Be nice. Be polite. Be strong.

Did you learn when you were young to be a good girl? 

Rewarded for it? Praised for being so easy, helpful, reliable… For being good. 

So did we. And so we mastered this way of being.

Be nice. Be polite. Be strong. 

A big part of that meant shutting down big feelings. Especially uncomfortable ones like fear and anger - these made people around us uneasy, it’s not nice to feel that way in front of other people.

Big emotions are impolite, loud, weak, inappropriate - and time consuming. 

So we smiled and ignored them, and we learned our feelings mattered less than other people's. 

And we over-worked, over-trained, over-pleased. Over-did-it. Over-performed. Over-served. Over-achieved. For validation from them. Their feelings were more important than ours. 

We were rewarded and celebrated for pushing and over-ing. We were #winning from the outside. 

And the carrot kept moving. Always another mountain to climb, we kept going.

We didn’t linger in the energy of celebration, the same way we didn’t linger in the energy of disappointment or frustration.

We’d been blunting our feels for years with the forcing: our emotional thermostat set to “fine.”

Can you relate, high achiever? What’s this costing you? Avoiding, distracting, ignoring your emotions - and yourself. Your truths.

You hear the whispers, you feel the longing. 

Be nice. Be polite. Be strong. This is what you know, and it has served you in creating the life you’ve created. It’s just that there’s a time and a place for it. Put it in your back pocket. 

There’s also another way to be, do and have what you want in your life. And it’s one of the most important skills we work on in coaching: getting familiar with your emotions. When you do, your response to them changes. And, so does your life. 

When we feel deeply, we’re healthier individually and collectively. We’re all for that. And we’re here for you. 

XO Kelle and Nina