Stop Letting Your Feelings Lead You

Buckle up, besties. We're back in our Bibles. Hello and happy Friday. We have made it yet again through another week, which is incredible, gracious, glorious, wonderful, beautiful, all the good things. Praise God. Praise God. I honestly want to start us off with a prayer right now, first things first, because last week I missed our prayer and I was like, what? That's crazy. I don't think, I think I prayed us out instead of praying us in, which is fine. It's fine. We still got a prayer in, but I'm thinking about it right now and I just don't want to forget it. And it's important. It's going to anchor this episode. So if you are somewhere safe, wait, can I introduce myself? Hi, I'm Dana, if you're new here, and this is Gospel To Go, the bite-sized Bible study you can take with you anywhere. If you are somewhere safe, I encourage you to bow your head and close your eyes. If you're driving, obviously don't do that. If you're on a run, you know, just do your best. Do your best. let's pray together lord god you are so good and gracious and kind and i want to thank you today for waking us up for getting us up out of bed and getting on with our day for another opportunity to seek your kingdom and help share you and your word with our friends and family and all that we meet today may we continue to bring joy to those who are around us and especially with today's episode talking about emotions and emotional discipline, I pray that you stand by us. And with your helping hand, we are able to regulate our emotions and remember to pray to you before we react out of anger or fear or jealousy. And Lord, we just are so grateful that we are able to be together today through this podcast. I thank you so much for my friend on the other side, and I ask you to continue to bless them. In Jesus' mighty name, amen. Alrighty, my favorite people, I did give you a little bit of a spoiler alert in our prayer, but I'm sure you can probably tell by the title today. We are going to be talking about emotional regulation and emotional maturity. I was thinking yesterday and today. So if you don't know, I usually record these on Thursday nights. So when I'm talking to you, it's about as close as I can get to talking to you in real time, if you will, since the podcast usually goes live Friday morning, if I'm on top of things, which I'm doing a little bit better at, I will say, then you know that obviously I'm not talking to you live because it is a podcast, but I record the night before, so it's as close as we can get. Anywho, yesterday and today, I spent a lot of my time thinking about what I was going to make today's podcast on. And if you listened to last week's episode, you know I have now taken on Substack, and so I'm writing at least two to three times a week on that. And for my paid subscribers, you guys get weekly devotionals. That takes up a very big chunk of my week. And I have a couple really exciting and fun sponsorships coming up. I have videos that are due tomorrow, and this week was just a little crazy. And I don't say this to complain. This is a really good segue into the episode because it really is all about perspective. This is a life that I prayed for. Let's actually take a step back right now and look at what it is that I'm overwhelmed with. I have a Substack account where I have, I don't know how many, I have lots of friends and subscribers on there who are coming to my community to grow closer to God and learn and download my devotionals that I put my heart and soul into. And what an opportunity. What a gift. Seriously. I am overwhelmed because I have partnerships, sponsorships with incredible companies, incredible companies that I dreamed of working with. You guys actually dreamed of working with. The two companies that I have videos due for tomorrow were companies that I prayed for. I was like, if these companies reach out to me, like that is a dream. Like hands down, I am going to be working with them because I went back and forth for a little bit about doing like partnerships and sponsorships and things like that just because of the nature of my content. And I want to be very transparent. Of course, obviously I will always be transparent with you guys, but maybe that's not the right word. I just want to be careful about what it is that I'm promoting on my page, right? Because my page is dedicated to God. And while there are so many other great things that I do in my daily life and share and own and use and products and things like that. I just, I never want it to feel, you know, like a sponsored page. I never want you to feel like you're coming to my page for ads. I want you to feel like you're coming to my page for a breath of fresh air. And I will share other things of my life and things like that, little things along the way. And I love that you guys are here for that, but I'm getting off track. Anywho, I prayed for these sponsorships, right? And now I have two videos due tomorrow that I need to just go over my scripts for and really plan like my morning so that I can have those due at the deadline. And there's just a lot going on, right? I'm preparing for my marriage in June and I had two meetings today, one with our caterer and one with our priest. It's actually our last meeting with our priest and it was bittersweet. I've had such a phenomenal time with our marriage prep and I'll do a whole nother episode on that. I don't want to get too off track because like I said, there is a lot going on. And so today is going to be a little bit of a shorter episode, but I never want to come on here. I feel like the last couple of weeks I've come on here in the first five to six minutes are me kind of like complaining and just being like, there's so much going on in my world. But nevertheless, I'm here with you guys, right? I will always make time to sit down and have a chat with you guys. And I really do look forward to the podcast days. So while I have, yes, a podcast to film and a sub stack article to write and a sub stack, you know, devotional that I need to put together and schedule for Sunday. And I have sponsorship videos I need to film and edit. And then all the other things like my my nine to five things that are going on that are kind of looming over my head, my marriage stuff, getting things ready for the bachelorette party, like all of those things that are kind of like open tabs in my brain, if you will. they are such good things and they are things that you know did 2021 or 2022 dana look at from you know years ago i think i would tell myself to shut up right now and be very grateful for the shoes that i'm standing in so i just want to look at it from that perspective and that's actually such a great way to lead into this episode because the whole reason that i was even starting to go off on a tangent about when I film my podcast and whatnot is because today when I was driving to work and then from work to my catering meeting, I'm thinking, I'm like, what am I going to do on the podcast this week? Like, I feel like I haven't really read anything that's really stood out to me that I haven already talked about or written about And I just like Lord like what what am I going to talk about What is it that I going to talk about And I ended up not stumbling across a podcast because I have listened to this podcast before, but something in me was like, I'm going to go back to Bella Dane's podcast. And if you don't know Bella Dane, she's incredible. She's talks a lot about very much just how to be a good conversationalist. She's kind of like your hot girl, smart girl, everything you want to be. Like she's just, she's an it girl without being so, how do I like put this? She's composed. She's beautiful, stunning, smart. She's funny. She is witty. She's a great conversationalist and she writes these great articles on Substack. I know you guys are like, Dana, shut up about Substack. Like I'm quite literally obsessed with it now. But I've read from her and I've also watched amazing TikToks by her of just how to be like an overall more, how to carry yourself better and how to be just overall a better person, I think. And while her content doesn't tie into faith, I think that I'm finding it very easy to kind of tie my faith into what her lessons are. And so nevertheless, I was listening to a podcast by her today. It was titled Building Emotional Discipline and Self-Regulation. And her podcast is called How to Stop Being a Loser. Honestly, that's like the best way to describe her overall personality. I mean, truly, she's just she's great. So you guys should look her up on TikTok if you don't know who I'm talking about. Lots of great lessons from her for sure. But I was so influenced, I guess, by this podcast topic. I started thinking about how we could tie this into the Bible. And so I kind of just want to take a few points from what I really learned. And honestly, guys, I'm going to be so real with you. I only have listened to half of it so far. So like, this is how, like, it's so good and I haven't even finished it. Okay. So this is something that I felt like I really needed to hear today. And I was like, thank you, God, because I'm going to take that to my girls. And we're going to talk about that. Emotional discipline. Because when I listened to this podcast, I realized that most of the chaos happening in my life, everything that I just listed for you guys, right? Like think of all the things that I just mentioned I have going on, plus more, plus there's like also a million other things that are happening. It's not coming from my circumstances. It's not coming from what life is giving to me, because life is always gonna life. She talked about how, like, why are you surprised that you're sitting in traffic. And I was like, girl, I feel called out right now because I tell you guys all the time I run late. I am always, always late. It's something that I at least realize about myself. I am always running late. And why do I continue to do it when I know good and well that there's traffic at 920 a.m.? I always hit the same traffic at 920 a.m. when I have to be at work at 930. Why am I not leaving five minutes earlier? Do you know what I'm trying to say life, there's always going to be traffic. You're always going to have to wait in a line. There's always going to be inconveniences and life is always going to throw things at you. So you can't base things off like life is going to life, right? So most of the chaos that's happening in my life has not come from what's happened or the circumstances that are happening to me. It's coming from my reactions to them. If I only showed up for God when I felt called to, or when I was feeling inspired. You know, if I only showed up to the podcast or to my TikTok videos and sat down to record when I was feeling super creative, if I only went to the gym when I was feeling, you know, super motivated, and if I only loved my fiance when I felt appreciated or loved back, like I wouldn't have anything. I wouldn't have any consistency in my life. Like you can't base everything off of your emotions and your reactions. And I want to give you an example. I want you to think of two girls. Let's call them Nancy and Polly. Okay. Nancy is our negative Nancy and Polly is our positive Polly. They both get up at 6am to go to the gym. Okay. When the alarm goes off at 530, Polly says a quick prayer. She gets up out of bed and she puts on her outfit that she laid out the night before. And she's saying her affirmations and she's thanking God. Thank you for my body that I can work every day. I can feel my heart pumping and my organs work. And I have a car that I can drive to the gym and I have money to purchase a gym membership. And she gets on the treadmill when she gets there and she puts on her favorite podcast or her favorite YouTube video or a playlist that makes her feel good. And she starts jogging and she's smiling and she's got the endorphins working and everything's great. And she's thinking about her day ahead. And she's like, this is awesome. And I'm going to impress my boss by doing this today. And I'm going to whatever, just thinking about positive things. Okay. I'm so excited to go to the meeting, the work meeting that I have, or I'm so excited to go to the vendor meeting I have tonight. And I have this to look forward to. Okay. And then you have Nancy, her alarm goes off and she snoozes and she snoozes and she's groaning and she's rolling over. and she knows she has to be at the gym at six. So right at five 50, she finally crawls out of bed and she's rushing. She's going through her drawers. She can't find the gym shorts she wants to wear. And she's going through her laundry. Now her room's a mess. And she's like, great. Now my room's a mess all because I have to go to the stupid gym. And she finally finds an outfit. She throws it on. She rushes to the gym, puts herself in danger. She's already overstimulated. Her heart's already pumping. She doesn't even need to get on the treadmill because her heart's pumping so fast because she's so stressed because she's so late. She finally gets there. She hops on the treadmill and the whole time she's just like, this is stupid. I hate this. This is dumb. I'm bored. I want to go home. I blah, blah, blah. I can't believe I got up this early and I have to go to work now and then I'm going to be tired and then I have to go to a vendor meeting and oh my gosh, this is going to be such a long day, right? Okay. I think you get it. If you're looking at both of those girls from an outside perspective, now picture them both on the treadmill next to each other. Okay. From an outsider's perspective, they're both facing the same day, the same morning, right? They both got out of bed, obviously, and drove in a car to get to the gym. And they're both on the treadmill at six o'clock in the morning. So nothing about the life itself changes, right? The circumstances itself, the circumstance of being at the gym itself, like it looks the same from the outside but they're both having completely different days they're both having completely different mornings why it's coming from their reactions to them okay i think a lot of times we confuse like emotional honesty with authority like i think that we have as a society kind of come to this point where it like feel your emotions and feel your feelings and sit with them and really don be afraid to like tell people who you are and be yourself and while I think yes of course absolutely absolutely I want you to feel your emotions I want you to talk about them I want you to see someone or talk to a friend or a family member if you need to talk out your emotions but don't give them authority okay it's okay to be emotionally honest with yourself and journal or reflect, but giving your emotions the authority to then power over your day is not cool. It's not okay. And it's not what God gave us feelings for. Okay. He gave us the book, the Bible, right? To tell us how to life. Okay. That's not what our emotions are for. Just because I feel something doesn't mean that it gets to make decisions for me. and that's what emotional discipline is. It's choosing your response instead of being ruled by your reaction. I truly think that there is a slight issue with culture now where it's like, if it feels right, just do it. Protect your peace. You deserve better. Cut them off. Follow your heart. All of those things that we hear day in and day out, again, feelings are real. I am not saying suppress them by any means, but they're unstable. If I entered my marriage with Danny based on literally only emotions only, like solely emotions, then wouldn't I leave on emotions? If I'm super happy on our wedding day, which I'm sure I will be, maybe a little anxious, maybe a little overwhelmed, like great. That's a great, like I'm happy. I'm in a great relationship. I marry him and then we get in a fight three months later and I'm super upset and mad and ticked off and so that I would just leave. We don't do life based on emotions. We have to get up and go to work. That's really not a choice for a lot of us, right? School. Like you got to go to school. There are things in life that you genuinely have to do. Do we feel like we want to do that every day when we wake up? No. There are definitely days where we're like, wow, I could really use like three extra hours of sleep, but we don't have a choice. So stop acting like getting up for God and sitting down with the Bible as a choice. Stop acting like going to the gym and taking care of yourself as a choice. Treat those things as non-negotiable because your feelings, they change by the hour. They change with hormones. They change with how much you got sleep the night before. They can change with who's texting you or who's not texting you back. They change with how your genes fit that day. Think of all of the little things that could throw our emotions off. It's very, very important that we root ourselves in the Lord, okay, to keep us regulated, but also, like, let's be real. Like, we can't let these little emotions that happen and come at us during the day reflect how we react to things because it could be detrimental to our life. I mean, I used to do that. I still do that sometimes. If I feel close to God, like, I'm opening my Bible. I'm excited to do it. But then on the days that I feel kind of distant, or maybe I'm a little upset with something, or I'm a little mad at him, I wouldn't. Okay, well, that's not going to work, right? If I felt super motivated, I'd work hard. But if I felt discouraged, I'd spiral. And I'd be like, what's the point of this anyway? Like, I'm not going to go to the gym. That's not maturity. That's emotional impulsiveness dressed up as like a big fat lie. Okay, it's not authentic. I want to bring you guys to a couple of verses. This is funny because we're already going on almost 20 minutes and I was like, this is going to be a short episode. Now we're probably going to be around 30 like we normally are, but praise God. I love it. I love that we're talking about this and I hope you guys are enjoying the episode, but let's go to Proverbs. I'm going to read chapter 25, verse 28. I love Proverbs. It says, a person without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. Okay. So that means no protection. Everything gets in, everything gets in. There's no, you have no walls up with no self-control. Okay. Every comment that comes onto a post, every mood that comes in, every offense or anything you feel like attacked or rejected on every insecurity. And then in Galatians, I love Galatians because Paul wrote it and I'm on a Paul kick right now. Chapter 5 verses 22-23, self-control is listed as one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, okay? Which means emotional discipline is not just personality. It's not just like, oh, I'm very emotionally disciplined. It's maturity and it's spiritual maturity because the fruits of the Spirit are what we're supposed to embody. And I feel like in this verse specifically, God is saying, self-control is that important, that it needs to be a fruit that you embody. In James 1, verses 19-20, it says, Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry. Quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. Being slow, like having to pause, requires a lot of discipline. So if you have no self-control and no emotional regulation, discipline is going to be very hard. Jesus felt everything. He felt it all. He felt betrayal, grief, anger, exhaustion, but he never let his emotions rule him. He was never ruled by emotion. He felt very deeply, but he acted intentionally. And it's a great model for us of true strength. All right. Emotional discipline looks like not sending the text, not clapping back when somebody really makes you angry, and I know you want to do it so bad. How many times has someone made you mad and you just immediately opened your mouth? Did you even listen? Let's go back to James. That's such a good verse. Be quick to listen, slow to speak. Normalize taking a breath when somebody says something to you. Pause. Take a breath. It's okay. You don't have to clap back right away. Okay? Don't quit because you feel insecure. Emotional discipline looks like not assuming the worst, not spiraling because someone didn't validate you. Okay, it's going to the gym even when you don't feel like it. It's opening your Bible even if your faith is feeling a little bit dry. Staying committed even when butterflies fade. You know, maybe you're 45 years in a marriage. I don't know. There's going to be times where things like this happen and we have to have our walls up a little bit and protect ourselves by being emotionally regulated, but also disciplined, especially with our mouths. I've been thinking about this a lot too, just within the context of marriage You guys know the whole reason behind my journey with God right now is to prepare myself for marriage The covenant of marriage requires so much discipline because love is not sustained by feelings. Kind of like I mentioned earlier, it's a choice. Like every day when I wake up, it's a choice. It is a choice to love your partner. And that applies to everything. It applies to friendships. It applies to your business, faith, everything. Emotional discipline means that you're not always going to feel understood or feel spiritual or motivated or appreciated, but you're understanding I don't need to feel it to choose it. There were years of my life where I only pursued God when I felt convicted to or where I was feeling inspired, and that was me in my lukewarm era. That's not devotion. That's just loving God or obeying him when it's convenient, and we don't do that here. It's not about us. It's not about convenience. It's about obedience. growth started happening when I stayed consistent even when my feelings like weren't if that makes sense I have to stay consistent in order to grow okay when my feelings don't cooperate like that's okay too bad like guess what we're still getting up at 6am and we're still driving to the gym and we're going to be happy about it and we're going to speak positive things out loud because your emotions can be indicators but you cannot let them dictate you okay you can indicate a feeling obviously by the way that you're like the way that your emotion is the way that you're feeling recognize it but also recognize that you are not going to let it rule your day okay they don't get to hold the steering wheel i want you to ask yourself where are my emotions leading me right now is something about today like have I already today let one of my emotions get the best of me? Or this week, have I been letting my emotions steer the wheel? Like, did something happen on Monday or Tuesday that I've taken into the rest of the week? Are they leading me into wisdom? Maybe it was positive. Maybe something positive happened Monday or Tuesday. And you are. You're letting it carry you through the week, which is great, but it needs to be leading you to something better. Or are these feelings leading you into impulsiveness? Was there a day where maybe you came home and you're like, I need a glass of wine. Today was insane. And you drink a whole bottle of wine and then you open up the snack cabinet. And I'm not saying that you can't indulge every once in a while, but I'm saying letting yourself go, whether it's with your emotions or your body or your routine. Where do I need these walls? Where do I need to put up these self-control walls? where do I need to pause instead of react who am I with where I feel like I'm constantly reacting for me it's my brother like my family personally like I know when I walk into my house and I visit my family like I'm immediately on edge I almost feel like it's one of those things where you almost don't you you know the tiktoks where it's like unfortunately my body doesn't know the difference between X and then getting mauled by a bear. That is so true. It's genuinely like sometimes I'm with certain people where I'm like, okay, my hacks are up. I am on edge and I am ready to clap back and we just need to pause and be like, where do I need to take a second instead of reacting? Or maybe it's like an environment that you're in. Feelings are super powerful, but they were never, ever, ever meant to be in charge. And some of the strongest people I know, they feel very, very deeply. They're emotional people, but they just don't let those feelings run their life. And I aspire to be like that. Emotional discipline. It's not suppression. It's not, we're not suppressing them. We're letting, we're still like feeling them, but it's all about strength. All right. And having that self-control and that discipline, and that is maturity. Okay? I hope that that made you feel kind of good. Maybe it made you feel a little bit inspired because when I heard Bella Dane's podcast on it, I was feeling extremely inspired and I was like, I want to talk about this on the pod this week. And I was happy that I was able to find some good pieces of scripture to tie it into. I'm going to read those back to you guys too, just in case you missed it. The three verses were Proverbs 25, 28, a person without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. Galatians 5, 22, and 23 is all about the fruits of the Spirit and self-control is one of them. And then James 1, verse 19 through 20, I think this one's my favorite, be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. Maybe this week or going into this weekend, we can practice saying a quick, quick prayer. I'm not talking we need to like pause and say in our father after someone yells at you. I'm saying like, Lord, get in my mouth. Like get that. Why did that kind of sound so weird? Like I feel like I'm looking at a piece of cake, like get in my mouth. No, like Lord, I ask you to, what do I always say when I, I, oh, I know I said that because usually my morning prayer, I say, Lord, get in my head before I do, but something quick. If it's like literally three words, Holy spirit come. Sometimes I say that too. When I know where I'm like, oh, I'm going to need the Holy Spirit for this one. Literally call upon the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit come. Sometimes I do that when I'm walking into a meeting or when I'm walking up to a podium to speak. When I get in the car and I'm nervous about my drive because here in Northeast Ohio, apparently the snow is just never going to stop. I love to say that. I love to call upon the Holy Spirit and just invite Him to be with you and help guide you. And it's so freeing sometimes to know that you've just like literally left it all at the feet of God. So I will love you and leave you with that. I hope you guys are enjoying the podcast. I love, love, love hearing from you. If you felt like this episode spoke to you anyway, or if you have any ideas for upcoming episodes, I, again, I love to hear from you guys. As always, I like to mention this, please, if you're going to message me, message me on Instagram. I never check my TikTok DMs. I really never do. And I feel so bad because there's so many sitting in there and I wish I could get to them. But TikTok just does a really weird way of like filtering messages and a lot of them are spam. So I want to talk to you guys. So message me on Instagram. And I love you. If something from this episode spoke to you, share it with a friend. If you want to share this podcast with someone, I would love you for that. I love that because that's how we get to like share the word of God, which is great. But as always, I really appreciate you seriously more than you know for being here. Thank you for letting me come on here every week and mini rant to you guys. I feel like I'm on a little FaceTime call with you guys and I love it. But also just thank you so much for being here and trusting me with your walk with the Lord. I love you so, so much. And I hope you have a fantastic Friday if you're listening to this on Friday and a great weekend. And never forget, Jesus loves you too. Bye guys.