Hello friends!

I recently had a pretty big decision to make. Someone had approached me with what was essentially my dream job, and I had to decide whether to take it.

What made that decision difficult is that I was already living out my dream job: the coaching and content creation I do for Emotional Explorations is genuinely some of the most rewarding work I've ever done.

I knew that taking up the job was the right move, because my employer was happy for me to continue Emotional Explorations on the side. Yet despite all this, I still couldn't help but feel incredibly torn.

That's what this week's exploration is about.

This week's theme:

50:50 vs 50+50

In the past, I would push through the state of feeling torn by simply convincing myself to side with one emotion and overcoming the other. For example, when choosing to leave McKinsey, I chose to side with my feelings of aliveness and ignore my fears.

This is what I call the "50:50 belief" — the idea that you need to commit to one set of emotions in order for you to commit to a decision.

But a few months ago, my own coach pointed out to me that he didn't like how I constantly framed fear as a negative emotion. I rebutted him and said "But in recent years, every time I let go of fear, life got better. And I see the same in my clients too."

He challenged me and said "That's because of your predisposition and the kinds of people you attract. There are definitely people who are probably too reckless and could use a little more fear."

That was an important turning point for me.

And so this time around, I didn't choose to side with any one set of emotions. I chose to hold all of them:

• I felt excited about my new job, and grief for dropping my full time commitment to Emotional Explorations
• I felt pride in what I achieved with Emotional Explorations, and shame in what I couldn't
• I felt safety in having stability again, and weakness in shying away from uncertainty

People would always pick one side to console me — "You've done heaps already Eric" or "Yeah, it's probably about time you stopped messing around" — and here is my conclusion:

All of these stances can be valid at the same time.

And by creating the space to hold these emotions, they could then move through me. Without putting in effort to reject certain emotions, I experienced less resistance in committing to my decision.

That is what I call the "50+50 belief" — the idea that you can choose create space to hold all your opposing emotions as you commit to whatever it is you've chosen.

And it's when you choose to sit with all of your emotions, that's when you'll arrive at peace sooner with your decision.

If you'd like to explore this more...

That's the theme of this week's YouTube video. In this video, I discuss more around how the 50:50 belief leads to two costs that I term 'emotional resistance' and 'emotional selection bias'; and how to transition into the 50+50 belief.

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That's it for this week's issue of Emotional Explorations! I hope it brought you clarity and I look forward to writing to you again soon.

Best,
Eric