Dr. Julia Kogan stated, “Quitting your job is not going to get you out of the endless cycle of exhaustion, overwhelm, and overthinking that we’ve been stuck in.  Not spending time with friends, letting go of responsibilities and commitments won’t get you out of that cycle either. We repeat cycles because of a build up of stress that causes a dysregulated nervous system whether from the past few years or from childhood; The nervous system drains the body’s resources, it takes your energy making it hard to go about our day.  We don’t want to let go and wind up in the same place because we’re doing the same thing our body knows how to do. We can’t get stuck in the idea that once we leave the job, the kids are gone etc. because that isn’t going to fix anything.”  The premise here is that upheaving our lives with the expectation that will resolve our issues doesn’t work.  We may need a big change, that’s true, but until we address the root cause of our dysregulation, we will repeat the same cycle no matter what we do or choose to change.  We’ve all been there, at the point where we’re so stressed we say “Fuck it,” and there’s nothing else we want to do.  We want to turn our backs on everything we know only to find ourselves right back where we started.  I made a huge shift in my career/life 6 months ago and I knew it was the right thing to do but I 100% was the same person I always have been in the beginning of that transition.  Sure, I knew conceptually what needed to be done and how to do it but I wasn’t that person yet.  Leaving the circumstance I was in didn’t change me–it changed my circumstances but I was still me and now I just felt overwhelmed about new stuff.  Prime example of carrying the same habits to a new situation.

It wasn’t until I learned where I needed to adapt that I understood where I needed to heal—and this couldn’t be where I thought I had to change, this had to be the root.  I had to be willing to dig and see what was actually holding me back.  I had the time I wanted, I had a role I’d wanted for a long time, but I was somehow still in the same place I’d been.  Sure, change doesn’t always happen over night, and that was a huge change for me.  But it wasn’t just a matter of having more freedom and a life away from the office.  It wasn’t just about having to adhere to what people told me and why I suddenly felt so averse to it.  All of this spiraled from a fractured relationship with time and lacking self-confidence.  I’d spent years begging for more time, complaining about the amount of time I spent commuting, the nights I’d have to stay long working on things that made no impact whatsoever on my long term goals, and now I had this abundance of time that I’d been begging for and it somehow still seemed to fill up with crap that made no difference.  I was looking for things to prove my worth on a new team, I was trying to find a way to be that person the team was happy with, to be the person learning a new role, all while learning a new way of life.  Learning how to incorporate the things I wanted to do with new obligations and new timelines, new expectations.  I had to give up what I wanted people to think of me for what I actually wanted to be.  I had to find the strength in myself to get really honest about the habits versus the actual responsibility.

**No one was breathing down my neck anymore with arbitrary and ever-changing demands and deadlines.  I didn’t have to spend 90% of my day dealing with staff who liked drama for the sake of liking drama.  I didn’t have to devote serious focused time and effort on a project only to be told it wasn’t the right thing/that someone else had already done it/my input wasn’t needed.  Yes, I still had a 9-5 but it was a 9-5 that I could set my schedule any way I wanted.  That 9-5 spans 24 hours and there’s a lot that can be done in 24 hours. **

So what was the real issue?  I had spent so much time keyed up trying to meet other people’s expectations because I was taught to prioritize everyone else’s stuff over my own that it felt like I had to sneak time in for what I wanted to do, like my life was what happened in the left over time from working on everyone else’s crap.  I felt guilty getting what I’d asked for.  So this was a case where I’d turned my life upside down for the right reasons, I just hadn’t oriented myself to where I needed to be.  The other issue was that I had a habit of being afraid to go it alone.  In a lifetime of mis-prioritization and resentment, I’d lost the ability to trust my instincts and just do the work I wanted to do, thinking I couldn’t do it on my own.  I could blame others for not achieving my goals that way.  I could clean up other people’s messes but I couldn’t face my own.  I couldn’t accept that my mistakes were to be expected as well, especially learning different facets of life, of who I am.  Especially while learning new skills and how to apply myself.  I had to accept that not everything would come as easily to me as it had before, that I may not know what I don’t know and that was totally NORMAL.  It wasn’t just about upheaval, it was about the strength to navigate that change and to be willing to trust I could figure it out.  This past Sunday I shared in my gratitude that I realized I had a certain level of clarity that brought me to the conclusion it’s time to do the work differently.  I said “instead of waiting for everyone to be on board, just start building the ship.”  That means learning to prioritize what I need to prioritize for my health/sanity as well as for my goals and dreams.  I could stop telling myself my goals take too long or it’s too hard or that the dishes have to be done a certain way at a certain time.  I had to stop telling myself we need everyone to see things exactly how we do before we get started.  Just start because it isn’t their responsibility to bring our vision to life anymore than it’s our responsibility to bring their vision to life.  The vision doesn’t necessarily begin how we think it looks—sometimes it takes a minute for people to catch up and when they do all the pieces click.  And sometimes moving forward is about proving to ourselves that we can do it.  That we have what it takes to get where we want to be.  So, we already  have the sketch in our minds, get it out in the world.