Re-Examine The Take-Away, Connect To You

For most of my life, I attached fear, future guilt, and avoiding shame to everything I did, from choosing what to wear to dinner with friends to going the extra mile for a client. I was anxious all the time and, since it was all the time, I had no idea it wasn’t normal. I thought that’s how everyone operated, on the go, all the time.

Anxiety comes with being hyperaware of what you have done wrong, what you could do wrong, what you are probably doing wrong right now, and how nothing will be good enough unless and until it’s impossibly perfect. Anxiety also comes with adrenaline.

Adrenaline is addicting.

When you quit adrenaline cold turkey, like I did, it’s death-defying. By quitting cold turkey I mean I let it all go without having a crutch to lean on while searched around in the dark for my healthy alternative. Even though it took years to get to the cold turkey part, escaping felt sudden.

And by death-defying I mean it was really hard.

I got sucked into into a vacuum of motivation and concern. I let go of worry and lost my reason to care.

I knew what was going on, I knew I needed to find a healthy motivator, but I had no idea what that looked like. I fished around for a while. A long while. I started to wonder if my laisez faire attitude meant I was some kind of sociopath. I just did not care about my work, my life, my anything, not like I used to.

But I kept searching and I kept my search at the front of my mind.

That’s when I reconnected with a friend who reminded me how powerful I was when we met, who actually shook me and said to my face, “What happened to you?!? We’ve got to get you back to that woman I used to know.” He had known me years earlier, in a professional capacity, when I was at the top of my game. He had no idea that fear and anxiety had been motivating me in the past, or that depression crippled me between bouts of super-achievement, or that divorce and the reasons for it had shredded any faith in myself I had ever had. But he was not about to let my story of woe slow me down.

He lectured me and pep-talked me until I gave in and agreed to try really living again. He inspired me to re-examine my take-away from those years. It was one thing to understand and accept that I had been motivated by fear all those years, and quite another thing to understand and accept that I have a ton of achievements to be proud of and a ton of good feelings went with those achievements, despite the constantly moving goal posts.

I turned inward and reached past the painful memories to see myself with different eyes. My job was to identify what I loved about my former achievements, and to understand why my friend associated me with someone who found joy in their success.

I rediscovered the joy of showing up for other people,

and the way designing and organizing events and activities stimulates my mind and creativity while making it possible to serve other people in meaningful ways.

By serving, I don’t mean placating or looking for approval. By serving, I mean creating situations and opportunities that invite each person, including myself, to enjoy exciting, engaging, meaningful experiences.

Being afraid of what will happen if I don’t do all the things and do them all perfectly isn’t even on my radar anymore. I do what I do because I really enjoy being present and available for writers and creatives. Down deep in my toes all the way up to the top of my head. This ties into my life’s meaning and purpose; this is what I find fulfilling.

Showing up for other people for the delight of other people skyrocketed me back to achieving, and then over-achieving, but this time for a good cause, and I was happy and whole. But I was still stressed and struggling to keep up. Things were unbalanced.

I was leaving myself out of the equation.

Everything had become about other people again. And I was rebelling. I ran late to my own meetings, stayed up hours after bedtime, ate like a teenager, grew bored, and resented demands on my time.

When I behave like this, I get migraines. I lose entire days to pain and nausea. Unless I set myself up to succeed, I fail. And it hurts. But there are root beliefs in my psyche about doing everything right and failing anyway, so I really needed a stronger voice to motivate me to act.

I practice what I preach, and what I preach to writers and creatives is: Practice having other voices in your head until it’s just as normal and natural to hear positive affirmations as it is to hear all the negative crap. I found the motivation for this part of my life, and I love it when the voice pops up to remind me to Do Something Today Your Future Self Will Thank You For.

This power that hides in plain sight inside this simple sentence is all about the follow up. I tell you what I mean in the next post, Some Things Are Just For You.