Neutral Like Neon: Chemistry, Consciousness & Coaching
It was a quiet Saturday afternoon. I had just fed my one-year-old, Abraham, and changed him before heading outside for some fresh air. I laced up my sneakers, packed some water, grabbed my phone and AirPods, and we stepped out for our usual walk through the quiet, blooming streets of our suburban neighborhood.
As Abraham enjoyed the stroll, I felt drawn to listen to one of Dr. Ehab Hamarneh videos. He’s a well-known coach in the Middle East whose work speaks deeply to consciousness, expansion, and more about transformation. This particular video, in Arabic, was titled something like: Do Your Thoughts Really Generate Your Reality?
I’m fluent in Arabic—I grew up in the Middle East—though all my higher education and most of my coaching is in English. But something about learning these concepts in Arabic activates a different part of me. It’s as if the ideas land more viscerally.
In this video, Dr. Ehab Hamarneh shares that the way to neutralize the effect of negative thoughts is… to simply be neutral. Not to react. Not to feed them.
I’ve learned this idea before, read it in books, heard it in teachings, and I do get it. But this time, the way he said it clicked differently. It sparked an unexpected insight rooted in—of all things—chemistry.
You see, I’ve taken nearly a dozen chemistry courses in my life. My first degree was in chemical engineering. And suddenly, my brain went back to the periodic table: elements with positive or negative charges react with others, forming compounds and new substances. But then there are the neutral elements—stable, non-reactive, self-contained.
Then I started thinking: what if our awareness—our consciousness—is like that neutral element? If we can separate our awareness from our thoughts (negative thinking in this case), and remain neutral, we don’t have to “react” to negative thoughts. There’s no chemical reaction. No energetic transformation. No unwanted emotional product.
That analogy grounded the concept for me. It finally clicked in a way all those books hadn’t.
Maybe this doesn’t resonate for everyone, but it did for me. And it made me smile—maybe all those chemistry classes did pay off after all.
It also reminded me how intertwined science and consciousness are. I don’t believe they’re separate. In fact, I often see science as a language for understanding consciousness.
I’ve taken a very unconventional path—from med school to chemical engineering to systems thinking to executive coaching—and I’ve stopped trying to make it linear. Everything affects everything. Like the butterfly effect I once studied in systems engineering. It all led me here.
Have you ever had an insight like this—where two completely different parts of your life suddenly connect?
