Change your emotional habits and get over stressful times like a honey badger

This week has been one of those weeks.

Our internet cable literally broke down, the dryer must be fixed, and we have a roof construction going on in the house. The cleaning lady rescheduled. My little one started with a part-time nanny and I'm dealing with separation anxiety, probably more than the baby.

All the scheduling and rescheduling take time and so much energy!

People are coming in and out of the house all the time.

Men are climbing ladders outside my windows, looking in when I'm breastfeeding the baby in the living room or working in my office.

There is no privacy for the person who needs a lot of if and alone time to digest the world around me.

All this could drive me nuts. But, I'm not allowing it to happen.

I have seen this so, so many times and it’s time to take a different, healthier and happier route.

If I would let my emotions take the lead and start stressing, I give my power away and it all goes worse and it will take longer to get over it.

Eventually, I would burst the pressure to someone else, like we often do if we are not able to connect and feel our feelings, and that’s not right either.

Instead of losing my nerve and wasting my energy I observe and choose to respond and react to stressful emotions and chaos calmly with high self-awareness.

Our emotional reactions are learned habits.

We learn all the habits by repetition and by watching others. The way to change our habits is to turn inward and start making a difference. It’s very delicate but the impact in our life is huge: it’s the way to change your life and create new, better paths.

So I breathe, and consciously release the emotions of overwhelm and focus on getting through the week positively, taking care of things one by one and staying present in the moment.

I remind myself to stay centered and grounded like a honey badger. Honey badgers don’t care but focus on essentials, on what they want.

(If you haven't seen the narrated viral video about the crazy nastyass honey badgers, it's super funny. It tells something about my sense of humor. )

Also, laughing reduces the cortisol hormones in the body and calms down the sympathetic nervous system. Watch something funny or shake your ass when life gets too serious or you find it hard to calm down to meditate on it. Like kids in general, our inner child loves when we let loose and get playful.

It would be impossible for me to go through this week without other people’s help.

I appreciate the abundant amount of help. I appreciate help is available. All these people help our family enormously with their knowledge.

For a long time, it was really hard for me to ask for help from others.

I've always had this mentality of a super strong, over-functioning, independent Finnish woman who doesn't need anyone's help.

My old self was a kind of woman who can build her own house by herself if needed.

This is what one construction guy said to me years ago when he renovated my apartment in Helsinki after I showed him how the kitchen needed to be built. I wondered why I paid him as I could have done it myself.

I still remember how I felt inside that time.

After ending a 7-year relationship I felt completely lost, and my brain was scattered due to insomnia and the anxiety I suffered. I had no idea what I should do next in my life, so I tried to over-control everything I could and operated completely from my masculine side. I didn’t allowing myself to stop as I was so afraid of what I would need to face.

I was almost collapsing then but I pushed through. I managed to keep it together until I collapsed a year later.

It was then when I realized that I can't, and don't need to, try to survive on my own and do everything by myself.

I realized there are people who were actually able and willing to help me.

Little by little I started asking for more help in different areas of life.

Today it’s much easier for me as I’ve learned to ask for help and I know when I need to invest in myself and when my own resources are not enough. The most important thing is that I’ve learned to receive help.

As I’ve changed my behavior, I have noticed there’s abundance amount of helpful and kind people around me. All we need to do is to be open, reach out and ask for help.

Help is always showing up in a form or another. Sometimes it shows up as a person, in the form of group or company, a program, a book or online resource, or just a message that is pointing to the new direction.

Sometimes it asks courage to get over my fears to receive it and give myself an opportunity for growth and expansion. May it be personal health and wellbeing, family issue or my work and business.

Our level of self-worth measures the ability of receiving.

I believe we can learn to do pretty much anything successfully if we just put our energy and efforts in. I could still do all kind of things by myself but nowadays, if it’s not my cup of tea, I don’t want to.

I don’t need to know everything or do everything by myself, anymore.

It’s much easier to have set boundaries and focus on what we are best at and absolutely love to do. Let other people do use their expertise.

The most difficult part to getting over stressful emotions and moments is to learn to step out of your own resistant ego-mind and give yourself a permission to feel happy and good about yourself.

That can only happen when you are present and mindful about your thoughts, your feelings and the chatter of your ego-mind.

You have the power to change your reality and rise your energy by changing your emotional habits:

• Watch and observe your emotional reactions and responses.

• Get out from your own way and emotions.

• Make changes consciously.

• Choose to behave differently.

• Repeat and learn.

Don’t worry if you don’t get it right immediately but be determined. Life will give you as many rounds of practice as needed, until you have changed the old pattern.

Help is available when life feels complicated and it's hard to see clearly what to do and where to go next.

Or your internet cable needs fixing.

What is the area of life that you could use some help with?

Much love,

Jenni