Neutrality of CIRCUMSTANCES

Separate what happened from what you make it mean so you can respond deliberately.

If all circumstances are neutral, why would we ever feel bad?

This is one of the questions people ask when they learn the Self-Coaching Model. They hear that thoughts create feelings and assume the next instruction must be to think positively about everything.

But that is not what I teach.

I do not want to feel happy about every event in the world. Neither do you. Understanding that circumstances are neutral gives us responsibility for how we interpret them. It does not mean we must choose a positive interpretation.

The goal is to understand what creates our experience so we can choose it consciously.

What I mean by a circumstance

Circumstances are things that happen in the world. They are facts, and from our current position, they are not things we have direct control over.

Other people's behavior, the weather, the past, other people's opinions, and illness are examples. We can describe the facts separately from what we think about them.

The circumstance itself is neutral. Our thinking makes it positive or negative for us.

This is why two people can experience the same event and feel very differently. One person's interpretation can create sadness, another person's anger, and another person's indifference.

If the event itself created the feeling, everyone would have the same emotional experience. But we do not. How we think about it determines how we feel.

Neutral does not mean you want to feel happy

People bring me the events they consider most horrifying and ask how I could possibly call them neutral.

A student asked this about the Las Vegas shootings. She tried describing the facts as if a Martian were watching: a gun, bullets, people falling, running, and screaming.

That factual description is what belongs in the circumstance line of the Model. But I am not suggesting she should use it to feel happy about the event.

We want to understand that her thoughts about it create her feelings. People who think about the event repeatedly may feel horrified. Others feel sadness or anger. People who do not think about it may feel indifferent.

The event has not changed between those people. Their thinking is different.

You can decide that you want to think an event is horrible. You can choose compassion for the people affected and sadness about what happened. The Model does not require you to change that choice.

Stop feeling bad about feeling bad

We do not want to interpret everything positively. We want the full experience of being human, which includes both positive and negative emotion.

Often, though, we add another layer of suffering by thinking we should not feel bad. We become upset about being upset. We hurry to escape a feeling that belongs in our human experience.

Accepting emotional contrast helps us stop doing that. We can stop feeling negative about the negative.

Trying to make the whole world positive so we can feel happy all the time does not work. We can make things better in some ways and still encounter negative experiences in others.

I think there is a balance to being human. Understanding it lets us release the resistance we add when we believe something has gone wrong simply because we feel bad.

Responsibility is not a reason to blame yourself

Some teachers discuss attracting circumstances through your vibration. That is not what I teach. I do not think asking why you attracted every circumstance is as useful as understanding the circumstances you are experiencing and how you interpret them.

Learning that you are responsible for your thinking can already tempt you to blame yourself for your results. I do not want you to turn this work into another way of beating yourself up.

Instead, look at what you have directly created and how your thinking has contributed to it. That is powerful information you can use.

No matter what your past contains, you get to examine what it means to you now. Your thoughts about it are what create your emotional experience.

You do not have to keep an interpretation merely because it feels as if the world handed it to you. You can see it as a thought and decide whether you want to continue thinking it.

Acceptance gives you a place to begin

People sometimes think accepting reality means surrendering the ability to change it. I teach the opposite.

With my clients and their bodies, I teach that they need to inhabit and accept the body they are in before changing it. Pretending to love it only as a strategy to get a different one is not the same thing.

The present moment is where your power is. Arguing with what already exists keeps you in a fight you cannot win.

Accepting is different from condoning. You can acknowledge reality without agreeing with it. You can act from peace and love and still move toward change.

You do not have to use hate, judgment, and resistance as the fuel for making the world different. Feeling those things adds them to your own experience. Freedom from that fight in your mind is where you can begin.

Apply this to the moments in your own life

The big events help us understand the concept, but you can practice it with the circumstances you encounter every day.

Someone cuts you off on the road. Someone steps in front of you in line. Someone does not call you back.

You may have been treating those as automatically negative experiences. When you see that your interpretation creates the negativity, you can decide whether you want to keep it.

Maybe you do not want to make the unanswered call mean something horrible. Maybe you want to see it as neutral or simply part of life.

Nothing about the fact has changed. You have changed the meaning you give it.

And when you do choose anger, horror, or another negative feeling, make that choice consciously. Know the thought you are believing. Decide whether you approve of the way you are using it.

The world presents circumstances. You decide what they mean and how you use them. That is where you find far more authority over your experience than you may have realized you had.