Dealing with the sh*tty fifty
The other day I received an upsetting email. I read it and instantly felt a heaviness in the pit of my stomach. “This sucks”, I thought. My mind wanted to start spinning in negativity and make the email mean all sorts of terrible things.
My past self would have run to the kitchen in search of chocolate to feel better. But I didn’t. I reminded myself that I was in the “shitty fifty” and observed the unpleasant feelings coursing through my body for a few minutes.
Then I purged my thoughts and watched my mind shift as the words went down onto my paper.
I’ve been working on this skill of emotional processing for the last few years and it has completely changed my life.
When unpleasant emotions aren’t something to run away from, your life opens up. You no longer need to rely on numbing behaviors or external things to feel better. Instead, you access your inner resources to move through your experience of being human.
This is how I help my students overcome emotional eating, over-drinking, procrastination, and other destructive habits.
Because the truth is, 50% of the time life is boring, hard, or unappealing. It’s called the law of polarity. You NEED the shitty fifty to provide contrast for the “nifty fifty” - the other half that’s 👍
The shitty fifty is only a problem when you avoid, react, or resist it and compound it with unhealthy coping mechanisms.
The skill of emotional processing is NOT one we ever learned in school. Or at home. Or anywhere ever.
So I make sure to give it a good amount of airtime in my coaching programs. Because how you deal with uncomfortable emotions determines:
→ How much success you will achieve
→ How you show up in your relationships
→ How you take care of yourself
→ How authentically you live your life
It’s no small thing to “feel your feelings”. It’s EVERYTHING.
To actualize your biggest dreams comes down to your willingness to be uncomfortable.
When you do, life becomes a playground and anything is possible because there’s no emotion you can’t handle.
If life is going to suck half of the time anyway, you might as well spend the shitty fifty creating the life you want.