I was batting around the idea of fairness today. I want to be completely honest where my thoughts originated and then I want to tell you where I landed. I think it’s important that you know I was being whiny and self-indulgent. I am not suggesting that my feelings or thoughts were invalid. I am only explaining that [validity aside] I was wholly involved in a wound-licking, poor me kind of moment.
My spiral started with the following sentiment: I wonder what it feels like for people who expect to get promoted every two years or so and then blammo, it happens.
I know, boo fucking hoo. Poor me. But not really. Not at all. Here’s the thing: I may not deserve a promotion. Or I may, and I may not get it, because that’s just the way that life works.
Life is filled with disappointments and failings and things falling apart. Filled to the fucking brim my friends. This is not sad. Every single detour, dead end, and heartache is an opportunity. I know, you just rolled your eyes. I get it. Please understand that my words are not shared tongue-in-cheek. I’m not being cute.
Every single time shit falls apart, we should be called to look within. We should look until we figure it out. We are not seeking an answer for why things broke. Nope. I mean, if that answer happens to emerge from this exercise, great, but don’t expect it.
I want you to know that I don’t have regrets but if I’ve come close, it’s all the time I spent trying to figure out why. Truly. Normally the statement I shared above (you know, the wah wah statement) would be followed with a ‘why meeeee?!’ We definitely need a little bit of that sometimes. We do. We need our moments to feel like shit and then regroup. I’ve written about this before and I really mean it. I think there is great value in allowing ourselves time to grieve, to retreat, to reflect. But that time must be brief. There must be an end in sight.
The real work is not sorting out why things happened the way they did. The real challenge is figuring out what comes next. We have to ask ourselves: where do we go from here? The best part is that there is no right or wrong answer here. Not at all. You might start down a path and decide that you want to about face, and that’s okay. The goal is movement. That movement might very well include a reconsideration.
I want to be absolutely clear that the way forward does not mean things are going to feel like sunshine and rainbows. You aren’t going to leave something that feels shitty and stumble into something amazing. Or maybe you will. That’s the thing. There is no guarantee. The goal is not perfection. It’s living. Um, k. WHAT?
Yes. Living is the art of working shit out. Moving forward and stepping back. When we remain stagnant, when we feel things and decide to shove down those feelings and ignore them, that’s when we cease living. I mean sure, we might be breathing, but in the realest sense, we aren’t really living. We are treading water. I don’t know how you feel, but my arms are way too short to keep myself afloat for too long. I’d only be able to hold myself above the water line for so long before sinking. And I can tell you one thing for certain, I’ve overcome too much shit to allow myself to sink because I’m afraid.
This all sounds great, but what does it mean in real life? Like I’m all good reading an article or social media post that tells me to shoot for the stars, but when we are faced with gut-wrenching discontent, it can be daunting to sort out where to go from there.
The first thing we have to do is what I’ve suggested in the context of many situations. We have to let ourselves feel. Be pissed off. Be sad. Be mad. Be embarrassed. Be heartbroken. Be all the things. And then, figure out why you feel the way you do. I know that sounds a bit strange, like obviously you know why you feel the way you do. But, do you?
Sometimes what we feel is driven off external factors that have nothing to do with us. We are appropriating emotions. We are feeling things because we are told to feel them. Our friends or family have revved us up. We read an article and it told us that we should be pissed off when ______ happens. We are too ashamed to admit that we don’t actually feel the way we are supposed to.
I have a friend who told me that she was relieved when she didn’t get a position she applied for at work. It was an internal posting and she felt pressured into applying for it and she really wasn’t interested in it at all, but was afraid of the optics of not applying. Despite knowing that she didn’t want it, she felt mad and sad when she didn’t get it. She told me that she didn’t know if she was actually disappointed or she was just responding in the way that she felt like she should under the circumstances. Messy business, eh?
Let me give you permission here. Let me tell you that you can feel however you damn please. Of course, there is some reasonableness factor but we know that already, right? So, feel free to breathe a sigh of relief when a relationship ends or when you don’t get that job. Be mad when your best friend gets back together with that guy she broke up with. But then figure out a game plan forward. Don’t dwell on the feelings but figure out how to repurpose that energy.
How do you do that without a full ‘why’ exploration? Well, the goal is to get to neutral. You look at the bits and pieces that are throwing you way out of bounds and then you figure out what moves you need to make to get you back to straight. Balanced.
I know this all sounds very esoteric so let’s be super real before I let you go enjoy your weekend.
If I am feeling unempowered because of shit going on at work, two things need to happen. I need to get to a place where I’m accepting of and grateful for my situation OR I need to go elsewhere. That’s pretty much it. Well, except for combining the two. I can work on better accepting my situation while also figuring out a game plan to move it on out. I know, that doesn’t sound terribly magical, and yet, we rarely engage in that thoughtful and deliberate fashion. We rage, we cry, we mourn, and then we stay put. We allow the waves to continually crash over our heads.
I already told you that my arms are too short to tread water. I have every reason in the world to start swimming. You feel me?
Anyway, have a good coupla days. I’ll probably be back Tuesday. Maybe before.
Talk soon.
L.
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