There come a few points in life when we realize what we are doing or the environment we are in isn’t working any longer.  The things that used to feel good or that we used to tolerate become painful and intolerable, seemingly overnight.  This isn’t to say that where we are is bad, it’s just that we recognize it’s no longer a good fit for us.  Similar to the lobster we talked about a few weeks ago, we outgrow both who we are and where we are.  When there is limitation to expansion, we feel that discomfort.  We are meant to use those signals as motivation to analyze where we are and make adjustments to the environment or ourselves.  That realization can be scary.  We spend a lot of time curating our lives and we do find a level of safety and comfort in what we build.  Saying that those spaces we create for ourselves no longer fit feels like a threat.  Like the lobster, we are soft without our shells, and that means we are vulnerable if we ever have to shed that shell.  Plus, why would we want to leave a place we spent so much time perfecting?

That’s where most of us get stuck.  We look at what we’ve done and fear what we need.  Building an entire life based on who we are in one moment seems kind of pointless without understanding that we won’t be that version of ourselves forever.  We have this expectation that we decide who we are at 18 and that we must be that forever.  Some people are gifted enough that they know their identity at that age, but for most people, the prefrontal cortex is still developing until our late 20’s.  That means we are still learning to identify ourselves until we are almost 30 years old.  Plus the ability to make a decision at a young age and carry that into later life is becoming increasingly rare (ie you can’t choose one job and stay there for over 30 years any longer—no pensions, health insurance etc.).  Things change too quickly to stay the same any longer.  Technology has made it so finding any level of comfort in repetition is pointless because we have to adapt to any changes. 

So getting back to environment, I felt my lobster moment several times this past week.  In a conversation with my boss and again in a conversation with my husband.  In both circumstances, I realized that I simply don’t fit in that environment any longer and it isn’t healthy to try and force myself to enjoy something that causes me frustration and pain.  At work, I’m at the mercy of higher ranking individuals and I’m tired of living my life waiting for the axe to drop, often for things that have nothing to do with my performance.  I’m also tired of leading from a place of control.  Leading from the heart has resulted in a mess, and no one responds to control. With my husband, I drew a hard limit on a specific behavior because it is no longer serving him or our relationship.  Certain patterns are no longer attractive to me and I know the stress they cause is completely unnecessary so I no longer accept that from my partner.  In the former circumstance, my boss recognizes this and she started a more open dialogue about other options for me. In the latter, my husband acknowledged where the behavior is causing issues for him as well.

The point of all of this is to accept radical honesty from ourselves about how we feel, about letting go of fear and knowing when our shells are constraining us rather than allowing us to be who we are.  Awareness and communication are key.  Making any leap is vulnerable and that makes it scary.  Those are the moments we have to decide we will do it anyway.  Being who we are is what allows us to break the cycle and do something new.  Our lives crave new, and they crave it in the vein of who we are, not who we’ve been, not in fulfilling the past of our parents, or not in the path society says will help us.  Break the habits and break the cycle by honoring the gifts we have inside.  Get honest and get aligned.  When we are able to see ourselves for who we are, growth happens naturally and we don’t fear it.  Allow the habits of who we are meant to be to fill our lives and soon we will be living that way.  We will know how to live without a shell and to protect ourselves in other ways.  Trust.