How did I come back from hitting the metaphorical wall?
Slowly, with my ego in tatters and my body depleted.
We are bombarded with ideas that we can do it all, should be able to do it all and oh, if you can’t, then simply fake it until you can. Don’t let anyone see a weakness…
At one point I was pushing on every level humanly possible. Now this next list is not a ‘look at me list’, it’s a ‘blimey, what the heck was she thinking’ kind of list. At the time I thought I was achieving it all but it came an immense cost.
Here’s the ‘what was heck was she thinking’ list:
- 7 years of fertility treatment which thankfully brought us two children but also brought with it mild PTSD from one birth.
- Raising two children
- 2 x knee surgeries and recovery
- Working at a global digital agency in an intensely pressurised deadline driven environment
- Commuting for 3 hours per day.
- No personal life.
- No hobbies.
- No time for myself.
- No fun
All of the items on the list were consuming my energy with very little to replenish it. Now I’m not going to bang on about whether or not my children give me energy. That’s not the point I’m making. It’s more about the balance of things that give you energy vs those that drain your energy. There is no balance in the list above.
So, what did the list bring me? One of the most embarrassing moments of my career. As a team we had just delivered a major project on time, on budget and on scope. #winning all round, not!!. All I could do was cry when I was being congratulated by my manager. The moment we had all worked towards and I wasn’t able to enjoy a single moment of it. I was completely broken. There was literally nothing left in me. My days of priding myself on being able to handle immense amounts of stress had finally caught up with me. I thought that that manic energy was me winning at life, however it was one of the many signs that I was on a slippery slope downwards. So what happened next? I was sent home to get some rest. I literally cried for 2 days. A miserable tornado of thoughts around ‘how could I have let this happen to me’, ‘I’m better than this’, ‘what will everyone think… how will I face people at the office again’… my world and everything that I perceived it to stand for collapsed around me…
It was an interesting time to say the least. My saving grace in it all was my ability to recognise that perhaps this mess was in fact also an opportunity. I was being given the time to step back and reflect on how I had gotten here. All the things that I had worn as badges of honour were in fact the reason that I was now in this position.
The most important factor in this time was my acceptance that I was in this position. I didn’t deny it. I didn’t blame anyone else. I didn’t look to distract my way out of it. I knew deep down that my actions, fears, inner demons had let me to this point. I had gotten myself here and it was going to be down to me to get myself out of it. But first things first, my ego needed a little bit of love and attention. My ego was simply doing what it thought was necessary to help me get through life. But sadly, that’s all I was doing.. getting through life. Surviving day to day with a glass of wine at the end of the day as a reward.. Not winning on many levels huh…
So what steps did I take after the above:
- Started meditating.. but I’ll be honest. In the beginning I simply fell asleep and then came round thinking ‘wow, that was a deep meditation’… ;-). Over time I was able to stay awake but I also didn’t put pressure on it. My mind had never known quiet so it simply shut down and allowed me to actually get some much needed rest.
- Started journaling – just wrote down whatever came up. No judgement of myself or what was bubbling to the surface.. I tried to do this every couple of days because I didn’t want to push anything.
- Expanded meditation into hypnotherapy focusing on inner child work. At first I also fell sleep in these moments. I’m not sure my mind was ready to go there to be honest but slowly I stayed away and started to process what was coming up for me in these moments.
- Walked, walked, walked and then walked some more in nature. Focused on moving my body and enjoying my surroundings. I needed to get out of my head..
…and many more things but they’re for another blog post when the time is right..
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