The Sacred Role of Hard

In this episode, we explore the beauty of contrast — the strange, sacred way that joy lands deeper after we’ve tasted the hard. I share two stories from our family road trip out West, including one freezing night in a tent in Oregon that taught me more about gratitude than any self-help book ever could.

We discuss emotional highs and lows, why humans aren’t meant to be happy all the time, and how allowing ourselves to experience the full spectrum of our emotions is what makes life meaningful.

If you’ve been avoiding hard feelings or struggling to let joy in, this one’s for you. And if you want more support, you’re always welcome to join my free monthly group coaching call at:

https://www.tamarcoaching.com/group

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:13

Hey guys, I just have to start off by saying this. Something really cool just happened to me. I blocked this time right now, I'm sitting down talking to you guys, as a time to sit down and write this podcast. And it'd been thinking about this podcast for a while, and I blocked this time to sit down and write it. And when I sat came to sit down to write it, I realized that I had already written it last week. And I completely forgot. And I was like, what? I completely forgot I wrote it. And so now I'm able to actually skip to the next step, which is to record it for you guys. And I'm just like high-fiving past me, like all over the place, because don't you love it when that happens? When you're like, you know, sitting down to do something. This happens all the time with laundry for me. I completely am in a complete meditative zone when I'm doing laundry. So when I sit down, so then when I'm like done working and I go out to like fold this big pile of laundry and it's done for me, I'm like, what? When did that happen? It literally feels like an assistant had come in to write this podcast for me and just handed it over to me because I feel I completely don't remember doing it, but I did it, and here I'm able to get to the next place and actually record it for you guys. So high fiving all the past selves out there who did such amazing things for us. And I want you guys to actually pinpoint something today, something that your past self did for you. And you can give a big high five because man, it feels so freaking good when you know you have a team behind you, and that is you. So I thought that was really fun. All right, before we dive, dive, dive in, I want to remind you guys that I host a beautiful and very amazing free group coaching call every single month. And truly, if you're someone who's been curious about coaching, curious about me, curious about how this how it works, curious about how to, you know, really improve and move forward in your business, or you want to taste the vibe, or you just need some support in whatever season you're in right now, it's such a solid place to land. You know, coaching is one of those things that you have to experience to understand it. So, and really being in a room with other entrepreneurs who are also figuring things out, I mean that is seriously world peace right there. That is true healing. It's incredibly grounding and it reminds you that you're not alone in this. So if you want to join the next call, head over to tomorrowcoaching.com slash group and you can register for the next call there and bring your yummy beverages or your glass of wine or whatever. Just bring yourself and be there. We would love to have you part of the community and get your little brain and your little business coached on. So all right, let's get into days get into today's episode. I want to talk to you guys about something that's important, a little nuanced, and you know, might ruff ruffle some feathers or kind of like have you twisted and your brain twisted a little bit here or there, but I want to talk to you about the beauty of contrast and why we have both the good and the hard in our lives. And I want to say this up front before anything else. Nothing I'm sharing today is advice I would ever give someone in the middle of fresh grief. It's really important that you hear that from me. And I say that because this episode was sparked by something very heartbreaking for me. A client of mine, someone incredibly special, who came to me wanting to rediscover her passion and excitement and build something new from the ground up, reached out the other day from the hospital. She's pregnant, baby, I think number three. We were timing our work together around her due date. So she would be just she would be done coaching just at her due date. And she messaged me from the hospital to reschedule because things weren't looking great. She didn't know exactly what was going on, and she wanted to reschedule for the following week, which of course was no problem. And then the later later on, she wrote to say she was on her way, she was leaving the hospital, and she was on her way to bury her baby. And I really actually should have kind of said a little warning here, because this I imagine can bring up a lot of emotions for a lot of people. And it did for me in that moment as well. It it was incredibly devastating. I felt for her family, for her, for this chapter that they're being forced into. And, you know, I I want to be very, very clear here. What I'm talking about today is not for her. I'm gonna reiterate that. Not for that moment, not for anyone in the middle of the their darkest hour, because this conversation is for later on, for the long arc of healing, you know, for the bigger picture of being a human. But it did spark this in me because honestly, between her experience and everything we've lived through here in Israel these past two years, the war, the hostages, the funerals, the young soldiers, the constant ache that we've been living through, I've been thinking a lot about why life comes with this kind of brutality like tucked inside of it. Right? It's so freaking beautiful, but it's also got this like real brutality that is tucked inside. You know, my coach, the coach that I got certified with from the Life Coach School, her name is Brooke Castillo. I'm not sure if I've mentioned her on the podcast yet, but she talks about this idea of life being 50-50. Half of life is freaking amazing, and half of life is hard as hell. And obviously it's not a mathematical equation, but you get the idea. And today I want to kind of go beyond that idea, that concept of 50-50, and not just that life is this way, but why actually I believe it's meant to be this way, and why on even and one more step further, why on some level we may even want it to be this way. Like not in a conscious way. I don't think we consciously think, like, oh, I really want it to be this way, for sure not. But unconsciously, I believe that we do want it because I think that there is some beauty in that as well. So let's start here. You know those moments where we where life feels like just totally complete, where everything just clicks for a second, and they're usually very small, short, fleeting moments. But those are the moments that stay with us like forever. I remember from years ago on a big family road trip out west, we'd been driving forever, my kids, you know, all my kids, all the snacks everywhere, someone always needing to pee and stop. They were very little at the time. And we finally pulled into a trailhead in Oregon, or it was either Oregon or California. I also don't remember which. I think it was Oregon. And I stepped out of the car finally, after, you know, a few hours of driving with my got my baby, strapped my baby to me, who now, by the way, is nine years old. He was trying to hold me the other day. I was holding a cup of coffee that we just picked up because they had these really cool out in Oregon, out in the out west, they had these very cool drive-up coffee booth. What are they called? Like kind of like a food truck, but a coffee truck, but you can drive up like a drive-thru, which again, maybe for all you guys are like, yeah, we don't have them here. And it was so cool. And again, I don't drink coffee, you guys know that about me, but I was like, I'm getting a cup of coffee because this is a fun experience and I'm gonna do it. Of course, it's like the best coffee. These drive-throughs, by the way, not like Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts. You know, I mean, this is like the the best of the best. So anyway, so that morning, somehow that coffee was like the best thing I'd ever tasted in my entire life. And the sun was warm, my kids were stretching and laughing and being super cute with each other, which, you know, for all those parents out there, you know that like that's not always the case. Like it's those are moments, you know? And Akiva, my husband was there, fully present. You know, at the time he had this nonstop travel job where I barely saw him, where we barely saw him. So just having him there was like a a miracle in itself. And I had this moment where my whole body went, oh God, everything is so freaking perfect right now. Everything is so good. Like I just remember, I can literally feel that moment right now as I'm sharing it with you guys. And it was very short. It lasted like maybe 20 seconds, but it imprinted me. Like I can feel it, like I said, I can feel it still right now. And I believe those moments land as deeply as they do because of the contrast, because of the co because of the contrast beforehand, because of the exhaustion that came before it, because of the chaos, as well as the loneliness that came before it. We had just a little backstory. I mean, basically, I had, you know, I, as I mentioned, my husband was on the road, he's for for work like crazy, going from he just was never home, basically, when my kids were little. And I really was a single mama, or a solo mama, not a single mama, a solo mama. And I felt a lot of deep loneliness there, like I think many, solo mamas and single mamas, a lot of, you know, chaos, obviously, a lot of exhaustion, all the kind of stuff. So this moment felt even like more crazy good to me than if I, you know, if I had maybe a partner who was just around all the time and I had breaks all the time and all those kinds of things. Like I felt it even deeper, right? You know, that's that's kind of what happens with contrast. Contrast made that moment sparkle. It made that moment from like a good moment to a sparkle moment. And, you know, here's another if to just to get the idea of the contrast here, and you know, here's another example. You know, you all know that I'm a beach person, you know, that I basically have beach in my DNA, you know. I think literally, by the way, my first birthday was on the beach. We were in living in California, LA baby, and we went all wet, and I'm a summer baby, we all went to the beach. I believe I ate sand and then cupcakes and then sand again. This is the story that I hear from my family, from my parents. Anyways, but every time I go to the sea, I live about nine minutes from the sea. The minute I stepped out, step out of the car, and when the wind hits my face and I smell that salt, I literally, literally say out loud, this just never gets old. I'll say this if I'm by myself, I'll say this if I'm walking with somebody else, I go for a swim soda, I will always say this, like this just never gets old. It like slips out of my mouth. And I mean it every single time. But someone who lives on the beach, right? I live close, but I don't live on the beach. Someone who lives on the beach who wakes up to the waves every morning and falls asleep to them at night, do they feel that same rush that's like, ugh, it never gets old? Maybe, but but also maybe not. My guess is not, because the contrast changes the way we feel things. Having to choose it, drive to it, step into it, it makes it feel sacred in a whole different kind of way. You know, also this um, you know, there's this this song. If you guys know Malcolmore and Ryan Lewis, they do a lot of duets together. You can check them out. Maybe both. I'll put, I'll put actually, maybe I'll put the song in the in the show notes. We'll see. But Malamore and Ryan Lewis have a you know lots of songs. One song, for example, is Can't Hold Us. And if you pop it in and you take a listen, you it's so funny I said pop it in, like as if it's a cassette player. Oh my gosh, that's like so back in the day. Um, but you'll hear like McAmore's verse, what he sings is like gritty and fast and intense. Whereas Ryan Lewis's vocals are smooth, right? They're soaring, they're sweet. It's the contrast that makes a song a hit. It's like the back and forth, the gritty and the smooth, right? The fast and the just like sweet. Like all the contrast makes it a hit because humans are wired the same way. We need the full range for anything to mean anything. And everyone, every one of us has emotional highs and lows. Emotional pleasures and emotional pain, physical pleasures, physical pain. It's the full human experience. And if you're not feeling both, if you're living 90% on one side, something's being pushed away. Right? I coach people on both ends. Some people feel like they're 90% in pain, negative thoughts are loud, everything feels like heaviness and pressure. Like literally every like every word out of their mouth is something negative. And others are 90% joy, sunshine, positivity, and they avoid hard feelings like they're like they're hot coals. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And you know, I will say I'm definitely myself lean towards the 90% joy, sunshine, positivity. It's how my brain was wired and also how I helped wire it as well with coaching. And I can see the places where I will like avoid the hard feelings, especially when it comes to my kids. If I'm like, if my kids are having a hard time, I have a very hard time with their hard time, like that is for sure. So, you know, that they try to like reframe instantly. That's what happens when no matter which side you're on, or you know, skip to the sadness, like slap affirmations on top of the real grief. But here is the freaking truth. When we avoid one half, we block the depth of the other. If joy is uncomfortable for you, we want to be able to let it in. If sadness is a thing you never want to touch, let that in too. We don't want to drown in it, of course. Not to stay there forever just being miserable as as humans can do. We don't want that. But to see that you're okay, that you can feel the full emotional menu without falling to pieces. Because when we allow both sides, we don't just survive, but we become more of ourselves like a hundred times over. We're more grounded, we're more compassionate, we're more connected, we're not afraid. We're not afraid because what we're all afraid of, guys, is what it comes down to is feeling. And it might be joy for you, though you might not know it, and it might be grief and sadness and hard things as well. But we're all afraid of feeling. And so if we let it in, whatever is hard for us, we become more of ourselves. I really believe God didn't just create oceans and pomegranates and Shabbat and dolphins. I believe God created, and God, by the way, to use the word loosely, but God could be however you want to interpret that, the universe, something higher than you, whatever it is. But I believe God created our emotional landscape too. The joy and the ache, the ecstasy and the heartbreak. None of it is random. None of it's punishment. All of it's part of what makes us human. And it helps make us more human than we are already every single day. All right, I just want to go back for to the road trip actually for one minute. It was such a good road trip. I know I talk about a lot of this podcast too. But, you know, that blissful moment I shared earlier, it only meant what it meant because of the contrast around it, as I mentioned, you know, and so like here's another moment from that trip. Our very first night camping in Oregon. You know, we set up our little tent all excited, thinking we were these outdoorsy champions, which by the way, we were. We were so because let me tell you, it was freezing. It was like freezing, freezing, freezing, freezing, freezing. And, you know, we were the only tent there for our not for our benefit, but our I don't know, for points for us, I guess. Everybody else had like their freaking RV set up with their, you know, all the stuff, the generators. Anyways, you know, apparently it had rained the day before, before we had arrived, and the temperatures just dropped. And, you know, again, we were the only idiots sleeping in a tent while everyone else was hooked up with their generators, generators and their, you know, heat and all the stuff. I remember literally walking by one to the bathroom at like three in the morning and like just being like, is can you do that in this country? Can you knock on their door and be like, Can we come inside? I think that they would probably maybe shoot us. I'm not sure. But anyways, we're Israeli, we had no clue what cold in organ meant, so we just went with it. And in the middle of the night, I woke up my husband and begged him for his thick, thick socks, which is by the way, a side note, very funny story about this, because he, when he was packing for this trip, he was packed, he packed three of his very thick, thick, big socks, like thicker than ever, like army socks kind of thing. And I told him he could not bring three thick pairs of socks. I was really trying to pack minimally for everybody, like you can have one pair and you'll just rewear them, and then when we get to a uh machine, a laundry machine, we'll wash them, you'll have them again. I told him he could only have one pair. And here I am waking up like, give me give me your sock, give me the socks, give me the socks now. I really felt like I was like like a real like I was like a you know, begging and and like I was like a thief. I was gonna steal them from him. Anyway, so I asked him for the socks, and I made him like take it, take it out of like off his feet so I could actually put them on my hands. It was cold. It was we were miserable. And we woke up at dawn and had to sit in the car with the heat blasting just to feel our fingers again. But the next night, the next night was only a few degrees warmer and we had a campfire and we knew what to expect now, and when we woke up, I remember all of us saying, Well, that wasn't that bad, that was actually really great. Not bad at all. Because here's the point. If the second night had been our first night, we might have been miserable anyway, because cold is cold, and when you don't know what to expect, it just feels cold. But because we had felt the extreme cold first, a few degrees warmer suddenly felt like heaven. Contrast made the difference, contrast made the gratitude real. And so here, where I want to bring this all back home, if you're someone who struggles to feel the joy, okay, and again I want to let you know, joy actually takes a lot of courage. There is so much courage and joy that people don't realize because people are are really afraid of it because you could be really disappointed, right? If you could be if you're really excited about something happening, but then there's a possibility that it might not happen. You want to kind of hold back your joy with it, right? So it takes a lot of courage. So if you're someone who struggles to feel joy, or if you tend to downplay the good things as soon as they happen, I want to offer you something gentle and really doable that can help you with this. I want you to let yourself amplify the good. Don't rush past it, don't minimize it, don't tell yourself it's not a big deal. You're it's like, for example, I'm gonna give you an example of this. If you're let's say out with your partner on a little date, and after, you know, especially after a stretch of feeling disconnected from them and they reach out for your hand, I want you to pause. Let that moment land. Let your body soften to it. Flood yourself with thoughts like, this feels so good. I love how connected I feel right now. I've missed this. I want you to go all in. Don't hold back on any feelings here. Let yourself receive it fully, even if it's just for ten seconds, but really go fully into it so that you're experiencing the full emotion of like joy. This feels amazing. A total exhalation. Okay? And if you're someone who avoids the hard, if sadness or anger or fear make you want to sprint the other direction, here's your invitation. You will have a different invitation. Your invitation is to let yourself feel those feelings for 90 seconds. That's it. That's how long they last. Intense hard emotions will last for 90 seconds. Think about all the things you can do in 90 seconds. I'm just thinking right now. First of all, you could definitely read two really good pages of your book, right? You could do, you know, a certain amount of jumping jacks. I don't know how many. What are your other ideas, guys? You could make a guacamole in 90 seconds. I mean, you could 90 seconds, it's not that big of a deal, right? The first 90 seconds of any emotion are the most intense. And if you could stay there, not fix, not solve, not name it to tame it, not name it like this is how I feel, but just going with it. You'll see that you are okay. I want you to put a hand on your chest and breathe into it. Remind yourself that you are there for yourself, let the emotion run through your body like a wave passing right through. No pressure, no judgments, just being fully present. Because when we allow the heart to wash through us, we will make space inside of ourselves for everything else, for the clarity, for the grounding, for the resiliency, and at the end of it, even the joy. So if you're someone who struggles to feel joy, maybe you just need to let it in more of the positive and let the goodness land. And if you're someone who avoids the hard feelings, your work is to let yourself sit in that discomfort a little bit. Okay? So just take a moment to think about am I somebody who's has a harder time letting in the joy, or am I somebody who has a hard time letting in the hard? And allow yourself to know which invitation is for you, because it's very important to do that. Okay? And also I just want to mention also like letting in the hard might also be, it might not be like a hard feeling of like grief, disappointment. It also might be, you know, taking a risk, getting out of your comfort zone, letting yourself be seen, right? Being and letting yourself be disappointed and failing and surviving it. All that is also can be very hard emotions that oftentimes we don't allow ourselves to feel. And I tell all of my people, all my clients, all my entrepreneurs, that that is the difference between a successful person and a not successful person and what they're wanting to achieve. Someone who is successful, the only difference, it's not because they're prettier, they've got more connections, they've got more money in the bank, or any of these kinds of things. It's because they are more comfortable allowing the discomfort in. They're more comfortable sitting with the disappointment, the frustration, the anger, the embarrassment for those 90 seconds than the next person. Right? We have room for all of it. That is the bottom line. The 50, 50, the 70s, 30, the 80, 20, whatever your mix is today or this week, we are strong enough to hold both. And the more we allow both sides of our emotional life, the more we get to experience the beauty that comes from the contrast. Right? Joy becomes more joyful, light becomes brighter, moments become miracles. That is the truth. If we allow the contrast, the more of what we want becomes even more. All right, guys. What do you think? I'm so curious to know your thoughts on this. I would love to hear from you. If you can, you can always drop into my DMs on Instagram, or you can also send me an email. I'd love to hear what you're what you thought about this particular episode. So that's what we've got for today. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being human in such a human world. And if you want to get some coaching going on, just sit in community with other people doing this kind of work or get, you know, getting support in their business and their lives, I won't go ahead and register for that next group group group coaching pro group coaching call. You know where to find it. Tomorrowcoaching.com slash group. Love you guys so much. Can't wait to speak and hang out with you guys next time. Have a beautiful, beautiful week.