37. The 50/50 Principle, Explained
Ever wake up in a terrible mood? Or have a negative feeling you just can’t shake? Me, too. Even with years of coaching (and therapy!), I still have negative feelings sometimes. I still have days where I wake up grumpy or bicker with my girlfriend all day or miscalculate how long an errand will take and wind up super hangry in the car on the way home.
These things happen. They’re not my super favorite. But they are part of life. And while coaching does help immensely in areas of mood and relationship and scheduling (among other things), that doesn’t mean we will never feel grumpy or have conflict or that things will always go according to our plans.
Negative emotions and conflict and things not going according to plan are part of life. Resisting them being part of life makes them feel much worse, though.
When we resist things, they don’t go away. We just wear ourselves out. When we accept things, even things we don’t prefer or enjoy, we actually have more power and agency.
Sometimes that’s the power to do something. And sometimes it’s the power to let something be without letting it ruin your day.
A coaching principle that can help you wrap your head around this is the 50/50 principle.
The 50/50 principle is the idea that life is 50% positive and 50% negative. The positive 50% is wonderful and what we all generally try to have all the time. The negative 50% is the bit we mostly try to resist and avoid. But the kicker here is that when we try to stay in the positive all the time and avoid the negative, we actually create a lot more unhappiness and suffering for ourselves.
(And yes, for those of you who follow my work closely, positive and negative are subjective ways of looking at things, not facts, but we’re going to use them as a shorthand here, to explain the larger concept.)
Join me on the podcast this week to learn more about this principle and how you can use it in your own life to create more of what you want and feel better when things aren’t going your way.
If you love the podcast and want to take this work deeper, I have great news! I have space for new one-to-one coaching clients starting this month, so click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If there are topics y’all want me to teach and talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here! I’d love to hear from you!
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
What the 50/50 principle is and how using it leads to more pleasure in the long term.
How to view your negative experiences in the context of the 50/50 principle.
Why it helps to normalize those times when we’re in the negative 50%.
How the brain’s negativity bias amplifies the negative 50% of our lives and we miss the positive 50%.
Where I have found this principle useful in my own life, and where you might want to consider using it too.
What you can do to see the positive 50% if you’re currently overwhelmed by the negative 50%.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about the 50/50 principle.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all. I’m so excited to talk to you this week. We're talking about a topic that I think and talk about a lot, which is the 50/50 principle. And the basic idea of it is that life is 50/50 positive and negative. Now, before we get into that, I will just say positive and negative are thoughts, they’re subjective assessments. It's not like there is a 50% of your life that is objectively good or objectively bad. But within the realm of thinking about things in positive or negative, this can be a really useful concept.
And I have an example from my own life. When the podcast comes out this will have happened, I think, a week ago. But it happened in my life this week, which is that I had a day where I woke up really grumpy. And the same day my girlfriend and I were bickering a lot. And those are both great examples of the 50/50.
Sometimes I wake up feeling amazing. Other days I wake up feeling grumpy. Sometimes my girlfriend and I get along splendidly well, other times we bicker our faces off. Obviously, bicker our faces off is also a subjective assessment. But I think it's funny and lighthearted to call it that. So that's what I choose to do.
Now, because the human brain has a negativity bias when we're in the negative 50 sometimes it can feel like all of life is negative, all of life is a problem. When I am not getting along with my girlfriend, when we are bickering, my brain even still after years and years of coaching will offer me this idea like, “This again.” Or, “We're always fighting.” Or, “Why do we have to have this conflict?” Or, “Wouldn't it be better if we didn't?” Or, “Maybe we shouldn't.”
And it'll get very obsessed with the conflict, and it will also sort of seem like we're always fighting. When we're fighting my brain thinks we're always fighting. When in reality there's a lot of times we're not fighting. There's a lot of times, like I said, we're getting along splendidly well. There's also a lot of times that are just sort of like, much closer to neutral. Things are going well, but they're not amazing. We're maybe a little grouchy, but we're not like fighting or having conflict.
But the brain doesn't bring all of that up. When we're in the negative 50, the brain is like, “It's always like this. Everything is terrible. What's the point? Why bother?” And then it's very easy to get discouraged and stop trying or dig in even deeper into the conflict and have even more of a fight because we're always fighting anyway is like the sort of thought that might be happening there.
And the same thing with like the grumpiness. When I wake up grumpy my brain’s like, “Here are 10 other times I woke up grumpy. I'm always grumpy. Why am I not happy? I should be happy.” And it gets very obsessed about the grumpiness and acts like the grumpiness is a huge problem and shouldn't be happening and that it's always happening. When really that's not true. Sometimes I am grumpy, and sometimes my girlfriend and I do have conflict. But it's never all the time.
So when we're in this place, it can be really useful to do a few things. Thing one is just to normalize it. You're a human, this is the human experience. It will be 50/50. Do I know it's 50/50, is that a scientific study? No, of course not. That's kind of just, I think, a basic coaching teaching that helps us normalize that sometimes we will have negative experiences and negative emotion and that every human with a fully functional human brain does have negative feelings.
So again, step one, we normalize it. Having negative feelings sometimes, again, like I said 16 times already, part of the human experience. And we notice “Oh, my brain is maybe acting like this is all I ever experience but I know that's not actually true.”
And so one thing you can do is even think about times when the opposite has been true. This is a great coaching technique for lots of different things. You can be like, “Well, when did I wake up and feel fine?” Or, “When did I wake up and feel amazing?” When have I had a different experience to the one I'm having right now? And kind of just looking for that data will jar your brain out of its point of view that if it's difficult now it's always difficult.
And if you have that idea of the 50/50 you can be like, “Well, where's the positive 50? If this is the 50 I don't prefer, where's the good 50? When did that happen? When was the time my girlfriend and I got along really well? When is a time I woke up feeling great?”
And today is a great example. I woke up just a few minutes before my alarm, which is one of my very favorite things when I wake up naturally before my alarm. But not naturally way before my alarm, because then I'm like, “No, I still want to be sleeping now.”
So I was like, “Oh, I'm going to notice this.” And especially because I had that negative waking up yesterday, today I was even more geared up to be like, “Yes, this is the good 50. It's awesome.” And I think that's such a great point because sometimes we don't even notice the good 50.
I have this happen all the time where when something goes the way I think it should or the way I want it to, my brain is like, “Yeah, that's how it should happen. I should wake up feeling amazing.” But in this capacity the word should just robs us of pleasure.
When things go the way I want them to I'm just like, “Yeah, it should.” And then when they don't go the way I want them to I'm like, “This is fucking terrible.” Then I never get to experience a ton of delight.
I'm experiencing negative emotion when things don't go according to my plan. But I'm not experiencing positive emotion when they do. And if anything, I think thinking things should go the way that they are, it doesn't necessarily feel super bad. Like it's not as bad as when they don't. But I do think it kind of feels a little bit bad sometimes. And it definitely doesn't feel as good as when we're like enjoying it and taking pleasure in it.
So part of the 50/50 lesson for me is taking pleasure in it when things are going well and reminding ourselves about that. That's why we do the thing where we celebrate the wins, we notice what is working. Those things help bring our attention back to the good 50. The 50 we want.
And we have to do that on purpose, because otherwise the brain is always going back to the negative 50. To what's not working. To what didn't go the way we wanted it to. To all of the feelings we have that we don't like, et cetera.
Okay, so I think you get the basic idea. The basic idea is that 50% of time, things will be good and we’ll feel positive emotion. And 50% of the time things maybe don't go the way we want and we feel negative emotion.
It's worth it to also say that sometimes we're having like both 50 at the same time. Sometimes things don't go the way we want them to and yet we're still in a great mood. And sometimes things go exactly the way we want them to and we're still in a terrible mood.
We are humans and can be complex in that way. But the basic idea is that having negative experiences and negative emotions is part of life. Now, with the coaching tools I teach you can still use the coaching tools to have, often a better experience.
So sometimes we can use the coaching tools to reframe the thing that we're not enjoying into something we can enjoy. Or at least reframe it into neutral. But we're never going to get away from having some negative feelings because negative feelings are just part of life.
And sometimes we want to choose negative feelings. Sometimes certain things happen in our life, and we don't want to feel super happy and positive about them. Sometimes someone we love passes away and we want to choose negative emotion about that.
But something I love to think about in a different way that I love to use this tool is this, it's the idea that if life is going to be 50/50 either way, if I accept that premise, and I do. So in that premise it's like if I'm going to have discomfort sometimes either way whether I try to have it or don't try to have it, what kind of discomfort do I want to choose?
This is something I use in my business and in my relationship all the time. If I'm going to have some discomfort in my business, do I want it to be the discomfort of putting content out there that I feel really passionately about, even though I'm afraid people might have thoughts about it? Or do I want to choose the discomfort of not putting my ideas out there because I want to like feel safe, basically? So they're both discomfort, right? They’re discomfort either way.
In the relationship the example is like, “Do I want to have the discomfort of having a conflict conversation with my partner? Or do I want to have the discomfort of not having the conflict conversation? And what I've decided over and over again, is I want to have the discomfort of doing the thing I want to do.
If I'm going to feel uncomfortable either way, I'd rather have the discomfort of having the conflict conversation and being really honest with my girlfriend about where I'm at and what's going on for me, even though will that conversation be uncomfortable for me? Absofuckinglutely.
And in my business, it's like last week I put out my podcast about coming out. And I talked in the podcast about how nervous and uncomfortable I was and how much I procrastinated on it. But at the end of the day I want to put that content out there for you and for me, even if I feel uncomfortable.
And so what does this look like for you in your job? It might look like asking for the raise, even if you think you're not going to get it. Being willing to feel the discomfort of asking for the raise instead of staying in the discomfort of not asking for it.
It might look like asking for support on a certain project. Feeling the discomfort of asking for the support versus feeling the discomfort of doing all the work with no support. So that's one way you can use this tool.
And then here's another thing I've been thinking about a lot with the concept and the 50/50 teaching. Because this is a teaching that a lot of coaches teach and use and talk about. I've lately been thinking about what if 50% of the world will like me and 50% of the world will not like me no matter what I do.
Now, obviously, I can't prove this. This isn't like a scientific 50/50. But I love this idea because it gives me absolute freedom. If 50% of the people in the world are going to love me and think I'm amazing no matter what I do, and 50% of the people in the world are going to hate me and think I'm insane no matter what I do, then I get to do whatever I want. And then I actually have the freedom to be who I am as a person and show up how I want to show up.
Because yeah, if I try to like do some people pleasing behavior some people who dislike me right now might like me. But other people who like me right now might dislike me. So I kind of love this idea that I can never get more people to like me.
Again, this isn't like a scientific truth. This is just a thought frame that I use to give myself the freedom to be who I am. And to trust that while some people may not love who I am, some people will. I also love to think that I have people in my life who will love me no matter what I do.
So literally no matter what I do, those people will always be in the 50 that love me. And then I think there are other people in my life who no matter what I do they're always going to be in the 50 who dislike me.
So if I'm going to live my life, making that person happy I'm kind of always fucked, right? If they're just never going to like me because of whatever their thoughts about me are, there's nothing I can do.
Now, listen, there's nothing you can do anyways to control other people's thoughts. But it is true that sometimes when we moderate our behavior people have different thoughts about us. But if 50% of people aren't going to like you anyways no matter what you do, why not just be who you actually are? Why not just say what you actually think.
And obviously, this doesn't mean all wildly or, I mean, you can do it wildly if you want to. I'm still thoughtful in how I say things. I'm still thoughtful in how I show up. It's more me giving me permission through the lens of thinking about other people, which is kind of convoluted. Really, I could just decide I love me no matter what.
And that's a different coaching teaching. That's kind of what we talked about last week with loving ourselves through our decision no matter what it is. But humans are social creatures and so we do, even those of us who have done fuck loads of coaching, spend a lot of time thinking about what other people think about us.
But I just love the idea that I can't manipulate that. Maybe I can manipulate individual people, what they think about me. But I love the idea that I can't manipulate the larger numbers overall. So that's just something I want you to think about.
If life is 50/50 no matter what, if sometimes I want that negative 50 of a negative emotion, if there's going to be discomfort no matter what I choose, and if some people are going to like me and some people aren't going to like me no matter what I do, how do I want to show up to my life? How do I want to show up to my work? How do I want to show up to my career? Which difficult conversations do I want to choose to have for my own reasons? And which ones do I want to choose not to have for my own reasons?
I think this is such a powerful concept and cannot be overstated what you can use this to do in your life. For everything from normalizing the times when you don't feel great and realizing that makes you just as much a human as everyone else. And Bringing your brain back to remembering and loving what is working, because there's always, always, always stuff that is working. There always is that positive 50 when you look for it.
Now, if you don't look for it, your brain will tell you there is no positive 50 because of negativity bias, and confirmation bias, and all that other brain shit we have going on. So you do have to do that part on purpose. But it's there.
And I actually think one of the best ways to find it is just to force yourself to list things. And don't tell yourself to list one thing because if you have to list one thing your brain will be like, “There are no things.” Tell yourself to list like 5 or 10 things that are going well or are working or are the positive 50 in your life. Because while the brain will resist having to list one thing, when it has to list a bunch, it kind of gives up on that because it's going to be so many it just will like spit out information at you.
You don't have to agree with this principle. You might not be on board with the idea that life is 50/50. A lot of people actually want to argue with this principle. They're like, “Wait, what if it could be like 80:20? Can it be 80% great and 20% not great.” And you can choose whatever percentage you want because again, this is not science.
I like 50/50 because it's equal parts and it's like no matter what I do, some things I like, some things I don't like. It just, I think, really simplifies things for me. And then every time I'm in a bad mood or something negative happens I'm like, “Cool, there's going to be like an equal and opposite thing, potentially. And I can just keep my eyes open for it.” And again, what we keep our eyes open for is what we find, see and experience.
So the basic things about the 50/50 teaching are 50% positive, 50% negative. 50% of things go the way you want them to, 50% they don't. Now, obviously, a lot of that does come down to perspective. But it's just a simple framework for thinking about the world.
And then again, the discomfort. If I'm going to feel discomfort either way, which discomfort do I want to choose? And the different discomforts have different side effects, right?
I like choosing the discomfort of having the difficult conversation with my girlfriend because then it's done. But it also builds intimacy in our relationship. She knows me better when I'm willing to have those difficult conversations. I know her better. And we get better at having difficult conversations.
So yeah, I'm still having my fair share of discomfort. But I like the side effects of that discomfort. I like the benefits of that discomfort. I like the outcomes of it. And I like the habits it's building. And it gets easier.
But that doesn't necessarily mean I'll have less discomfort. It might mean we have deeper conversations. Or maybe I'm having my discomfort in a different area. Although honestly, even when it does get easier to have conflict conversations, I don't know that it ever gets easy. It's still conflict. It's still work. And that's okay.
And then the final one is, if half the people in the world are going to love me, no matter what I do, and half the people in the world are going to not love me no matter what I do, what do I want to do? How do I want to think how do I want to feel? How do I want to act in the world? What results do I want to create?
Because so often we're trying to run our lives and create our life results based on winning other people's approval or fitting in with other people. And listen, you're allowed to do that if you want to. You're allowed to do whatever you want. Not because I say so because that's just literally how freewill works.
But when you think about freeing yourself from what other people think, then you have ultimate freedom. I know I said free twice there. But we should say it twice because it's so important.
I think so much of what people want in life is freedom, right? So much of what people want in work, or when they switch jobs, or when they want to make more money, or when they want to retire early what they want is freedom. What they want is choice.
And when you use the coaching tools I'm talking about on this episode and all the other episodes, what you realize is you already have it. You already have ultimate freedom. You already have ultimate choice.
Now, some of the things you choose may have consequences you don't want. Some of the things you choose may have side effects you do want. But you get to choose no matter what. And you get to choose for your own reasons.
And you are the one always choosing, even if you're living your life according to Aunt Mabel’s standards to try to make Aunt Mabel happy, you're the one choosing to do that. She's not she can't control you. She has no input on how you do things. So I think that's so important to think about too.
You are always the one who is doing the things, who is making the choices. And even when we have all that social conditioning in there, we're still the one. It's not our fault that social conditioning is in there. But once we know about it, it is ours to decide what we want to do with. It is ours to decide if we want to unlearn it or if we want to just let it be there.
And listen, if you do want to unlearn it, I want to do that work with you be because I'm so passionate about this and the things you can do, and accomplish, and have, and be in your life when you take full responsibility. And when you do step into that choice and that freedom that you already have, will blow your fucking mind.
So if you want to do that with me, come sign up for a consult call. Let's have a conversation about it. No pressure. If it's the right fit, I'll tell you how you can work with me. If it's not, we'll just have had a lovely conversation. All right y'all, have a great day. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all. I’m so excited to talk to you this week. We're talking about a topic that I think and talk about a lot, which is the 50/50 principle. And the basic idea of it is that life is 50/50 positive and negative. Now, before we get into that, I will just say positive and negative are thoughts, they’re subjective assessments. It's not like there is a 50% of your life that is objectively good or objectively bad. But within the realm of thinking about things in positive or negative, this can be a really useful concept.
And I have an example from my own life. When the podcast comes out this will have happened, I think, a week ago. But it happened in my life this week, which is that I had a day where I woke up really grumpy. And the same day my girlfriend and I were bickering a lot. And those are both great examples of the 50/50.
Sometimes I wake up feeling amazing. Other days I wake up feeling grumpy. Sometimes my girlfriend and I get along splendidly well, other times we bicker our faces off. Obviously, bicker our faces off is also a subjective assessment. But I think it's funny and lighthearted to call it that. So that's what I choose to do.
Now, because the human brain has a negativity bias when we're in the negative 50 sometimes it can feel like all of life is negative, all of life is a problem. When I am not getting along with my girlfriend, when we are bickering, my brain even still after years and years of coaching will offer me this idea like, “This again.” Or, “We're always fighting.” Or, “Why do we have to have this conflict?” Or, “Wouldn't it be better if we didn't?” Or, “Maybe we shouldn't.”
And it'll get very obsessed with the conflict, and it will also sort of seem like we're always fighting. When we're fighting my brain thinks we're always fighting. When in reality there's a lot of times we're not fighting. There's a lot of times, like I said, we're getting along splendidly well. There's also a lot of times that are just sort of like, much closer to neutral. Things are going well, but they're not amazing. We're maybe a little grouchy, but we're not like fighting or having conflict.
But the brain doesn't bring all of that up. When we're in the negative 50, the brain is like, “It's always like this. Everything is terrible. What's the point? Why bother?” And then it's very easy to get discouraged and stop trying or dig in even deeper into the conflict and have even more of a fight because we're always fighting anyway is like the sort of thought that might be happening there.
And the same thing with like the grumpiness. When I wake up grumpy my brain’s like, “Here are 10 other times I woke up grumpy. I'm always grumpy. Why am I not happy? I should be happy.” And it gets very obsessed about the grumpiness and acts like the grumpiness is a huge problem and shouldn't be happening and that it's always happening. When really that's not true. Sometimes I am grumpy, and sometimes my girlfriend and I do have conflict. But it's never all the time.
So when we're in this place, it can be really useful to do a few things. Thing one is just to normalize it. You're a human, this is the human experience. It will be 50/50. Do I know it's 50/50, is that a scientific study? No, of course not. That's kind of just, I think, a basic coaching teaching that helps us normalize that sometimes we will have negative experiences and negative emotion and that every human with a fully functional human brain does have negative feelings.
So again, step one, we normalize it. Having negative feelings sometimes, again, like I said 16 times already, part of the human experience. And we notice “Oh, my brain is maybe acting like this is all I ever experience but I know that's not actually true.”
And so one thing you can do is even think about times when the opposite has been true. This is a great coaching technique for lots of different things. You can be like, “Well, when did I wake up and feel fine?” Or, “When did I wake up and feel amazing?” When have I had a different experience to the one I'm having right now? And kind of just looking for that data will jar your brain out of its point of view that if it's difficult now it's always difficult.
And if you have that idea of the 50/50 you can be like, “Well, where's the positive 50? If this is the 50 I don't prefer, where's the good 50? When did that happen? When was the time my girlfriend and I got along really well? When is a time I woke up feeling great?”
And today is a great example. I woke up just a few minutes before my alarm, which is one of my very favorite things when I wake up naturally before my alarm. But not naturally way before my alarm, because then I'm like, “No, I still want to be sleeping now.”
So I was like, “Oh, I'm going to notice this.” And especially because I had that negative waking up yesterday, today I was even more geared up to be like, “Yes, this is the good 50. It's awesome.” And I think that's such a great point because sometimes we don't even notice the good 50.
I have this happen all the time where when something goes the way I think it should or the way I want it to, my brain is like, “Yeah, that's how it should happen. I should wake up feeling amazing.” But in this capacity the word should just robs us of pleasure.
When things go the way I want them to I'm just like, “Yeah, it should.” And then when they don't go the way I want them to I'm like, “This is fucking terrible.” Then I never get to experience a ton of delight.
I'm experiencing negative emotion when things don't go according to my plan. But I'm not experiencing positive emotion when they do. And if anything, I think thinking things should go the way that they are, it doesn't necessarily feel super bad. Like it's not as bad as when they don't. But I do think it kind of feels a little bit bad sometimes. And it definitely doesn't feel as good as when we're like enjoying it and taking pleasure in it.
So part of the 50/50 lesson for me is taking pleasure in it when things are going well and reminding ourselves about that. That's why we do the thing where we celebrate the wins, we notice what is working. Those things help bring our attention back to the good 50. The 50 we want.
And we have to do that on purpose, because otherwise the brain is always going back to the negative 50. To what's not working. To what didn't go the way we wanted it to. To all of the feelings we have that we don't like, et cetera.
Okay, so I think you get the basic idea. The basic idea is that 50% of time, things will be good and we’ll feel positive emotion. And 50% of the time things maybe don't go the way we want and we feel negative emotion.
It's worth it to also say that sometimes we're having like both 50 at the same time. Sometimes things don't go the way we want them to and yet we're still in a great mood. And sometimes things go exactly the way we want them to and we're still in a terrible mood.
We are humans and can be complex in that way. But the basic idea is that having negative experiences and negative emotions is part of life. Now, with the coaching tools I teach you can still use the coaching tools to have, often a better experience.
So sometimes we can use the coaching tools to reframe the thing that we're not enjoying into something we can enjoy. Or at least reframe it into neutral. But we're never going to get away from having some negative feelings because negative feelings are just part of life.
And sometimes we want to choose negative feelings. Sometimes certain things happen in our life, and we don't want to feel super happy and positive about them. Sometimes someone we love passes away and we want to choose negative emotion about that.
But something I love to think about in a different way that I love to use this tool is this, it's the idea that if life is going to be 50/50 either way, if I accept that premise, and I do. So in that premise it's like if I'm going to have discomfort sometimes either way whether I try to have it or don't try to have it, what kind of discomfort do I want to choose?
This is something I use in my business and in my relationship all the time. If I'm going to have some discomfort in my business, do I want it to be the discomfort of putting content out there that I feel really passionately about, even though I'm afraid people might have thoughts about it? Or do I want to choose the discomfort of not putting my ideas out there because I want to like feel safe, basically? So they're both discomfort, right? They’re discomfort either way.
In the relationship the example is like, “Do I want to have the discomfort of having a conflict conversation with my partner? Or do I want to have the discomfort of not having the conflict conversation? And what I've decided over and over again, is I want to have the discomfort of doing the thing I want to do.
If I'm going to feel uncomfortable either way, I'd rather have the discomfort of having the conflict conversation and being really honest with my girlfriend about where I'm at and what's going on for me, even though will that conversation be uncomfortable for me? Absofuckinglutely.
And in my business, it's like last week I put out my podcast about coming out. And I talked in the podcast about how nervous and uncomfortable I was and how much I procrastinated on it. But at the end of the day I want to put that content out there for you and for me, even if I feel uncomfortable.
And so what does this look like for you in your job? It might look like asking for the raise, even if you think you're not going to get it. Being willing to feel the discomfort of asking for the raise instead of staying in the discomfort of not asking for it.
It might look like asking for support on a certain project. Feeling the discomfort of asking for the support versus feeling the discomfort of doing all the work with no support. So that's one way you can use this tool.
And then here's another thing I've been thinking about a lot with the concept and the 50/50 teaching. Because this is a teaching that a lot of coaches teach and use and talk about. I've lately been thinking about what if 50% of the world will like me and 50% of the world will not like me no matter what I do.
Now, obviously, I can't prove this. This isn't like a scientific 50/50. But I love this idea because it gives me absolute freedom. If 50% of the people in the world are going to love me and think I'm amazing no matter what I do, and 50% of the people in the world are going to hate me and think I'm insane no matter what I do, then I get to do whatever I want. And then I actually have the freedom to be who I am as a person and show up how I want to show up.
Because yeah, if I try to like do some people pleasing behavior some people who dislike me right now might like me. But other people who like me right now might dislike me. So I kind of love this idea that I can never get more people to like me.
Again, this isn't like a scientific truth. This is just a thought frame that I use to give myself the freedom to be who I am. And to trust that while some people may not love who I am, some people will. I also love to think that I have people in my life who will love me no matter what I do.
So literally no matter what I do, those people will always be in the 50 that love me. And then I think there are other people in my life who no matter what I do they're always going to be in the 50 who dislike me.
So if I'm going to live my life, making that person happy I'm kind of always fucked, right? If they're just never going to like me because of whatever their thoughts about me are, there's nothing I can do.
Now, listen, there's nothing you can do anyways to control other people's thoughts. But it is true that sometimes when we moderate our behavior people have different thoughts about us. But if 50% of people aren't going to like you anyways no matter what you do, why not just be who you actually are? Why not just say what you actually think.
And obviously, this doesn't mean all wildly or, I mean, you can do it wildly if you want to. I'm still thoughtful in how I say things. I'm still thoughtful in how I show up. It's more me giving me permission through the lens of thinking about other people, which is kind of convoluted. Really, I could just decide I love me no matter what.
And that's a different coaching teaching. That's kind of what we talked about last week with loving ourselves through our decision no matter what it is. But humans are social creatures and so we do, even those of us who have done fuck loads of coaching, spend a lot of time thinking about what other people think about us.
But I just love the idea that I can't manipulate that. Maybe I can manipulate individual people, what they think about me. But I love the idea that I can't manipulate the larger numbers overall. So that's just something I want you to think about.
If life is 50/50 no matter what, if sometimes I want that negative 50 of a negative emotion, if there's going to be discomfort no matter what I choose, and if some people are going to like me and some people aren't going to like me no matter what I do, how do I want to show up to my life? How do I want to show up to my work? How do I want to show up to my career? Which difficult conversations do I want to choose to have for my own reasons? And which ones do I want to choose not to have for my own reasons?
I think this is such a powerful concept and cannot be overstated what you can use this to do in your life. For everything from normalizing the times when you don't feel great and realizing that makes you just as much a human as everyone else. And Bringing your brain back to remembering and loving what is working, because there's always, always, always stuff that is working. There always is that positive 50 when you look for it.
Now, if you don't look for it, your brain will tell you there is no positive 50 because of negativity bias, and confirmation bias, and all that other brain shit we have going on. So you do have to do that part on purpose. But it's there.
And I actually think one of the best ways to find it is just to force yourself to list things. And don't tell yourself to list one thing because if you have to list one thing your brain will be like, “There are no things.” Tell yourself to list like 5 or 10 things that are going well or are working or are the positive 50 in your life. Because while the brain will resist having to list one thing, when it has to list a bunch, it kind of gives up on that because it's going to be so many it just will like spit out information at you.
You don't have to agree with this principle. You might not be on board with the idea that life is 50/50. A lot of people actually want to argue with this principle. They're like, “Wait, what if it could be like 80:20? Can it be 80% great and 20% not great.” And you can choose whatever percentage you want because again, this is not science.
I like 50/50 because it's equal parts and it's like no matter what I do, some things I like, some things I don't like. It just, I think, really simplifies things for me. And then every time I'm in a bad mood or something negative happens I'm like, “Cool, there's going to be like an equal and opposite thing, potentially. And I can just keep my eyes open for it.” And again, what we keep our eyes open for is what we find, see and experience.
So the basic things about the 50/50 teaching are 50% positive, 50% negative. 50% of things go the way you want them to, 50% they don't. Now, obviously, a lot of that does come down to perspective. But it's just a simple framework for thinking about the world.
And then again, the discomfort. If I'm going to feel discomfort either way, which discomfort do I want to choose? And the different discomforts have different side effects, right?
I like choosing the discomfort of having the difficult conversation with my girlfriend because then it's done. But it also builds intimacy in our relationship. She knows me better when I'm willing to have those difficult conversations. I know her better. And we get better at having difficult conversations.
So yeah, I'm still having my fair share of discomfort. But I like the side effects of that discomfort. I like the benefits of that discomfort. I like the outcomes of it. And I like the habits it's building. And it gets easier.
But that doesn't necessarily mean I'll have less discomfort. It might mean we have deeper conversations. Or maybe I'm having my discomfort in a different area. Although honestly, even when it does get easier to have conflict conversations, I don't know that it ever gets easy. It's still conflict. It's still work. And that's okay.
And then the final one is, if half the people in the world are going to love me, no matter what I do, and half the people in the world are going to not love me no matter what I do, what do I want to do? How do I want to think how do I want to feel? How do I want to act in the world? What results do I want to create?
Because so often we're trying to run our lives and create our life results based on winning other people's approval or fitting in with other people. And listen, you're allowed to do that if you want to. You're allowed to do whatever you want. Not because I say so because that's just literally how freewill works.
But when you think about freeing yourself from what other people think, then you have ultimate freedom. I know I said free twice there. But we should say it twice because it's so important.
I think so much of what people want in life is freedom, right? So much of what people want in work, or when they switch jobs, or when they want to make more money, or when they want to retire early what they want is freedom. What they want is choice.
And when you use the coaching tools I'm talking about on this episode and all the other episodes, what you realize is you already have it. You already have ultimate freedom. You already have ultimate choice.
Now, some of the things you choose may have consequences you don't want. Some of the things you choose may have side effects you do want. But you get to choose no matter what. And you get to choose for your own reasons.
And you are the one always choosing, even if you're living your life according to Aunt Mabel’s standards to try to make Aunt Mabel happy, you're the one choosing to do that. She's not she can't control you. She has no input on how you do things. So I think that's so important to think about too.
You are always the one who is doing the things, who is making the choices. And even when we have all that social conditioning in there, we're still the one. It's not our fault that social conditioning is in there. But once we know about it, it is ours to decide what we want to do with. It is ours to decide if we want to unlearn it or if we want to just let it be there.
And listen, if you do want to unlearn it, I want to do that work with you be because I'm so passionate about this and the things you can do, and accomplish, and have, and be in your life when you take full responsibility. And when you do step into that choice and that freedom that you already have, will blow your fucking mind.
So if you want to do that with me, come sign up for a consult call. Let's have a conversation about it. No pressure. If it's the right fit, I'll tell you how you can work with me. If it's not, we'll just have had a lovely conversation. All right y'all, have a great day. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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