When life gets hard, the first thing we want is for everything to feel better. Am I right? Well, sometimes, the best thing to aim for is getting to neutral. Instead of wanting everything to feel amazing, getting to neutral as a first step is so much less daunting. And you do this by working on neutral thinking.
This week my kids are on vacation with their dad. Every summer we each get two weeks of allotted vacation time with them. This year, they are just away for a week, but the past few years, he’s taken the full two weeks at one time. It was brutal to have them away for two whole weeks at first!
As I reflected on this though, I don’t feel like it’s brutal anymore. I miss them, of course! But I have now gotten myself to a neutral place about them being away. I have very neutral thinking about the whole situation.
Of COURSE, I miss them, but I’ve also learned to appreciate my time with my partner and for me to spend time with myself doing some of the things that I’m not able to do when I’m in mom mode.
Any time you go through a big change in life, it’s really common for the change to rock the boat a little (or, in my case, a lot!). Change is hard for most people.
When you’ve known things to be one way for a long time and all of a sudden, they’re not, that feels uncomfortable.
I’ve told this story before, but when my ex and I were in the throes of the divorce process, one of the things that I got really stuck on was that I had lost what I had defined as a “normal family”.
A friend tried to explain to me that there is no such thing as normal–everyone has their own definition of what that is to them, but my brain did NOT want to let go of the idea of the normal nuclear family. Forget reality, because that’s what I wanted!
It can be really hard to let go of something that we want but we can’t have even though we know we can’t have it.
Brains are a funny thing. Even though I knew that my definition of normal was gone, I still clung to it SO tightly. I could have shifted my thinking to ok, I’m just going to have to pivot and create a new normal for myself. But instead, clinging to the idea that in order for it to be good, I needed a family with two married parents living in the same home with their kids.
I created that. But the reason it was so hard was that I had the thoughts that it was normal and I also clung to the idea that normal was good.
As Pema Chodron says, the reason we suffer is that we cling to the way we want things to be. And she is right.
And I suffered a LOT.
I have to say, that changing my thoughts about my family isn’t something that happened easily or overnight. But what I learned is that it’s a much easier task to get to neutral thinking first.
A lot of my clients have gone through a divorce, and one of the things that comes up is their anniversary date. I can really relate to this one because it can be a hard day – it’s a reminder of what’s been lost. The life that you lost.
Personally, I can say that I’ve gotten to a place of neutral thinking about that day. It’s not like it comes and I feel all cheerleader-y about it. I’m not jumping up and down praising God that my marriage is over, but I am fairly neutral about it. I remember the good things and the not-so-good things, AND I also enjoy the life I have now on that day.
I still have work to do when it comes to feeling neutral about my ex, however. And I’m ok with that. Neutral thinking and neutral feeling is my goal. I don’t expect to ever love who he is after what I went through. But I do expect to get to neutral at some point and that’s a much less daunting task for me than being able to think he’s amazing.
After a big change in life, we just don’t want to feel the pain of the event. None of us want to feel pain. Obviously!
But the trick is, you’ve got to learn how to be with it. The only way is through.
The only way is through is to keep moving through the painful feelings, honoring them. Letting them energetically move through you. Let them serve their purpose. And instead of resisting, observe them – you’re a vessel for those emotions to move through you.
I’m not denying this can feel difficult. But it’s the work. Right?
If you’re one of those people who feels so much pain because you just want the emotions to be gone, or you just want to feel good, you have to work on an interim place to land. A smaller chunk to bite off.
That’s neutral. Neutral thinking, neutral feeling.
In the situation with my ex, I cant expect to go from having thoughts like, he’s such an asshole to I love everything about him and I feel perfectly great about every aspect of our relationship and the part he plays in my life right now. That’s totally rainbows and daisies and it is NOT realistic.
Nor do I really care to get there. I will probably always have some kind of charge about him in SOME way. Maybe not, who knows. But I’m not mad at myself if I don’t ever completely get rid of that because I can be with that emotion when it comes up. And then I move back to my place of neutral.
It’s much easier to think about getting to neutral.
If you lose a job (been there, done that!), your first reaction might be to panic, feel bad about yourself, or feel hatred or animosity toward the company. And the thoughts you are thinking about losing the job are causing those feelings.
Getting neutral might look like asking yourself why losing the job happened FOR you. What are the benefits of losing that job?
Here’s a story about that.
I don’t always like telling this story because it involves me being let go from a job, and that’s a little triggering sometimes. But a few years ago, I left my part-time brewery sales job to work as an inside sales rep for a company that basically sold tech solutions to government agencies. The work wasn’t exciting, but it was fine and paid fairly well. And, it was enticing because it was a huge step up in income for me, it was a work-from-home position (when I took the job, at least), and the commission opportunity was amazing.
But, I was let go right before my probationary period ended. And I was let go because I was going through a difficult time in my family – we had some medical things going on that required me to be available for one of my kids during work hours at times, and my boss didn’t like that.
That boss, who was hired after I was hired, basically told me that I needed to find doctor appointments outside of work hours. I’m not sure what universe she was living in, but that can be really hard. There are only so many after-hours appointments available, and EVERYONE wants those!
It ended up being a situation where I had to choose my job or my family.
Anyway, at first, panicked. But thankfully, I have some tools in my “toolbelt” to be able to balance the panic (not saying panic didn’t ever again come into my field!). I held on to the knowing that everything has always worked out for me eventually and that this would too.
And it eventually did, and as always, I can now connect the dots backward and see how leaving that job was the best thing for me in the long run.
Being able to hold both of those things – be with the panic and anxiety while also holding the possibility of what if there is something better, helped me get to overall neutral thinking about the situation.
Also, it’s important to remember that our brains want to look for evidence that something is a problem, so our default will always be to see all the reasons that the situation that was taken away was good. When you can intentionally look at all the reasons why it’s’ a good thing that you’re not in that space anymore, that helps get to neutral thinking, neutral feeling.
Becoming a new “empty-nester” is also a big transition and one that I’ve helped people through. I’m not an empty nester yet, but my son is in college, so I am familiar with how different it is to be a parent to older kids. It’s a challenge to learn how to parent them when they’re “leaving the nest”.
How do you get to neutral thinking here?
Well, you’re always going to miss them, but there are some really good things about them getting out in the world on their own too.
You’re happy that they’re happy. You’re excited for them to get out into the world and fly – to experience things, have their own successes, and learn from their mistakes. You’re excited for them to find themselves and do things like get married, have kids, and see the world.
This is also an exercise in letting go. I always like to say with kids that they were never YOURS. You were just given the job of raising them until they were ready to fly on their own.
It’s such a hard thing, but so beautiful at the same time. Getting to neutral thinking and neutral feeling here just really requires learning how to be with all of it even when it’s hard. Because you know that on the other side of hard, is so much good and beauty and joy.
With transitions, while you’re leaving something behind, you are also gaining something.
It’s important to look at all of it and learn to be with all of it. You can’t have it all the ways just like you can’t have all the things all the time. You have to let go of needing all the things and be grateful for the things you do have. You can still have feelings about the things you don’t have or the things you’ve lost – for sure.
We don’t want toxic positivity or spiritual bypassing here. You can do both.
You can recognize what’s missing or hard, but you also be grateful for the good and build on that.
Honoring the hard stuff is just part of getting to neutral.
How you feel about your body is another place where getting to neutral is really helpful. It’s pretty hard to go from self-loathing to a place of unconditional love for your body right away. You’re not going to get there overnight, and neutral is a good place to aim first.
To be clear, neutral does NOT mean you don’t care. It DOES mean you’re in a place where you can honor that you’ve lost something and ALSO appreciate what you’ve gained.
For me, my new normal is amazing and aiming for neutral first has helped me get there.
Do miss the old normal? Yes! I do. Sometimes more than others, but now I guess I’m able to look at it from a place of enjoying the memories, or being thankful that I had that experience. I learned how to accept what is in this moment, NOW, which is all I know for sure I have, and even though sometimes I don’t like it, I can soften into it.
Do I ever get upset? Yes! But I can be with those feelings and let them flow through me from a place of acceptance. And eventually, those feelings subside into a more neutral place.
This is all part of my process that I call “in the weeds”, or “lost in the wilderness”. You’re getting yourself to a place where you can accept and surrender.
This is also what I’m talking about in the free workshop I’m hosting next Thursday, June 30th. (rescheduled from 6/23)
We’ll be talking about assessing the situation and getting a handle on where you’re at. We’ll work on visioning what the life you want looks like. And that can be a baby step – like getting to neutral!
If you know you want to get to neutral on something and feel ok about it – like you’re not paralyzed – you’ll have a direction and know what steps you need to take to feel better or do better so you CAN get to a more neutral place. Then you can move FORWARD rather than staying stuck wanting your old normal back.
The workshop is Thursday, June 3oth at 7 pm Eastern. You can register at bit.ly/thelifeyouwant-workshop for FREE.
It’s an interactive workshop so we’ll be doing exercises together on the call and you’ll get a chance to get coached if you’d like that. It’s a great opportunity at no cost to you! And if you attend live, I’ll have a bonus for you. Yay!
So, to recap, instead of worrying about feeling all better, get to neutral first. It’s not as far to go. You’re not biting off more than you can chew with neutral. And remember, it’s a process. Be with it. Know you’ll always get where you want to go because if you want something, the way to get it is always possible.
As long as you’re focused on wanting it you WILL get there. So patience, and get to neutral first.
Prefer to listen? Click HERE to listen to the accompanying podcast episode on Real, Brave, & Unstoppable!
Do you wish you felt more alive and less like you’re on a “hamster wheel”?
I know the feeling. That’s why I created the FREE workshop, How to Create the Life You Want.
So many people get to a point in life where they realize that life feels like a mere existence. Every day feels the same and it is NOT what they thought it would be. They thought they’d feel more… ALIVE.
I’m here to tell you that it IS possible to have the life you want. It’s not going to come easy, at the snap of your fingers, but it is 100% possible.
Not sure where to start? Join the workshop! Click HERE to register.
