. That's the secret about it. I forgive you. I forgive you. Doesn't do anything if I don't feel forgiveness. So how can I bring myself into this feeling of forgiveness? One of the ways that helped me a lot was to make myself aware and to remember myself that I do not know what is going on in other people's lives. So maybe it is the truth that this person actually got fired and is just in his own funnel of perception currently. Maybe putting ourselves in the shoes of others allows us to feel compassion, to feel empathy, and to come to a place where we can truly forgive what happens because we are understanding.

Nadja Hagen [00:11:22]:
It wasn't personal, it never has been. Even if somebody is hurting you intentionally, this is more about the other person than about you. I will share an example with you. From my early twenty? S, I was in a club, dancing, having an amazing time. And me and my girlfriend, we were on the way to the restrooms and we passed by two guys. And this was a time where I did a lot of sports. I was super fit and I was lean. I really felt comfortable in my body and I had a great figure.

Nadja Hagen [00:11:58]:
And one of these guys, while I was passing by them on my way to the restroom, was telling his friend, look at her, she has a big fat ass. What? To be honest, it hurt at this moment. And it took me a couple of days to process this because being in shape, being attractive, had a very high priority in my life at these days. But that's a story for another time. What I've noticed is that a lot of things are relative. For this guy, my booty might have been a little bit too much, but for a lot of other people, it was a dream booty. So things change the way you look at them. And especially when it comes to things like attractiveness, there are so many different tastes.

Nadja Hagen [00:12:50]:
So a woman who is attractive to one guy might not be attractive to another guy. I mean, there are people who think Claudia Schiffer is not beautiful and she's a top model. And I think this is one of the best examples to remember ourselves that things are relative. When I come back to what I mentioned earlier, that even if somebody is hurting you intentionally, this is a relative too, because it says more about the state the other person is in than it does actually about you. The comment the guy made does not really tell the truth about my backside. It just tells his truth, which is not the ultimate truth. And the same happens when people hurt us intentionally. They might be in such a bad place that they just can't act differently, which is a really, really sad condition to be in and something that invokes compassion in me, which doesn't mean that I allow this behavior to continue.

Nadja Hagen [00:13:54]:
Not at all. Boundaries are still in place, but we can set boundaries and we feel compassionate at the same time. When you put things back into perspective and you remember yourself that a lot of things are relative, then it's so much easier to come to a place where you feel real forgiveness. And the moment you feel this forgiveness, you can take a conscious breath, feel it presently, and then let it go, including all the feelings that come with that, or that go with that. In this case, another way to bring yourself in a state of truly feeling forgiveness is to remember yourself that it is you who is giving a meaning to the situation. So that's a very logical approach and it doesn't work for everyone, but for some people, this is really, truly helpful. If I attach the meaning that the other person's behavior says anything about me, then this is my meaning and I have decided to attach this. I can reframe this and remember myself that this behavior says more about the other person.

Nadja Hagen [00:15:05]:
So it doesn't say anything about me. And that leads to me not feeling disrespected anymore or being treated unfairly. And then the next step is it allows me to forgive. Do you see how this works? Isn't it powerful? And another way of bringing yourself into a state where you can truly forgive either another person or yourself is to remember yourself that it might be that other people have treated you unfairly, it might be that other people are just have been mean. All of this might be too. But no matter what the truth is, you define who you are and how you react. And I had a lot of situations in my own life where I decided from a feeling perspective, I'm so hurt. I want revenge.

Nadja Hagen [00:15:57]:
I want to hurt the other person as much as I've been hurting. And I totally get this. We have all been there in this state of emotion, but I decided this is not who I am. I might feel this way right now, but how I feel right now does not determine who I am at my core. And I am so much better than this. I will not pay it back because I'm standing above this. I have certain standards in my life that determine how I act, what I do and what I don't do, what I feel proud of and what I feel ashamed of afterwards. And I don't want to feel ashamed about myself.

Nadja Hagen [00:16:40]:
So there are certain behaviors and reactions that I avoid because they are not who I want to be. And this is powerful. So in today's episode, you got three powerful ways that I shared on how to bring yourself in a state where you can truly feel forgiveness, and how to process your emotions and let go of the negative and heavy emotions that come when you are in a place of feeling resentment, being annoyed, or being mad at someone. I hope that you take these tools and apply them to your life, and they put you in a place where you are so much more equipped to deal with these situations. Because whatever life is bringing to you, there will always be situations and reasons for which we can decide to be annoyed or for which we can decide to forgive and move on with our own life. Thank you for tuning in for today. If you like this episode, please leave a five star rating and let other people know that this podcast is truly worth listening to. I'd be so grateful.

Nadja Hagen [00:17:48]:
Thank you and I talk to you in the next episode. You. You. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you found this valuable, please give a five star rating and tell other women that this show is worth listening to. I talk to you in the next episode.