When You Kind of Hate Everything

I’m in search of saturated presence this summer, so I’m sharing some origin stories here while I take a little summer sabbatical.

I was new to working with a life coach, and so far I hated it.

She was trying to get me to “lean into possibility” and “expand my field” and other stupid impossible things, and I didn’t know how to tell her that mostly I just wanted to cry with fear and dread because I loved my baby girl so much but I was very afraid, that my relationship was undeniably bad and yet also felt inescapable, and I felt completely stuck in the life I had made for myself living 21 stories up in the Tokyo sky.

But she kept trying to get me to do these dumb exercises anyway, where we’d look for ways to shift the things that weren’t working, and I just stared out at the smoggy skyline and told her with great bitterness that they couldn’t possibly work for me, because one of the things I was totally sick of was living in a concrete jungle where everything was tight and dirty and dead. And I couldn’t change the city I lived in.

Nothing could change that, I added for dramatic flair. Ha! I thought in my head. Take that, life coach! I’m STUCK!

She said mildly, “So I hear you saying that you long for breathing room, for the energy of growth and beauty. Is there any way you can create just a little bit more of that in your life as it is right now?”

Oh.

Well that was embarrassing.

Yes, actually. Sheepishly I admitted that getting some plants, clearing out of my apartment, and walks in the sunshine were definitely possible even in Tokyo. And sounded really nice, actually. She’d taken my list of “everything is terrible” and turned it into a concise list of what I longed for.

So let me propose something a little scandalous.

Write down everything you DON’T like about your life right now.

This is the opposite of practicing gratitude and focusing on the positive and keeping your energy high.

It will feel weird to those of you who’ve spent a lot of time doing personal or spiritual development, because it will feel like you’re rooting around in cow muck instead of gazing up at the stars. But listen, that shit is fertile. So just try it.

Let all your mucky unevolved embarrassing thoughts and feelings come up. Let your inner four-year-old whine for a minute.

Answer this question: What do you NOT want any more?

Go ahead and scribble it down, all the crappy bullshit stuff you are ready to be DONE with. All the parts of your life where you’re totally over it. Everything you hate. (Focus on how you FEEL about those things. So instead of writing, “the nightmare political farce in my country,” you’d write, “feeling so helpless yet furious about the political farce in my country.”)

Anyway, maybe your list looks like:

I don’t want to feel RESENTFUL anymore.

I don’t want to be so TIRED any more.

I am so over feeling so LONELY.

I hate being so STUCK.

I’m done with all this ANXIETY.

I hate feeling like no matter how much I do, IT’S NEVER ENOUGH.

I’m ready to be done feeling so PINCHED financially.

I hate that I feel like an IMPOSTOR at work.

I am sick of DOUBTING myself.

I don’t want to feel UNLOVABLE any more.

Phew! If you’re like me and everyone I know, there’s some real charge to that list.

Good!

(If you can stand it, stop reading right now and actually do this exercise. It’ll be even more potent if you don’t know what comes next. But I bet you can’t help but keep on reading-- I know I would. That’s ok. It’ll still work. Try to just write down what feels true without thinking ahead to the next step.)

Because here’s what you’re going to do next: you’re going to flip each of the key words in it to get to what it is that you really DO long for.

Ask yourself: what is the opposite of that? (A thesaurus can come in handy. Looking up the antonyms is often very revealing.)

an IMPOSTOR --> THE REAL THING

ANXIOUS --> PEACEFUL

STUCK --> HAVE MOMENTUM

RESENTFUL --> BE GLAD FOR

LONELY --> CONNECTED

TIRED --> RESTED

PINCHED --> ABUNDANT

DOUBTING --> TRUSTING

Etc.

Each of the things you’re totally sick of holds in its opposite your key to the way out.

The words you come up with might not be perfect, but I bet they’ll give you a powerful glimpse into what you want.

Feel free to tweak or completely rewrite the words until they ring true...and hopeful.

I urge you to try it, actually on paper, instead of just thinking about it in your mind. If you let yourself take in the opposing forces of those opposites, you’ll find that those words and phrases can have a potent power to jostle around inside of you and point you in good, nourishing, helpful, interesting directions. You might find that they point you toward RELIEF.

But for all you overachievers out there, there IS a way to take it one step further.

You can ask yourself, What can I do, right now in my life as it is, to create more of each of the things on the right side of that list?

Sometimes it’s really simple and basic. For instance, if you crave rest, you might need to go to bed earlier.

If you crave connection, you might want to join an online community or live course.

Some of them require a little more oomph.

If you crave momentum, you might need to find a project you can move forward with your own steam and energy and raw materials, no matter what happens in the outside world.

If you long for space and room to breathe, you might need pre-arranged boundaries with your family around a set time of day.

If you long for more financial stability, it might be time to get serious about using YNAB or starting up that side hustle.

And some of the words on this list just might pull you out of the pragmatic and show you your own soul.

For instance-- what would it take to start TRUSTING yourself? Oh, why, just an utter reprogramming of your deepest beliefs and habits. (Which is utterly possible, by the way. Not instantly, no, but over the next year? Absolutely doable.)

Or-- what would you need to do in order to believe, down to your bones, that you fully earned your seat at every table you sit at? It might take a deep dive into every aspect of how you treat yourself-- how you talk to yourself, what you wear, how much you invest in yourself, the mantra you say silently to yourself every time your asshat colleague opens his mouth. (Again: we can do this.)

Or-- if you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that you were utterly lovable and precious and worthy, what might you change in your behavior? A shift in who you spend time with; a fierce cutting of ties with people who don’t value you properly; a fierce devotion to becoming your own most loyal ally, best friend, and tender passionate lover. (Do, DO do commit yourself to this. You won’t believe how much it’ll shift.)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. That final step is just optional.

Start by just writing down what you DON’T want, and flip it to see it point to what you DO want. You might just surprise yourself.

The best part about this exercise is that you aren’t carving anything into stone. You don’t have to declare a theme for the year or set goals you promise to accomplish, or really commit to anything at this busy, harried moment. You’re just digging around in the dirt and generating new POSSIBILITIES.

But if some of those possibilities make you stand up and catch your breath? If you find tears of relief slipping down your face? If some of your words flash like starlight in your chest?

Pay attention, my love.

Pay the most tender, wondering attention.

Even when things are hard, even when the world is upside down, even if there’s turmoil inside very you, you can still set your course. You can still steer yourself true by your own lights. You can declare dominion over your own goddamn life, no matter how messy. Don’t be afraid of the muck-- there’s always a way to work alchemy. Dross to gold. Mess to hope. SICK OF IT to total soft clarity and simple aligned action. Stick with it. You’re made of magic, dearheart. Even the mess is part of the magic.

love,

Katherine

P.S. Not too long after this convo with my life coach, where I convinced her that I was utterly stuck in my life in Tokyo, there was an earthquake and I ended up moving unexpectedly to Portland, which just happens to be one of the greenest growingest places there is...but that’s another story and it’s all in my BOOK: