A little self reflection goes a long way.
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine the other day. She was telling me about the time she quit her job and how she felt like herself at 25 again (to give you some context she is in her late 40s). She’d worked in corporate America for about 20 years, hated it and had finally decided to go out on her own and start a company with a business model that did not make sense to a lot of people but was exactly what she wanted to do.
One night, she’d met up with a coworker from her previous job who’d asked her how stressed she was running this new business. She explained that she felt so much more stress being in a place she hated and having to wear a mask every day to fit in with the culture, the people and with a job she also didn’t like. She said on the last day of the previous job, she’d felt like a weight had been lifted and a rush of relief had come over her and over the next couple of months, she experienced life like she was 25 again. Running this business, though it came with its own stress could never compare to that stress, because she was finally in charge of what she wanted to do, how she wanted to act and who she wanted to be around. Now we don’t all have the same privileges as my friend and we can’t all go out and quit our jobs (at least not yet) but we can adjust parts of our reality.
We often go through life not realizing how many layers of societal assimilation we put on our true selves to exist without judgement. Only in rare moments, do we realize that these layers even exist and that we have covered up who we truly are.
A good practice is to begin to ask yourselves questions to find out more about yourself, to depart from living life on autopilot. What things happened in your life that caused you to change from who you were at your happiest and your freest? Who are the people in your life that cause you to feel triggered and make you put on an act so that you can exist alongside them? How much benefits are these things or people bringing into your life?
Once you get to the point where you can truly say that there are no benefits coming in, you have to start formulating a plan to extricate yourself because you don’t want to look into the mirror one day and not recognize yourself. And I don’t want that for you babe.
Are you struggling to develop a greater understanding of yourself, identify patterns or areas for improvement, and make conscious choices aligned with your values and goals? This Free Work Sheet can help.
