Big Feelings — Pt. 1
I finished an excellent book this week: Big Feelings by Liz Fosslien & Mollie West Duffy. The book provides tools to understand, express, and manage difficult emotions in a healthy way.
Each chapter focuses on a different feeling: uncertainty, comparison, anger, burnout, perfectionism, despair, and regret.
What I liked about this book was the practical, non-preachy nature of managing each sentiment. Given the breadth of takeaways, I’ll split this post into two parts.
Uncertainty: Not being sure about something.
Convert your ambient anxiety into more specific fears. You can pinpoint exactly what you’re afraid of losing and how you might be able to avoid some of those circumstances.
Separate the withins from the beyonds. The withins are something you can do about; the beyonds are beyond your control.
For the withins, create a plan from which you'll deviate
For the beyonds, try to let go by noting, or by distracting yourself.
To build your confidence, look back at situations where you've been resourceful and managed your uncertainty tolerance. You’ve already gone through 100% of the worst days!
Comparison: Evaluating yourself against others.
When you make comparison targets (people whom we measure ourselves to), remember the difference between benign envy vs. malicious envy. Try to nudge yourself away from malicious.
Benign envy is when we admire someone and try to emulate them. Malicious envy is when we dislike and begrudge the other person for having what we want.
Pick a broader baseline of comparison — not just one person, but 10 people. Get extremely specific about all fields in life (e.g. not just career, but health, family, etc.).
Don’t just look at a single person for upward comparison, when you obsessively compare yourself to people who you deem “above” in some way.
The best comparison? Compare present to past you. Look back at how far you've come.
Anger: Being upset or frustrated.
Anger can be found in many forms. Resentment is anger looking for a payback, and hatred is clinical strength anger. That’s a danger zone - don’t let anger turn into a brittle barnacle of hatred.
The way to process anger is by allowing yourself to be upset. Fume and then figure out your triggers to reduce future flare-ups.
Use anger as fuel to drive change or spark creativity.
Burnout: Absolute exhaustion from prolonged stress.
Look for early warning signs for burnout: overstimulated, overwhelmed, irritated, and a case of the “scaries” on any day of the week. Take care of yourself before you’re completely fried. A quote:
“Sometimes life taps you on the shoulder with a feather, sometimes it hits you with a brick, and sometimes it runs you over with a bus. Learn to listen when it's just a feather.”
Before you say yes to something you’re not excited about, ask yourself: What do I gain? What will I not be able to do instead? What’s the worst thing that can happen if I say no?
With every no, there is a deeper yes, even if that yes is just to yourself.
Figure out whether you're overextended, disengaged, or feeling ineffective.
If you're overextended, get comfortable living at 80 percent and say no more often.
If you're disengaged, seek connection and craft a more meaningful schedule.
If you feel ineffective, find ways to achieve clear wins and realign your life with your values.
If you feel all three, detach your worth from your work and embrace "garbage time".
Fantastic methods to deal with trickier feelings. More to come next week. What big feelings are you managing? 🤍