The 50/50 Rule

Feelings are part of the human experience.

We are supposed to have a contrast of both positive and negative feelings.

This is what makes all emotions possible.

If we experienced only positive emotion, we wouldn’t know it was positive because we had nothing to compare it with.

I think a lot of us know this, but most of us still assume that life should be better than it is.

So we try to change ourselves, and our circumstances thinking that if we do, life will be rainbows and daisies all the time.

We desperately want there to be more good than bad in our lives.

But the truth is, it will always be 50/50.

50% positive, and 50% negative.

When we get lost in the idea that we should be happy all the time, we usually end up buffering and feeling our lives with false pleasures.

I used to believe this, especially when it came to my kids.

I used to believe that my kids were supposed to be happy all the time and it was my job to make sure they were.

HA!

I was so busy running around trying to protect my kids from feeling any kind of discomfort that they weren’t evolving and working to make their dreams come true.

And I was exhausting myself with an impossible task.

I’ve since come to learn that discomfort is a good thing.

Discomfort is the price of growth.

We grow and become stronger, more resilient through our pain.

The goal of this life is not to feel happy all the time, the goal is humanness, to experience this life as well as we can, knowing that includes a wide range of feelings.