Archive for June, 2015
Sometimes life sucks and then it gets better
Sometimes life sucks. Stuff happens. You’re stressed out. Don’t feel like your normal self. Aren’t up to doing all the things you used to do.
It could be for any or multiple reasons, right? We’ve all been there.
I’m there.
I like keeping my private matters private, so I’m leaving the details out. Thanks for understanding and not asking about it!
And anyway, I don’t want to talk about the details. I want to talk about how I’m handling it.
I’m prioritizing my health and wellbeing, the people I care about, and doing the very best I can for my clients.
So how is that going?
Well, business is great. The people I interact with from day to day are the best I could ask for, and I like my job every single day. So that’s good!
I am focused on doing great work for my clients. I am not, however, taking on much new work, finishing my book, or posting my blog every Thursday (thanks for noticing, by the way). Payroll and taxes are on track but my QuickBooks is more than a little out of date. I’m not up for all of it right now, and would rather focus on the most important stuff and do the rest when I can.
My health and wellbeing and the people I care about are up and down. Good days, bad days, fun days, sad days. I haven’t been to yoga in over two weeks, but went dancing and golfing for the first time in eight or nine months. I’m reaching out to my friends and family when I need support. But I’m not being a great friend to all of the people that matter to me because I don’t have the energy for it. I try to let them know I care and be there when it counts the most.
The negative stuff is temporary. I’m looking forward to getting past it and excited for the future. Overall life is good, I’m fortunate, and I know it. Grateful.
People say “be gentle with yourself” when you’re going through a rough time. Well, yes, but what does that mean exactly? For me it means I know my priorities and that’s what I’m focused on. I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got.
I hope you are doing great. And if you’re not, I hope you’re also focusing on the most important things and letting the rest go until you’re ready for it.
Because Life’s a Bittersweet Symphony and sometimes you gotta just Shake it Off.
Free Your Identity From Your Job
It is easy to let your job become your identity. Especially if you have a title or function that is considered high-status, or you work for a well-known organization. This manifests as “I’m important because I’m Senior Director of Finance!” or “I’m important because I’m a surgeon!” or “I’m important because my company is a nationally broadcast news station!”
American culture and language may be partly to blame for over-identification with work. For example, in French, a guy doesn’t say “I am hungry” because he isn’t the embodiment of hunger. Instead, he says, “J’ai faim”, which more literally translates to “I have hunger.” Wouldn’t it be great if instead of “I am a mechanical engineer”, people thought of their job in terms of “I do mechanical engineering work for a living?”
There would be less annoying egos to deal with and more focus on producing the outcomes that job functions are intended to produce. Haven’t we all been to a party where people ask each other what they do for work and someone puffs out his chest and says “I’m the head of the ______ corporation,” and we think to ourselves, “you might be the head of a company but you’re an ass at this party.”
If you’re taking your identity from work, here are four steps to break free:
Step 1) Stop, just stop using your work email address for your personal correspondence. Using “me@mycompany” for personal use reinforces to you and everyone you email that you are inseparable from your job. I will reblog this point until you stop.
Step 2) Acknowledge to yourself that you are not your job. You are a person who does work in exchange for a paycheck. No matter what title you have, whether you work for yourself or someone else, regardless of your salary and how much or little your role is favored by society; you are still not your job.
When interviewing people about quitting their jobs, many men told me they took their identity from their work. Women often told me they think of themselves first as a mother or wife and then in terms of their work. I dislike all of this because it is taking on identities from factors outside of yourself. If you are your job, what are you when the job goes away? If your reason for existing is your child or spouse, what happens when they turn on you or disappoint you, or you end up living vicariously through them?
You can still be an employee/parent/spouse and be happy and proud of being those things. I hope you are! That is different from getting your sense of self from them.
Step 3) Start defining yourself by your own qualities and attributes. Then repeat the words to yourself, silently or aloud, every single day, until you believe it. For example, “I am a kind, generous person” or “I am strong and resilient”. Your job can’t take your innate characteristics way from you.
Step 4) Have a life outside of work. Spend time with people other than your coworkers. Have a hobby. Participate in a club or organized group. Yes, you spend many of your waking hours at work. Maybe too many. It is said you can tell a person’s priorities by how they spend their time and money. Make your life bigger than your job by caring and participating in activities that have nothing to do with work.
If you need to spend more hours working each week than on any other single activity, you can make your reason for working have more meaning. You’re supporting a family with your salary. You’re learning a skill that will allow you to transition to a better job. You’re saving money so that you will have more choices about work in the future.
And then? Do step number one right now and the repeat steps two through four until you identify yourself by your unique qualities or you die, whichever comes first. C’est tout.
Blahg Blahg Blahg
I didn’t publish a blog post last week. Work was great, but I was feeling the accumulated effect of other stresses in my life and when Thursday evening came around, I went to bed early instead of writing a post. I figured I would post something by Sunday at the latest, because I’ve done that before when I didn’t feel like I had the energy to meet my self-imposed Thursday deadline.
Then it was the weekend and I slept through a lot of it, spent some time planting and watering and pruning the shrubs and trees around my house to relax, and zoned out reading books. Then on Sunday night instead of writing a blog post I started laying out a poetry manuscript for a chapbook contest that is ending soon. I stayed up way too late, until 3AM, sorting through my poems and formatting them into a 6 x 9 inch word document. Didn’t finish the chapbook and didn’t even attempt a blog post.
Monday I was exhausted, of course, and went to bed early again. And today I rushed from one meeting to the next and to appointments after work and got in bed at 8:30PM for another early night. I read through my emails on my smartphone to make sure I didn’t miss anything important before going to sleep, and read this:
“What I Do When I Feel Like Giving Up”, by James Clear. It starts off with “I’m struggling today. If you’ve ever struggled to be consistent with something you care about, maybe my struggle will resonate with you too.” And then he goes on to write about how he’s consistently posted on his blog twice a week since November 2012.
Dammit, James.
I was ready to push off the guilty, nagging feeling I had about not blogging and prioritize my rest. Until I read his damn post. The entire article was about how he didn’t feel like writing that day and how he motivated himself to do it anyway.
Dammit, James!
So now I’m out of bed, at my desk writing this post, which I could have written last Thursday or any day since then but didn’t, until James put it in my face that it is my choice and that there are methods of motivating ourselves even when we feel like giving up. Even when we are convinced our reasons for not writing (or whatever) are rationale, and even when we are this close to tuning out and distracting ourselves.
I’ve even blogged about this topic before and could have taken my own advice. But I didn’t. I let my habit slide and now I’m putting in the effort to get back on schedule. It is a choice, and I could stop blogging or only blog when I feel inspired. My truth is that I do care about writing consistently and sharing what I’ve learned about meaningful work.
So thanks, James. And dammit.
I want to quit my job…two years from now
I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who tell me they want to quit their jobs, but not right now. They want to quit in two years. The most common reason is that people want to stop doing their current work and do something else…but they don’t know what that is. For some reason they think that in two years they will have figured that out.
However, when you’re working a ton of hours in a stressful position, you don’t have much mental space or energy to determine what your next best job is. Plus, your free time is spent recovering or distracting yourself from your unhappy situation.
I feel your pain.
It wasn’t until I made up my mind that I was going to quit my job that I began to have ideas about what my future might look like. There was a definitive moment, a changing of my mindset, when I set my intention to quit. I turned my focus away from trying to make my current job situation better and focused on creating a better life. Like magic, I started getting inspired and followed my interests as far as they would go.
Here are a few examples of the actions I took and what they led to:
- After eight years without any creative writing, I started filling notebooks again. The ideas for stories, poems and lyrics popped into my head without even trying. I decided that after I quit my job I would spend a month at Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program. Once there, I wrote the outline for my self-help book for people who want to quit their jobs. I started this blog. I also kept writing creatively, joined writing groups, and volunteered with a literary magazine.
- I began researching and visiting animal sanctuaries. I documented their best practices and what they needed to improve. I have no idea if this will lead to any paid work in my future, but it was meaningful to me. The current outcome is that I have three favorite animal non-profits: Best Friends Animal Society, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest and The Wild Animal Sanctuary.
- I realized that my love of research, analysis, report-writing and justice could lead to a career in private investigation. I got certified, built a marketing plan and decided this would be my next job. In case you haven’t been following my blog – I did not become a P.I. But planning to be a P.I. gave me the courage to quit my job and continue pursuing my interests until I ultimately began my consulting business.
Which leads me to this point: you don’t have to figure out your next job right now. All you have to do is follow your interests. Two years from now, your ideal job may be completely different – and better – than anything you can dream of now.
Happily, I’m not a data point of one. Many people who I spoke with followed a winding path to a satisfying career. If you need more convincing, read Martha Beck’s Finding Your Way in a Wild New World.
If you’re convinced but are thinking “what do I do now, I don’t even know what I’m interested in”, just experiment with one small, easy thing that you will enjoy doing. Make something with your hands. Revisit an old hobby. Do something you liked doing as a kid. Talk to a friend in a career that you may be interested in. Take a class or an evening workshop in a subject you are curious about. Read.
If you’re on the right track, more and more opportunities will open up to you, just as starting to write poetry again led to a month of writing classes and my book-in-progress.
When you’re not on the right track, you’ll lose interest or life will throw signs at you that it is time to change direction. For example, as I neared the date when I planned to quit my job, I began to doubt that a formal career in investigation was the right choice even though I enjoyed the process leading up to it. At the same time, a former coworker and I came up with a business idea and created an LLC in a blink. Several months later I realized our company wasn’t going to generate a salary and I moved onto my backup plan of consulting, which turned out to be a perfect career for me.
I didn’t cling to my initial idea out of stubbornness or misplaced determination. I was open to each new opportunity and was willing to move forward or change my plans as I went along. I like the metaphor of walking on a path with a lantern that only illuminates the step you’re at and where to place your feet next.
For example, if you are interested in making elaborate, one-of-a kind cakes, you don’t have to buy a bakery or launch a catering business. Have a friend or two commission desserts from you and if you enjoy it, do more. You might find that you only want to bake cakes for your loved one’s birthdays because it is a creative outlet and you feed off of their gratitude. Maybe you’ll realize you don’t want to make cakes for strangers, you don’t want to bake at all in the summer, and you really don’t want to produce a customer’s requested design if it isn’t a style you’re interested in.
When you pay attention, the universe will give you nudges in the right direction. What matters is that you are taking action. You are signaling that you are open to discovering a new path, one step at a time. If it leads you to another step forward– great! If you dislike it, or the choice generates negative results, then pursue your other interests.
If you’re one of those people who want to quit their jobs in two years, be clear about your intention. Then take one small action and you’re on your way.
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