Episode Description

I love pancakes! Many people do. Today’s episode is about the time pancakes gave me a nervous breakdown. Many pancakes were harmed in the making of the episode, but it all turned out okay in the end. And my feelings are no longer hurt.

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Transcript

Hello. Hello. I am so excited to have you here with me today. Kind of doing things a little bit differently. I’m also recording a video along with this so that, uh, y’all can see what I look like, cuz probably some of you haven’t met me.

The video is gonna be on  my business, Facebook page, Sheila Morgan Coaching. And who knows where else I might… I might save that video. Could be fun. So what are we gonna talk about today? Um, there’s kind of been this theme happening lately of people talking about hurt feelings and the impact of that, what happens, what’s going on with that?

And so I wanted to address that. I wanted to talk about why we get our feelings hurt, what’s going on there and how we can stop having that happen. 

For one thing, we’re all humans, right? So you… you’re never going to get to a perfect state where nobody ever hurts your feelings, but I want us to look at that statement a little bit differently, and I want you to know that you don’t have to feel bad from what other people say and do. And we don’t have to put the responsibility on other people that “they hurt our feelings”. We can take back our power and we can decide whether our feelings are hurt or not, and not leave it up to other people. Cause what you’re saying, when you say you hurt my feelings, you’re giving them the power to hurt you. And how does that feel?

That doesn’t feel good to me at all. I would rather be able to decide when I feel bad and when I don’t. Like if somebody’s, you know, walking down the street and they say, oh, you’re ugly or you look stupid, or what are you doing here? You don’t belong here, whatever they say to you. Do you wanna feel bad immediately or do you want to feel, do you just wanna feel okay?

Do you wanna feel okay with yourself? Continue to love yourself, feel good about who you are? I know I do. I don’t want to wait for other people to either make me feel good or make me feel bad. So with that, let’s I wanna share with you a little story. 

So I was dating this guy years ago and I decided to cook for him. I really wanted to show him how amazing I could cook. And so I was gonna make him pancakes. So it’s morning, time, breakfast time he’s in the living room. He was playing video games and hanging out in there. I’m like, I’m gonna make you breakfast. And I asked if he liked pancakes. “Yep. Pancakes are great.” And he told me, “I make really good pancakes” and I said, “cool. So do I, let me go ahead and make some pancakes for you.” I went into the kitchen, I had all the stuff there, so I was mixing up the pancakes, got the burner going, got the pan hot, started cooking the pancakes. 

And every freaking time, no matter what I did, I was burning the pancakes. Like they were getting too hot. They weren’t getting fluffy enough. I kept messing with the burner, the heat on the burner. And by the fourth pancake, I was stressed out. I really wanted to show him that I could kick pancakes and I couldn’t get a single good pancake to come off of that stove.

I said something to him about, man, I messed up another one and he goes, oh, well, the burner’s too hot. and I thought, oh no, I’m the one cooking. I know what I’m doing. You just keep playing your video games. Don’t tell me… don’t YOU tell me how to cook pancakes. I’ve been doing it forever. I raised three kids. I know how to cook pancakes. Some guy playing video games is not gonna tell me how to cook pancakes! 

Like I had all these thoughts going through my head about pancakes. It was… I was getting more and more pissed and then I made another pancake and it still burnt. And I had to mix up some more batter. I’m like, my God, these are not working.

And he yells from the living room. The burner’s too hot. I’m like, oh fuck you. You… You’re in the other room. You don’t even know what I’m doing in here. So just keep your opinions to yourself. 

I made another pancake. And by then I was so hurt and so angry and so pissed off, like how dare he think that he needs to tell me how to make pancakes.

I wanted to throw the pan and I was just furious. And he comes walking into the kitchen. He goes, yeah, that burner on the left. It doesn’t turn down. You have to use this one over here.

if I had been in a calm state of mind, I would’ve been oh, cool. Thanks. And just got to work, making more pancakes. And instead him saying that to me, which was him being helpful. I got even more pissed. I said, if you can fucking do it better, you go ahead and do it. I’m done. And I threw everything, I grabbed my stuff and I left.

And I felt like shit . And it wasn’t until later that I realized. He wasn’t criticizing me. He had no intention of making me feel bad. He was trying to help me. 

The problem, the reason that I was upset, the reason that my feelings were hurt was because of all the things that I was thinking about him. I was thinking, oh, he’s mansplaining.

He’s being a Know it all. He thinks he knows how to do this better than I do. And all that was happening was that he knew that that one burner was too hot. He knew that that burner didn’t work right. Could he have yelled from the living room? Make sure you’re using the burner on the right. Not the burner. Yeah, totally. But he was playing video games. He was distracted. 

That’s irrelevant. It doesn’t even matter. What he said or how he said it, what his intention was, anything about that I was taking all of it as criticism. 

And that’s something that we have to be alert for. How are we hearing the things that people are saying to us? Are we hearing things as criticism, even when they’re not? That’s a problem. Right? That that’s telling me that we are by default, assuming people are negative and critical of us. So that’s something that’s going on inside of you. That’s your thoughts about yourself. That’s your thoughts about other people in your life and how they talk to you and how they treat you.

That really has nothing to do with the other person. So I know you’re probably thinking, well, what about when they are critical? Surely, that hurts my feelings when they actually are critical. 

And the thing is, is that. Even when they’re being critical, you can control how you feel about it. Someone can be telling you, you don’t know how to burn, how to cook pancakes. All you ever do is burn them. You don’t know how to adjust the burner, right. You are using the wrong pan. You’re too stupid. You shouldn’t be making pancakes. I don’t wanna eat your crappy pancakes. Even if someone is saying that we still get to decide for ourselves, whether we’re gonna be hurt by what they said, because we can look at how we think about the situation.

We can look at how we think about that person. Are they being arrogant? Are they being a jerk? You know, are we thinking negative thoughts towards them? Are we thinking negative thoughts towards ourself? Like if you already know, you can make an amazing pancake and that there’s just some glitch happening, fine, whatever… you’re gonna be okay with it. 

But if you already think , gosh, I hope I get this right. I hope I don’t screw this up. I hope I don’t do a terrible pancake. And then you hear anything that sounds like criticism, your own thoughts about yourself are influencing how you take the words that that person said to you.

And one of the things that I teach is how it doesn’t matter. What’s going on outside. What’s going on in the world. What the, what the circumstances of the world are, your thoughts are what create your emotions. The way you think about yourself, the way you think about other people, the way you think about what people say, what they do, even you thinking about what their intention is, whether they are criticizing you, or if they’re just saying words that you think they’re criticizing you, it doesn’t even matter. 

All that matters are the thoughts that you’re having about the entire situation, or even just one little part of the situation, or even about yourself. 

Your thoughts create your feelings, and then you’re gonna take action based on those feelings. You could inflate the situation. Right? Me taking the action of getting more and more angry and yelling back at him, escalated the argument.

And then he got mad because he was just trying to help me. And I was reacting.

Our emotions are gonna come from our thoughts. They’re gonna come. The tool that I offer you to not let that become such a problem is to just take a breath. just take one little breath. You feel that emotion come up. Ahhh, before you say anything, before you do anything, just take a breath and ask yourself, What’s really happening here? What are my thoughts about this situation? Why am I reacting like this? And do it from a place of curiosity. Not a place of judgment. 

Because, when you start telling yourself “God I’m being so reactive, I’m being so stupid. I can’t believe I’m acting like this.” You’re just adding fuel to the fire. It’s more criticism. It’s more negative judgment. It’s again, with the thoughts that aren’t helping you. Get curious about the thoughts you’re having. Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t add to the criticism that someone else is offering you. Don’t make it a bigger thing than it already is.

Okay, that’s what I have for you today. 

Take a look at what you’re thinking about the things that other people say and do, they might be being critical to you. They may not be. That’s completely irrelevant. You still get to choose. You still get to choose how you think and how you feel about the situation.

Okay? Love you all have an awesome day. Bye-bye.