On feeling negative - change isn’t always easy.
I recognize the feeling when I look up and realize I've walked three blocks without really noticing any of the human around me.
Step. Step. Check for cars. Crosswalk. Step. Step.
My mind is elsewhere, trying to process my feelings from the conversation I've just left. My thoughts are usually running a million miles a minute trying to understand what happened, what went wrong, or how I could have changed it. I catch myself on these internal diatribes every once and a while but they've taken on a new meaning as I've launched this business:
How can I be a coach who claims to help people feel more ease and worthiness in their life, when I still have these negative thoughts?
I remember reading newsletters, blog posts and Instagram captions, scouring for something that would make the feelings of dating a little easier or help me stop feeling so envious of my peers as I looked around at their jobs (and the paychecks I thought they might be making). I read and watched hundreds of pieces.
But the ones that stuck with me the most were really honest. They did not paint a picture of a perfect world that I could enter if I bought their course or hired them for coaching. It was the people who were honest with me about how somethings in life were hard but gave meaningful insight on how they handled that.
There has been plenty of negative in my personal growth. Getting clear about what I want and need, learning how to date with more authenticity and vulnerability, deciding to launch a business that felt really aligned and deciding to be more vulnerable with people in my life in search of deeper connection has not been a walk in the park.
So I thought it was high time to give you all an honest look.
This one's a really personal one - I hope you all enjoy.
I cry 5x more than I used to.
On average, I feel far more deep sadness, anger and negativity than I did last year. And I'm really working to let myself feel these things. When I feel tears welling up, I try to let them flow because I know my body is recognizing an emotion from whatever situation I'm in and I need to honor it.
In the last month I have cried on the beach, in an airplane, on the street (I step to the side though - I promise I'm not one of those people blocking the sidewalk!), in a restaurant bathroom, on a bus and obviously, in my own apartment. (Anybody who lives in New York knows the crying in public transit life - we don't have cars to sit in so we just let it all out. It's basically a rite of passage.)
In each of these situations, once I've let the dam break, and let the tears flow, I can ask myself: "What am I feeling right now?" If I don't let myself feel sad, I never get to that moment of asking myself what's really going on. And that clarity is magic. I get to unlock what's really going on - what's scaring me, what action I just took I'm not proud of or what just happened that hurt me and why.
Feeling our feelings is powerful. My feelings give me a shortcut to what I need to address, heal or process.
While my life involves far more tears, anger and disappointment than it did a year ago, I also move through and past things faster. Potentially most importantly, I feel things less repetitively. When I used to push down my emotions or choose not to address them, I'd often notice the nag of a similar feeling popping up in my life in lots of smaller ways. I have so much compassion for that girl, who didn't want to look at the sad parts of her life and by doing so, kept feeling them in small ways.
So I am happy (in a sense!) to report that by allowing myself to feel my negative feelings, I've found a little growth or healing in each one. And by the same token, by allowing myself to feel my negative feelings really deeply, I get to feel the positive ones the same way. In the same way that I let tears flow, when I feel joy, I'm way better at feeling it. You may run into me some time, with a cheesy grin on my face, looking up at the sky.
Recently, I got overwhelmed on a street corner in the West Village looking up at a water tower on top of a building a few blocks away. It was 20 degrees and the steam from a tower nearby was letting off crisp white clouds nearby the water tower. My city was showing off for me and I was awash with gratitude and a moment of pause to just take it all in.
So if you see me sometime looking like a space cadet smiling at the sky, now you know what's happening - I'm experiencing a moment of deep joy. Feel free to join in or just enjoy your own private version.
This new phase of my life is not all sunshine and rainbows, I feel the bad things too and lots of them. But feeling them deeply has allowed me to embrace feeling the good ones deeply too + feeling the hard stuff is giving me roadmaps to identify what's really going on and move through it (and move on) much quicker.
I still have self-doubt.
It would be easy to focus on all the ways that I know better and all the things I have under control. Constantly speaking in "and I can help you too!" language. But just like I'd be lying if pretended I never have sad, angry or negative feelings, pretending that I never doubt myself or my path would be painting an unrealistic picture too.
I did not start this coaching business to convince people that it's possible to live a life where you never doubt yourself.
Where you never leave a date wondering "I think that went well but does he feel the same way?" Where you never send a message and click back to your texts 5 minutes later to cringe about the wording you used. Where you never close your computer for the night and end up back on it 30 minutes later because you're not quite sure that the presentation for tomorrow will be enough and you need to read it one more time.
I have those thoughts, or similar ones, just like everybody does. But I've cultivated an ability to recognize when it's happening and get through it faster.
Often this recognition comes from a feeling in my body of tightness, or I realize I'm walking looking at the ground, with a hunch in my back, rather than my chin up looking at the world around me. When I catch myself having these trains of thought, I will literally say to myself, "I've told myself that story before and it's not serving me anymore. What's another way to look at it?"
The point is not to eradicate doubt. The point is not to let it control our lives.
There are so many ways we can reframe a negative train-of-thought: What opportunity do I have here to show up differently than I have in the past and prove that story wrong? In what ways am I being unkind to myself, and how could I love myself more right now? In what ways am I focusing too much on me right now, can I put this into a larger context and see this as a smaller piece of the puzzle?
But the key to all of this is being really kind to ourselves when we notice a doubt or negative thought and compassionately moving ourselves out of it as quickly as we can.
I still feel like I have so far to go.
Starting a business, even so far, has shown me the importance of confidence. I have to believe that every day that I'm going to do my best and when things go wrong, I will be resilient and find a way to make things better. I'm proud of many of the ways I've stepped up to this plate of entrepreneurship:
I did not let overanalyzing delay me launching a website because I reminded myself that it was more important to start speaking to you all than to say exactly the right thing.
I did not let bureaucratic mumbo jumbo stop me from laying the legit foundations for the business (we've got an LLC, y'all!!) because I knew that everybody feels some level of discomfort and as long as I had done my research, I just needed to push through.
I did not let fears about the business making money stop me from making some important investments because I realized that my belief that this business will make those investments back (and more) is as important as the investments themselves.
But with all that accomplished, I'm still very much a work in progress.
There is never a point in any self-development journey where you've "made it." We never crack the code. It can be easy to connect with gurus and coaches on the internet who promise step-by-steps or recipes to make exactly the life that you want.
Mark Manson has a great point on this. He proposes that there are two different approaches to self-help or personal growth. The first are "Doctor People." He says, "they've got this pain or confusion in their life and they want to solve it so they can move on and feel normal and healthy again. Much like a doctor eases your physical ails, they look to a book or website or seminar to cure their emotional ails. their mindset is very much, 'I paid you, now fix it!'" On the other hand, he proposes, are "Coach People." "Other people approach this stuff like they'd approach a game, like basketball or chess. They want strategies. They want roadmaps. They want checklists...They want to understand the nature of the game on a deep level. Any new breakthrough of experience or emotion, they want to have it, to conquer it and be transformed by it."
What I love about this framework, is that "Doctor People," whether they realize it or not, want someone else to fix them, without having to face the thing making them sick. On the other hand, "Coach People" are looking to understand the process, what's causing the situation, how it works and how they can fix themselves.
With this outlook on life, the more you understand how our thoughts, emotions, and feelings "work," the more you will realize that there is always another level to which we can improve.
I have felt enormous progress in the last year of more self-love, more conviction in my path, less attached to what others think and so much more, but it doesn't mean I could still love myself more or release more attachment from the opinions of others. I'm also unlocking other parts of my life where I can improve.
The gift of this new perspective, is identifying these things feels more empowering. Every time I get through an old habit I wanted to let go of, or unpack a limiting belief, I see my success and I see a dozen more opportunities to apply what I've learned and ways my life could be even better. It is a humbling but optimistic state to live in.
I recognize that it seems a little crazy to launch into a piece about the importance of acknowledging the negative and then find a way for each negative in my life to be a positive. I don't want to diminish that the negative stuff still really hurts. It sucks to experience and it doesn't always get easier. But what has happened is that alongside these negative experiences, I see the light coming with them - I see the opportunity, the learning and the growth and it makes that hurt from the negative dissipate faster.
Our goal is not to eliminate the negative - the pain, the hurt, the doubt in our lives. We never will so it's futile to try.
But the more we can recognize that these negative experiences come with a side of fries, so to speak, a benefit that sometimes we can only see after the fact but is there nonetheless, the more that we can move out of the pain and the hurt with more speed.
I know I can do a better job on here (and on Instagram) showing an honest, unpolished view of what this journey has been like. I'm going to make it a goal to show you that. We can date, cultivate friendships, love our families, strive in our jobs and honor that it is both incredibly rewarding and difficult. Both are allowed. Both are important.
Thanks for reading.
