Clean Getaway

“Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do.” ~ Byron KatieI wrote last week about signs that it’s time to quit your job. However, I strongly believe and encourage my clients to get clean about their job before leaving, if possible. What do I mean by clean? Cleaning up your thoughts, taking responsibility for your part of the relationship, and making peace with it all.

[Caveat: I’m talking in generalizations. Obviously, there are some instances and environments when you need to get out NOW. Take care of yourself and do what is best for you.]

1. Cleaning up your thoughts

I believe our thoughts have incredible power. They also influence our feelings, so if you are feeling something you don’t enjoy (like sadness, frustration, fear or anger), examining your thoughts is critical to help you identify WHY you are feeling that emotion. By identifying your thoughts about the job you want to leave and examining them to understand the story you are telling yourself about the circumstance, you can more objectively make decisions that are based on what’s best for you, and not just making choices because of the story your brain is concocting.

When I work with my clients, I help them identify the thoughts that are causing them pain. There are several resources that can help you with your thoughts; one of my favorites is Byron Katie.

2. Taking responsibility

Another lesson from Byron Katie is the concept of business, as in, “Who’s business are you in?” Katie classifies three kinds of business: your business, other people’s business, and God’s business. Your business includes how you think and feel about things. Other people’s business is how they think and feel, including how they think and feel about you. You have no control over that, which you may know if you’ve ever had an experience where you did everything “right” and they still didn’t like you. Finally, God’s business encompasses natural disasters, weather and other big things we have no control over.

When you stay focused on your business, life gets a lot more simple. By taking responsibility for how you feel, you take back your power and also let others off the hook of making you happy.

3. Making peace

Peace is two-fold: it’s best to leave a job in a professional manner (think about the Golden Rule), and keep your mind focused on the positive. That may sound counter-intuitive…after all, you’re leaving the job. But by focusing on the positive – what you learned (either skills, or learned about yourself), the people you connected with, the experience you gained – helps your brain continue to look for what’s positive in your life. Our brains are naturally wired to look for the negative, to keep us out of danger, so shifting your brain to focus on the positive takes diligence and practice. It has immense benefits, as I recently wrote about. Recognize that this job, for the length of time you were in it, played some role for you. If nothing else, it helped you get to the place where you are now.

 

Leaving a job cleanly not only makes for a smoother transition for you and the company, it also puts you in a better position to begin something new without dragging the old habits, negative thoughts and patterns with you.

Trusting Through Change

“Nature does not hurry. Yet everything is accomplished.” ~ Lao TzuI was recently watching an educational video that included time-lapse video of a flower blooming. I love watching nature unfold in time-lapse. It’s fascinating to me to see the progress, which normally occurs so slowly over time that you hardly notice it.

The narrator said, “You can’t make a flower bloom more quickly.” It reminded me how often I want and try to hurry things along. I wonder…if we are like a seed under ground or a butterfly still in its cocoon, if perhaps things are happening under the surface to prepare us for what will come.

I think change can come to us externally, like a new job offer you didn’t expect, a layoff, or the death of someone close to you, or it can come from internal changes, by steady effort to make a change happen. Either way, there is a necessary adjustment period, as our perspective shifts to adjust to a new reality.

If you’re finding yourself in the midst of change, whether it’s by design or by surprise, I encourage you to relax, to let the river of change carry you to your new destination. You may feel like resisting it, and for a while, you may feel like that’s working. But there’s a freedom in letting go of the resistance, of accepting the change and trusting in the process. Trust that things are happening under the surface and that they are happening FOR you, not TO you.

Career Possibilities

Possibilities AheadI’m thrilled to announce the launch of a free podcast series — Possibilities Ahead — I’ve created with the supremely talented and organized Kanesha Baynard. Kanesha and I were in Martha Beck’s Life Coach Training program together, and she is a fireball of energy and ideas! We have collaborated on this podcast series to answer career questions and challenges from people who are wondering what to do next in their career, those who are struggling with making changes, and others who are trying to meld their passions with their careers. Through inquiry based tools and effective resources, Kanesha and I provide practical tips on each podcast to motivate listeners to explore possibilities that will positively impact and support their professional goals.

There are three podcasts available now, with additional podcasts produced monthly. You can get the whole list of Possibilities Ahead here on my site, or you can subscribe to have them delivered to your inbox. Have a question? Submit your question online for consideration for future episodes.

“We all have possibilities we don’t know about. We can do things we don’t even dream we can do.” ~ Dale Carnegie

Tuning Into Your Body’s Wisdom

Nature and retreats like this one relax my body.

“I believe your body knows a lot more than your mind about the life you’re supposed to live.”

Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star

I started working my first job after college having a sense of determination that I would work my way up the ladder of success, getting more responsibility, more senior titles and more pay. After all, I had gone through the educational system where you do just that, advancing to higher levels with each achievement. And for awhile, I did that. At my first job, at the headquarters of a national non-profit, I was promoted several times over my five-and-a-half year tenure and did very well. Then I decided to switch to the marketing side of things and went to an agency where I stayed for just over seven years. Again, I was promoted and continued to strive for higher positions, more responsibility, and management. Leaving there, I was recruited by another agency that tempted me with an even higher title and pay.

I never really asked myself if I truly wanted to keep moving up. I just assumed that’s what a person did who was successful.

And somewhere along the way, I stopped listening to my body. Before I left a company, I knew there were things that I wasn’t happy with, but I didn’t really connect the symptoms my body was producing as anything more than signs of physical illness or disease.

At that first job, I started taking antidepressants. While I don’t take them now, I do feel like these drugs can be life-saving and can make the world of difference for those who need them. At that time, it was as if someone had taken off the black-out shades in my life. It was amazing! I also started talk therapy and learned some healthy coping skills, but the drugs were so effective and easy that when, a couple years later, I started having anxiety attacks and additional depression symptoms, I went to my doctor for additional drugs. [Note to self: More is not always better!] While the drugs kept me out of the deep abyss of depression where it was hard to function, they also numbed my emotions a bit. I honestly didn’t want to feel what I was feeling, and at that point, I just took more to numb more. When I left that job, I did lower my dose again, although it was years before I was brave enough to try coping without them.

The next interesting symptom my body threw at me was IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). I won’t go into details but will sum it up by saying it’s not pleasant! IBS stayed with me for several years, always flaring up during periods of high stress.

The third symptom was back and hip pain. I assumed this was due to my mild scoliosis, diagnosed when I was a teen and always causing an achy pain in my lower back. But it was getting worse, including intense pain between my shoulder blades and my right hip completely giving out when I tried to put weight on it. After seeing several doctors who said that there was no treatment and that I should just “learn to live with the pain,” I got immense relief from chiropractic care. However, it wasn’t a permanent solution, and again, the pain would flare up, often during stressful times.

The thing that helped the most with all of this? Learning from teachers like Martha Beck that the unconscious mind communicates in symbols, sometimes using the body as it’s canvas, acting out its messages. The pain, muscle cramping and other irritable symptoms were my body’s way of telling me I was off course. WAY off course. After all, “disease” is “dis-ease.” My body was screaming at me. The more I ignored it, the more inventive it got to try to get my attention. Muscle spasms locking my neck or shoulders up to the point I couldn’t sleep or turn my head were probably the most painful and impossible to ignore.

I am happy (and relieved!) to report that I no longer have these symptoms. And now, I’m also starting to get some really cool and good feeling messages from my body, signs that I am on the right course. I do still get occasional twinges of pain in my back or hip, and when I feel them, I know it’s time to investigate. What am I avoiding? What’s my body trying to tell me? The message may be that I need to stretch or get some exercise, but it also may be that I’m not being honest with myself about how I’m feeling.

I’d love to hear about your experience: have you noticed this in your life? How does your body “talk” to you?

Letting Go

Follow a New Path

“Don’t settle because you’re afraid you won’t find something better. Don’t compromise because you don’t want to be alone. Give your perfect life, lover and job time and space to grow into our life.  Don’t rush, don’t hurry. Take your time, be easy, have patience. Allow everything to come to you with your subtle guiding and intending. Your days of constant chasing with little reward are over. Everything you’ve ever wanted and more coming to you, you just have to let it in with love, receptivity and non-judgment. Letting it in is how you become it.”

– Jackson Kiddard

I have a hard time letting go. I really want to control everything, including time and outcomes, but funnily enough, I’m finding this impossible. (Shocking, right?) My life has been full of opportunities to learn this, and since I’m still getting new ones, I know I haven’t yet mastered the art of letting go.

I love the above quote by Jackson Kiddard. It has so many good bits of advice, but today, the messages of “don’t rush, don’t hurry” and “let it in” ring especially true to me.

Leaving a Job or Leaving a Relationship

I have played the role of the rat in the race and it didn’t suit me. However, it was familiar to me. I knew the basics of playing that corporate game. Leaving the corporate world and entering into entrepreneurial land, I am like a child exploring a brand new environment. It’s exciting and scary. And a part of me is grieving what I’ve left behind, even though I know deep inside that it wasn’t right for me.

I felt this way when I got a divorce, too. It’s a mixture of feelings, really: sad and grieving for the lost relationship and the loss of the dream, relief that the painful parts are over, and wonder and a little fear about what lies ahead. I never wanted to be a “divorcee” — I used to look down on people who had gotten divorces, as if they just didn’t try hard enough — but being faced with one, I realized it’s not as black and white as I had thought. I had to shift my perceptions and admit I was wrong. That’s never easy, but it is sometimes necessary to forge a new path.

Help Along the Way

Fortunately, as I head down this new path, I have many resources (as well as past experiences) to draw upon. I know I’m not alone: I have friends and mentors who are also entrepreneurs. I have many blessings from the tools I’ve learned from Martha Beck. And I have faith, a deep inside knowing that I will make it.

If you are facing a new path, or the ending of an old one, I encourage you to reach out, whether that’s to a coach, a friend, or someone who’s faced what you’re facing. You’re not alone, and you don’t have to do this alone. And what challenge isn’t better with a friend to help you along?