It was so apparent to me sitting there in that moment just how much I had once again fallen for the lie. I could feel my muscles ache, my emotions were a mess and I felt as low on energy as it gets. There were more than one lie I had blindly told myself that resulted in why I felt this way right now. The first one being, I could handle it followed by it was only for a little while. From there it got worse to include I have to do this for my family and it will be alright.
Here I was spending a short two day get away with the family that I swore I wouldn’t bring along my work laptop. That was just another lie as I looked in our hotel room from the patio and saw my green backpack that had my work laptop tucked inside. SIgh. It was like a weight I carried around constantly reminding me of how much time was being taken out of my life for the sake of a paycheck. Currently it felt like a boulder around my neck with the stress of political drama swirling at work, a staff reporting to me all concerned with their job security and me trying to figure out how to navigate us out of this situation so we would all have jobs. Just another day at the office right?
In reality, there wasn’t anything we could do as it was one of those situations where we were caught in the middle of two higher ups vying for personal empire territory. It happens and very soon we would know our fate from it. This is stressful at any time it happens but right now it was the culmination of several things strung together that caused me to wake up early and sit on this hotel patio watching waves slowly come in thinking about what a mess my life was again.
The stress at work had added on weight to my body from stress eating. I rarely moved away from my desk during the day to even stretch because it was constant, never ending demands that had to be done right now. I felt old and tired like I had been burned to a crisp from overcooking. This is where the guilt rolled in like a morning fog thick and gray. I had sacrificed my own health and well-being for this job because I believed in it. I worked late and on weekends to do the impossible because they said it had to be done right then and failure wasn’t an option. I hadn’t failed them but I sure had failed myself with extra weight, sleeplessness, exhaustion and lost time with my family. For what though because now my entire team and myself faced layoffs because someone else wanted what we had created for themselves.
I was mad at myself. Personal responsibility runs deep in me and I felt responsible for letting this happen. I thought I was doing right and following the rules only to find out there was another set of rules in backdoor deals that I wasn’t a part. I should have known better. I should have said no. The list of shoulds run through my mind for the thousandth time. I guess I’ll need to find another job soon. It always seems to come to that. When one goes wrong and this sort of thing happens it’s always those that gave it all that seem to have to be updating their resumes.
I had swore this wouldn’t happen again to me. That I had enough and it was going to go my way from now on. No more being caught up in this kind of thing that left me without a job and income for my family. How naive right? No more would I let a job ruin my health, take my family time and leave me with nothing when I became disposable. Even more stupid right? My own inner warrior was roaring at the injustices and wrongs but I sensibly knew there are sometimes matters we just need to plan to walk out of and leave the battlefield.
So while I wanted to cry, yell, demand justice and more I knew the reality of it was I needed to move forward. I would certainly have to find another job because bills wouldn’t pay themselves but I owed it to myself to do something more. A job is only as good as the time it is serving us but when that time turns to toxicity or is no longer meeting more than our monetary needs it is time to move on. I however knew I needed more than just another job this next time. I knew it would take more than the promise of a shiny new job to prevent this same thing from happening again.
It is so often in those moments of wrong doings we find the real path forward in our lives. When just having enough isn’t good enough anymore and our desire to actually live well is more than a dream we find what we need most. I was at that threshold place once again. I had been here before and made the choice to start my own business the last time something like this happened in my career. Yet a few years later I was at that place again needing to recommit, replan and recharge my vision. It was necessary I use that to stand up amidst the rubble of what was going on and rebuild myself, my small business, my career and what it would all look like.
Where I sat in this moment was one of those pivotal times of deciding to be a victim or warrior. Sometimes we think we don’t have a choice and in some ways we don’t but I believe we always have a choice of what we do next in that situation. Yes, we all need to work and I would soon find the need to search for another job but I didn’t have to let that be my only option. When we choose to build our own path forward from a life storm it is when we find our strength and courage to do things we never thought we could. It takes the willingness to realize where we are and more than just wishing for it to be different.
For the moment I needed to wallow in the guilt and cry over the pain of what was happening. I had to feel all the frustration and worry and see what it had done to my body and mind. Then I needed to rise up from it and take the step forward. Weight can be lost, emotions rebalanced and jobs replaced. It isn’t without work but it is the only way to overcome. What also was needed was my own path forward to demonstrating to myself that I could recover and rebuild better than I had been before all this happened. It was time to take my own advice and carve a new path forward that was right for me.
When we think we have life all figured out we often learn we don’t at all. I thought I was on the path to living my best life with a well paying career I could rely on to support my family and build up my retirement account while I built up my small business I could build up on the side. It is when we give up our personal boundaries for our jobs and let them consume us to the point there is nothing left that we realize how unreliable jobs really are. I had let down my boundaries of sticking to the very advice I present in this blog about living naturally well and was paying the price for it now. So many lessons learned in this experience that I needed to sort out.
That’s the thing though is living naturally doesn’t mean bad things still won’t happen. It doesn’t mean we won’t gain weight and feel burned out but rather we have a way forward that helps us recover faster, better and stronger. I had the tools to recover from the weight gain, emotional baggage and self guilt I felt because of what has happened in my job. I knew I deserved better and I could figure out how to have that in my life again. It was there sitting on this hotel patio watching the sun rise and hearing my family still sleep that I knew it wasn’t as bad as I was letting myself believe. Losing a job is devastating and frustrating but it wasn’t all that made me. I wouldn’t let it steal any more of my joy and leave me emotionally eating my way through feelings I couldn’t express any longer.
The next move was mine to take. Would I just replace this job with another and let it too consume me with pounds of weight, burned out emotions and lack of security? Or would this time I push deeper into my own strength to rise up wiser, healthier and stronger?
If you’re ready to not settle anymore either, let’s connect. Visit my website at dragonspitapothecary.com to explore what it could mean for you and chat with me for direct help.