When you're in the thick of your divorce, it can feel like EVERYTHING sucks, EVERYTHING is hard, EVERYONE is against you, and you're life will NEVER feel peaceful or normal again. In this episode I'm teaching you the 50/50 principle that can help you look at your divorce and anything else in your life through a different lens.
This episode will serve as a guide to getting through the emotional labyrinth of divorce, emphasizing that hardships are temporary while some kind of peace or positive thought is always within reach. You'll learn how high expectations can add undue pressure, particularly for people pleasers and fixers, and how embracing life's balance can help you stay present and grounded.
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Grief and trauma are the two biggest struggles women deal with as they go through their divorce. It's highly likely that you are experiencing both and don't even realize what you're feeling. I'm here to tell you that it's okay for you to grieve your marriage (even if it was shitty) and it's normal to be experiencing some kind of trauma (which is essentially a disconnection from yourself - your mind, body and soul). I can help guide you through the grief in all of the forms it shows up so you can heal. I can also teach you how to ground yourself in healing so you can ease through the trauma. Schedule your free consult by clicking here.
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Interested in the Divorce Betrayal Transformation? Learn more here.
Are you lost and confused about who you are after divorce? Don't worry. I've got 51 Ways to Get to Know Yourself Again. Click here to download.
Want to work first hand with Karin so you can stop worrying about what your life will be like after divorce, and instead begin making it amazing today? Click here to schedule a consult to find out more about working 1:1 with Karin as your coach.
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Full Episode Transcript:
If you are a woman and you're going through divorce and you're having a tough time, you're wondering where all of the help is for your mental and emotional needs as you go through your divorce. Don't worry, I got you. You are in the right place. You are listening to Becoming you Again, episode number 176, and I am your host, karin Nelson. Welcome to Becoming you Again, the podcast to help you with your mental and emotional well-being during and after divorce. This is where you learn to overcome the grief and trauma of your divorce. We're going to do that by reconnecting with yourself, creating lasting emotional resilience and living a truly independent life so that your life can be even better than when you were married. I'm your host, karin Nelson, so that your life can be even better than when you were married. I'm your host, karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast. My lovely ladies, I am so happy to be here. I've been having an incredible time on my summer trip to Alaska, where I've been staying with my sister and her husband. We have gone and seen beautiful things. I've had experiences doing things like four-wheeling that I've never really done before. Some of it's been great, some of it's been hard, and I'm going to talk more about that in today's podcast episode, but overall it's been such an incredible, beautiful, amazing, hard, scary at times even experience. And before I jump into this week's topic, which I'm going to elaborate on in just a minute and it kind of goes back to what I was just saying about my trip but I just want to ask you for a very quick favor If you are listening to this podcast episode episode on Apple or on Spotify, please take 10 seconds right now, open up your phone to whatever app you're listening to it on and give it a rating. And if you're listening on Apple podcasts, I would ask that you go one step further and you can actually leave a review as well. Now, there's two reasons why I'm asking you to do this. The first one is, of course, it feels good to know that people are listening to your podcast and they like it, but also and this one's maybe a little bit more important the more ratings and reviews this podcast has, the more the algorithm of those platforms says oh, people are liking this podcast, let's put it in front of more people, let's suggest this to other people who might need to listen to this specific topic. And what that does is it helps more and more women, just like you, know that there truly is help and guidance and support and love as they go through their divorce. So please take 10 seconds. Give it a rating. If you're on Apple Podcasts, give it a quick review. I appreciate it so so much. Any woman out there who is needing something will appreciate it so, so much, because they'll be able to have more access to finding this podcast. I love you, thank you. Thank you, thank you for doing that.
All right, let's jump into today's topic, which is called 50-50. Now, this is a concept or a principle that I use very often with my clients. I use it in my own life constantly, because it simplifies things for me in my brain so much. Now, this is a concept that I learned from my mentor and it's this idea that 50% of our life will be full of negative thoughts about things, about situations, about people, about whatever right, and 50% will be about positive thoughts, positive things about people, about situations, about whatever. I'm going to go more in depth with this, but I want you to know, a lot of my clients really like this concept and it really resonates with them, and some of my clients don't like it at all and it doesn't resonate with them at all, and so, as with anything that I teach you, anything that I talk about on this podcast, if it resonates with you, take it and use it and run with it, and if it doesn't leave it behind, it's not a problem.
The whole idea about healing and learning and having a toolbox full of things that help you grow and evolve into the person you are becoming is to find things that feel right to you, and not everything works for everyone, and that's okay. So, as I said, 50-50 is what it's called. Now, of course, understand this is not a scientific 50%. There's no study of my life or of your life where we break it down and measure out every instance and say, yes, the calculations are correct, it's been 50-50. This is just a general estimation that I personally find useful and some of my clients also find very useful.
So here's what really resonates with me when it comes to 50-50. And that is that when my brain is in the negative half and I'm feeling bad, I'm feeling grumpy, I'm experiencing things that I just really don't like very much, when I'm in those moments, it helps me to remember this idea of 50-50. Because that idea helps me let go of this expectation that I shouldn't be feeling this way, that I shouldn't be feeling bad, that I shouldn't be feeling negative feelings, that I shouldn't be mad about this or grumpy about this or hating this or thinking this is the worst, because actually, my life will not always be happy and I will not always be having things go smoothly and I will not always be loving every second. I am meant to experience things that are hard and that are crappy and that are that I think are dumb or that I really don't like or that I wish weren't happening. That is part of the human experience and this idea of 50, 50 helps me remember that and helps me to stop telling myself I shouldn't be feeling this way, I shouldn't be experiencing this, because guess what I should be? And it's okay. It's not okay, like we can still be mad about it and upset about it, but it's, nothing has gone wrong. When I'm experiencing negative emotion that is a normal part of the human experience and then, when I can remind myself of those things, when I'm in it, when I'm in the negative half right, it feels less bad, it feels less hard, it feels less terrible. No, it doesn't take it away. Yes, I'm still going to feel negative emotion, but it takes the pressure off of me knowing or thinking that I'm feeling or experiencing something that I shouldn't be so like.
Think about when you're going on a vacation and You're anticipating it, you're excited about it and you're thinking about it and you're just. You want so badly for everything to be so much fun and for everyone to get along and for things to go perfectly and for everyone to have a really great time. Right, those are very natural things to want when you're going on a vacation. You're planning a vacation for your family Totally natural, totally fine. And those thoughts and those expectations it's fine to have that. However, those expectations can at times feel like a lot of pressure, especially when you're in it right. It can feel like a lot of pressure to make sure that everything goes perfectly and to make sure that everyone is happy at every moment. And especially if you're a people pleaser, every moment, and especially if you're a people pleaser like I am a recovering people pleaser or if you're a fixer, it can almost feel like you can't relax and that you have to be in charge of everyone's emotions because you need this vacation to be amazing.
But if we look at it through the lens of 50-50, we can kind of start to realize, okay, this is probably 50%-ish of the time going to be great. People are going to get along, activities are going to be very fun, we're going to get enough sleep, things are going to go smoothly, et cetera. Right, and probably 50%-ish of the time. Somebody's going to be unhappy at some point, somebody's going to have a mood, somebody's going to wake up grumpy, somebody's going to be hungry and we're not going to have access to food in that moment. Somebody's going to be bored with the activity. There's going to be a long line that there's going to be a long line that we're all going to have to wait in. There's going to be traffic when we drive to that one thing that we needed to do or wanted to do today. It's going to be too hot, or it's going to be too cold, or it's going to be raining, or it's going to be like whatever.
Right, going into the vacation without the expectation that everything needs to be perfect or even will be perfect, and that most likely it's going to be 50-50. And that's not a problem. That takes the pressure off of you that you need to make sure everything is perfect, that you need to make sure everything everyone is happy and that everything is going smoothly, and it allows you to just be present in the moment to enjoy what you need to enjoy, to be upset when you need or want to be upset, and not make it a problem. That's what I love about this 50-50 principle, and what's really powerful to me is sometimes in life when it seems like everything sucks, when it seems like everything is hard and everything is negative, like I can probably imagine many of you who are going through a divorce might be feeling, because I remember feeling that way and I am working with clients presently who feel that way and I have worked with clients in the past who have felt that way when they were right in the middle of it, right Right in the thick of the hard.
Emotions are fraught and tense and we feel low and we feel imbalanced and everything just feels heavy. When you're in that space of negativity, it can often feel like there will be no end, because it's really hard to see the end of it. It's really hard to see above the clouds of the heaviness and the sadness and the anger and sometimes it just feels like we're stuck in this inversion of pain and sadness and defensiveness and all of the things inversion of pain and sadness and defensiveness and all of the things. But that's what I really love and find so powerful about this 50-50 principle, because when we apply it in situations like this, when we are really stuck in that negativity, you can just kind of remind yourself self. Life will not always feel like this, things will not always feel so hard. I will not always feel this anger, this sadness, this grief. There is the other side of this 50. And you can always use this concept as a way to look for what is going good in the moments, because sometimes, when we're stuck in the negativity, our brain will only focus on what else is going wrong, on what else is bad, on what is terrible, on what we're struggling with, and it will completely overlook anything in your life that feels peaceful, anything in your life that is just feels a little bit better. And so when you remember this idea of this 50-50 principle, and so when you remember this idea of this 50-50 principle when you're in the hard, you can also start to look for those moments where you do feel peace, where you do feel a little bit better than terrible, where things are going good and you start to look for the other side and it can kind of help you step out of the mire of heaviness and hardness for moments and help you recognize that it's not always negative, bad or terrible. It's 50-50. So, like I said at the beginning of the podcast, I was going to talk a little bit more about my trip to Alaska this summer and I used this principle, this 50-50 principle, a lot with my trip.
Alaska in the summer is a beautiful, amazing I mean. I've never been there in the winter so I can't say, but I would assume it's also beautiful and amazing. Just colder and more snow, obviously, but to me the weather in Alaska has been beautiful and amazing Most days 65 degrees, 70 on some days. Beautiful weather, beautiful surroundings, not a lot of traffic all of the things right, all the things that we really love. However, not everything was perfect. There was the other half of the 50, as we would expect if you're going to use this 50-50 principle.
Throughout the entire month of June there was a million mosquitoes anywhere you went outside. I've never seen so many mosquitoes in my entire life. I thought that in Utah we had a mosquito problem. No, we do not have a mosquito problem in Utah. In the summer, there is definitely a lot more mosquitoes in Alaska because the temperature is like the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. I'm not a huge mosquito fan. When I get a mosquito bite, my skin swells up into these giant like red bumps and they itch terribly. So to go along with this amazing, beautiful, perfect weather that we had, there was the other 50% of that where I would go outside and get mosquito bites. I'd have to spray myself with mosquito repellent everywhere we went to hope that I didn't get any mosquito bites.
Now, another thing about Alaska is it rains a lot. For some people that would be a negative part of the 50%. Some people aren't rain lovers. I, on the other hand, love rain and the days that it rained were some of my favorite days. And the thing about Alaska which is really interesting is that if you go visit there, or especially if you live there, you just have rain gear and you go do things in the rain. You go hiking in the rain, you ride four-wheelers in the rain. You just do things in the rain, because it rains so often that if you were going to let the rain stop you, you would never go outside and enjoy anything. For me. I loved it. I loved every day that it rained. It was my favorite. That was the 50% that I loved. But then there, but then for other people that would be the 50% of the negative.
Again, it goes back to this principle of we get to decide what the 50% means to us, right, what we think is positive, what we think is negative, and we get to realize that there's something on the other side of that. But what I really love about this 50-50 principle is that there's always equal parts potential, which, again, it's very simplifying for my brain, because I know that there are going to be some things that I really like and there are going to be some things that I really don't like. And I don't have to be mad about the things that I don't like because, number one, I know that that's a normal part of being human, that I know that not everything's going to be perfect, I know I'm not going to like everything and that nothing has gone wrong about it, but I also know, with this principle, that it's not always going to be like this. There is always the potential for the other 50% in things.
I hope you find this helpful and useful. If not, again it's totally fine. There's lots of other tools out there that are helpful. But if you do find this helpful and useful, go ahead and start applying it right now, because I promise you, you're going to start to see things differently in your life. You're going to start to think about things differently and seeing the 50 50. All right, my friends, thank you for listening. I love you so much. I will be back next week. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life, with weekly coaching, real life practice and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to karinnelsoncoaching dot com. That's wwwkarinnelsoncoaching dot com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating wherever you listen to podcasts and for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married. Make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.
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