My experience is that the answer to this question, from most people is: No, not really! I know a job is a very difficult area of our lives to change, it’s a materialized part as it often implies a responsibility to others too, but think about it; Is there anything more healthy than to spend most of our time awake doing a task that we love? Whatever you love about it, the task, the money, the learning, the colleagues, isn’t that the most energizing and loving thing we can do for ourselves? Why is it that so many of us spend so many hours, doing something that takes more energy than it gives? If you can’t change it you have to love it. If you can’t love it you have to change it.
When we feel how the job drains us on energy it’s easy to start thinking there us something wrong with us, that we are lucky to have the job so we should feel good. Then the guilt comes, and even more guilt when we don’t dare to change what we know is not good for us. That’s when we start complaining about ourselves and others. Words are very important, we transmit what we send. If you want to be kind, be careful with what you say to yourself and others.
Most of the time we probably liked the job from the beginning, but we change, things change. If we don’t allow ourselves to transform and change we will get stuck. Love, productivity or creativity are all energies, and as such it always transforms. Energy is never still, it must move all the time.
I had a job that many would have wanted, with all the attributes that would correspond to a ‘successful career’. I loved it at first, it was perfect for me. But the higher up I got in the 13-floor corporate building with sea view, it just felt as if I wasn’t me. It felt like if I watched myself playing a role in a movie. Huge business deals were made, others felt so happy and the dollars were glowing in their eyes thrilling them with joy, but I just couldn’t feel it. It took me 7 minutes to drive to my work after leaving the kids at the day care center, 3 more minutes to take the elevator to the top level in the beautiful head quarter. My transformation from a mum to a business woman took 10 minutes.
The job I loved so much in the beginning, that gave me so much new knowledge and experience, had become my golden prison. I had developed and learnt, but now I was stuck. It wasn’t until I tried to get a meeting with the CEO for a very important issue concerning thousands of employees, thousands of families, and he could only give me 7 minutes, that I realized. “Walk me to the car” he said, “it takes 7 minutes, that’s all I got.” I realized how sick that was, and that this sickness was contagious. That’s when I realized I could never be me in that environment. I could never express myself, I just didn’t belong there. One thing led to the other, and when my husband and I decided to allow change, and fly out from the safe cage, we sold everything and moved to Spain. Of course we worried. We didn’t have any parents to fall back on and two small girls. But worries are all illusions until they happen. In reality on the cost side were the loss of the nice salaries and the nice titles on the business cards. The profit side was so long, so much longer than we could ever have imagined. A real mind detox (more on that tomorrow).
If someone would have said that I would work with Olive Retreat today, I would probably not have been so surprised. When I allowed myself to feel and be hopeful, I felt that I wasn’t in the right place. I felt that something had to change to ‘feel right’ and healthy. It was time to move on. My husband felt the same. I know that thoughts and feelings are like signals to us, they come and go, change quickly, and are part of the non-mass energy of us, but it’s when a thought or a feeling stays, when they develop into words, then action, that it becomes us.The transformation started with a learning that became a thought, the thought became words, the words became action, the action became me, then me becomes my life and future.
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