If you’re just now tuning in, hop over to Part 1 to get the context. We’re working through key lessons learned from four movies — Matrix, Divergent, Wanted and Unbreakable — that are instrumental for personal evolution if we know what to look for. The first two lessons focused on honoring the “splinter in your mind” (which is how you know it’s time for a change) and owning everything.
Now we’ll talk about releasing and reframing. Releasing is pretty much the opposite of owning everything, right? The trick is knowing what to own and what to release, and also knowing what we could own if we just viewed the situation a bit differently (reframe). Let’s hit each of these, and then pull it all together with a chart that you can use to guide your own decisions.
Release what no longer serves you
In the movies, all the heroes except for David in Unbreakable made a clean break (get it?) from their former lives. Neo, Tris and Wesley completely left their jobs, friends, family and identity in order to train in a contained environment to discover what they’re made of. Two of them took on new names: Neo and Tris are apparently cooler names for heroes than Mr. Anderson and Beatrice. Tris burned her old clothes as she joined her new faction.
Now while 99% of us can’t just leave everything behind, nor do we have access to a self-contained environment where we get our asses kicked until we live up to our potential, we will stay stuck unless we release what doesn’t serve us.
“Why?” you might ask. “I like my friends, my closet jammed with stuff I don’t wear, the life I built, the job that looks more impressive than it really is. I’m just feeling a bit stuck. There’s nothing I really want to release.”
Ok. Have it your way. But humor me for just a minute: imagine that you want to walk down the street, but you refuse to pick up your back foot. Your foot likes that place; it’s comfortable there. How far would you get? “Nowhere” is, in fact, the correct answer.
If you want to make progress, you have to let go. Whether that’s old stuff sitting in storage, clothes you don’t wear, a relationship or friends that don’t serve where you want to be, or a job you’re not happy in… something’s gotta go in order to make room for the new. Here’s the motto that helped me tremendously:
If it’s not a “hell yes!” it’s a no. There is no in-between.
If you don’t believe me, stop right now and read Fuck Yes or No by Mark Manson. Seriously, go. Ok, now jump over here and buy Marie Kondo’s book called the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Both of them go into infinitely more and better detail about this concept, which is truly life-changing if you actually follow through.
When I fully “got” this concept a couple years ago, I was sitting on a beach in Tulum, Mexico that was covered, literally several feet high, with dirty red algae blooms that had washed ashore…. and were continuing to wash ashore, every day. Climate change is a bitch. The hotel I was staying at didn’t keep up with the beach cleaning, and the algae kept piling up to a state where it was overwhelming. The crew had pretty much given up; they were listless and took a lot of breaks. In comparison, the workers at the hotel down the beach were efficient and on it every morning. They were cheerful, with good attitudes, and that beach was relatively clean by each afternoon.
I watched this state of affairs feeling infuriated — seriously, inordinately wrapped around the emotional axel — at the lazy workers at my hotel. Fortunately I can recognize from past experience that a button-pushing situation is usually mirroring something in myself. So instead of flying to another Mexico beach to finish my long-overdue vacation, I pulled out my journal and explored, for the next couple days, how I wasn’t cleaning my own metaphorical beaches. How I’d allowed clutter in every area of my life to create feelings of being overwhelmed and stuck. And how the efficient and happy hotel crew next door served as a fabulous role model: by cleaning up every day, they stayed ahead of the game, always prepared for whatever was going to wash up on the beach the next day.
When I got home I started the purge. I looked around my apartment and saw that I’d decorated more like my mom than like Jen. I had no idea how the authentic Jen would decorate, so I followed Marie Kondo’s advice and only kept what brought me joy. The only “hell yes’s” ended up being one piece of art and a coffee table. That’s it. After that I went through all my clothes and got rid of nearly everything in my closet. I chopped all my hair off. And I started listening to my gut on what felt right to me… what my “hell yes’s” were. Owning them even if they totally went against my stories. Trusting that it would all turn out ok. And it did… better than I could have possibly imagined.
What are you holding onto that isn’t serving you? Thank these things and people for their service, and let them go. If it’s family, you can choose how much time you spend since you can’t simply walk away (and who knows, they might surprise you by being more supportive than your stories imagined). Identify the stories and ideas that no longer serve you, write them on pieces of paper, and burn them.
Reframing
All of our heroes needed to reframe their ideas of themselves in the presence of new information, insight, and evolution. David in Unbreakable didn’t leave his past behind, but started seeing his strengths for the first time in a new light. Reframing means not throwing the baby out with the bathwater; perhaps something doesn’t need to be released, but rather seen through fresh eyes and a new perspective.
You’ll know what to reframe when you identify where your stories lie. Perhaps there’s a desire to get fit and exercise, but your story is that you don’t like the gym. Well, maybe you really don’t like the gym, or maybe it’s just a story. This has been my story for ages, and it served as a really good excuse when I didn’t feel like working out. More on this in a minute. First, let’s look at two ways you can reframe:
Emotions lie, so change them.
Yes, believe it or not, emotions lie. They’re self-created, not actual reality. If you’ve spent any time with your emotions and really paid attention, you’ve seen that most of them can change pretty quickly. If you’re feeling sorry for yourself one minute, you could be laughing an hour later with a friend who wouldn’t let you wallow in self-pity. Often we can sink into a negative emotion caused by a story we’ve manufactured in our heads; this shows up a lot in relationships, where we bring our own baggage and filters to explain someone’s actions that may not be remotely true. We imagine ourselves being ignored or cheated on, creating all sorts of drama, and meanwhile our significant other is be-bopping through their lives totally in love with you and bewildered at why you’re so emotional over nothing.
So, back to the gym example: I’ve decided that I don’t like the gym. I’ve reinforced this story by an emotion (bored and trapped) that I’ve come to associate with the gym over the years, and I continually reinforce the story by repeating frequently to myself and others that I don’t like the gym. It’s gotten to where I don’t even think it’s a story; it’s TRUE, DAMMIT. Ok. So now I have a choice. Lots of choices, in fact. I can choose to exercise outside. Easy enough. Or, as I did today as I was pondering this post, I can prove to myself that it’s just a story by changing my emotion.
I started on that multi-function exercise machine. You know, the stair master with arm pulleys so you get a full body workout. I rolled my eyes and started slogging away. After 5 minutes I was bored and wanted off… but then made a different choice. Now the fun begins: I manufactured the emotion of excitement. Really, it was that easy. Boom! I was excited. Then I manufactured a feeling of gratitude for my cool gym (it really is pretty cool) and that I am healthy enough to enjoy it. Boom! Then I manufactured a feeling of being loved, and then loving those around me. Boom! I cycled through these emotions, feeling exactly how they felt in my body. Excitement felt farther away from me — a light, radiating-outwards energy — whereas feeling loved was like holding onto a soft, warm blanket. Hey… this was kinda fun! Until I hit the 15–minute mark, when I was hijacked by this overwhelming “ohmygodgetmeoffthisstupidmachine” feeling… which I decided to ride, like surfing, and see what happened. See if I could simultaneously hold gratitude with aversion until one of them won. Hint: gratitude won. Then I hit the weights, felt awesome, and now I’m super happy that I went to the gym. This shit works.
Here’s another way to reframe: start experimenting by following your curiosity. Elizabeth Gilbert suggested this gem of advice. As she wrote, and I’ve experienced, following your passion is tough; half the time you don’t know your passions, and if you do, you put a lot of pressure on yourself. Or your passion ebbs and flows, which is confusing. Instead, just follow your curiosity and see where it leads. See if you’ve been stuck in a story with a new life waiting on the other side, or if it’s just… meh. No worries either way, and no pressure. David in Unbreakable had a hard time believing he had the makings of a superhero, but simply started following his curiosity… lifting more weights than he’d thought possible, and opening his intuition to sense the bad guys. What if this crazy idea were true?
Tying it all together
We’ve talked about owning, releasing and reframing. Here’s a sample chart I put together that helped me understand the relationships between them, along with a step-by-step process below. Hopefully it can help you too. Most of these items are mine, except for the “working mom” one which came from an old friend. The last two rows I struggled to work through over a 2-year period that was triggered by a dark night of the soul and the algae-covered beach, and now I couldn’t be happier. By owning my truth, even when I didn’t want to, I feel liberated and no longer care about anyone else’s opinions about me but my own. Score.
- As suggested in my last post, write down all your “should’s”. It may take some thought, and you’ll probably notice them most as you go through your daily activities. You’ll hear a little voice inside with all the should’s that you picked up from your family, society, or your own imagination. Occasionally they’re true — maybe you should eat fewer jelly donuts or stop throwing rocks at people — but usually they’re just stories.
- Next to each one, write why you believe you should do or be that. There could be a lot of reasons, or just one. Write it all down. Dig deep.
- Then try to identify what is really true, or what you think is the truth. Sometimes it’s totally not obvious, and may take some time to fully recognize. Sit with it, and write it down.
- Now identify your stories. I indicated my stories in red in the chart. How do you know what’s a story and what’s real? This is where listening to your gut comes in. What’s good for human beings in general, like exercise or eating better or not throwing rocks at people, aren’t stories. Things you’re good at and enjoy, but feel blocked for some reason, aren’t stories. The rest is fair game.
- Find what needs reframing. As I went through this exercise, I suspected that “I hate the gym” was a story, but I needed to test it. Being undisciplined is both a fact that I need to own — this is how AA works: own your shit in order to gain power over it — as well as a story. Nothing is set in stone and there are ways to learn discipline if I want it badly enough.
- Own everything in “the truth is…” column (green box.) You might like it or you might not, but this is reality. The only real source of suffering is wishing things are other than they are.
- Release any “should” that has a story in your rationale (red box). Who would you be without the story? How liberated would you feel without this should hanging over your head?
- Reframe what’s left (the yellow box). Play with attaching different emotions, or exploring your curiosity and see what happens.
- You’re now left with a set of choices to make, which is very empowering. Ideally, you’ve taken the majority of your should’s off the table because they’re just stories that don’t serve you. You now have a much smaller set that you can choose to do something about, or not. If, at the end of the day, you need to just own the fact that you’re a (couch potato, whatever) then just own it and move on. Stop torturing yourself. If you can’t turn it into a hell yes, then it’s a no. Done.
The critical skill for doing this exercise well, and feeling confident in your choices and decisions, is listening to your gut. Head over to Part 3 for two practices to develop this muscle.
I’d love to hear from you on all this. What’s resonating? What’s not? Do you have your own ah-hah’s to share? Leave a comment! If you liked the post, I’d appreciate your claps (Medium’s version of a like) and sharing on social media. Part 3 will give a more detailed “how to” on listening to your gut.
