Change and making a choice.

Change.

Something I’ve always loved. A craving I have lived with for most of my life and have worked with many times. A new direction, a new job, a career change, a rediscovery of an old passion and my favourite kind of change, a new country. I’m the person in the workshops who describes the feelings outside the comfort zone as exciting and exhilarating, rather than the one who describes the fear of the unknown. Comfortable with the uncomfortable, unafraid of conflict or speaking my mind, change is something I’ve lived with and embraced since my very early years. Lots of moving as a child, 4 countries, 7 schools, 4 states of Australia and well over 40 houses, you could say change is a part of who I am.

So why then has the recent change in my life been so challenging, not from a physical perspective, but mentally and emotionally?

The change I’m referring to, is walking away from my travel business whilst borders remain shut and tours to India for women are off the table. Reinventing my career to take a different direction, take on a new job, in a different industry, one which I don’t have much experience in, has been challenging me emotionally and mentally. As I drive the freeway in both directions to this new workplace, I’ve been contemplating this and asking myself why this is so different this time round. I wanted the new role, I followed through with it when it was first discussed, I have tackled it head on, and whilst I believe I’m doing well in it, there has still been a block, or something heavy about this change.

It hit me just two days ago why, and I’ve been working through the thoughts that are living in my head, trying to make sense of what is going on.

I’ve been telling myself that this change wasn’t chosen by me, this was “forced change”. I’ve been working with the rhetoric that my business is another victim of this global pandemic and something I have worked so hard on over the last 6 years has been pulled out from underneath me, without my consent, without my approval. I’ve had very high levels of emotion, bubbling at the surface ever since I started this new role. I’ve found myself at night and on the weekends angry at times, crying very easily and just in a state of grief which I thought I’d moved through over the last 6 months. But it’s been right there, waiting for me, at every quiet moment. It’s made me irritable at home, sad and reflective and shutting down a little to block the emotion. As you know emotion is energy that needs to move so it doesn’t sit where we push it. Like water, it finds the cracks and moves and flows where it wants to, so that small actions trigger bigger than required reactions and not taking the bins out suddenly becomes a world war 3 situation.

So, after a group coaching session on Monday night where I tried, but couldn’t keep the emotion down, I decided to go back to basics and start to work on the one thing I know how to do. Changing my thoughts. I started with the guru of this practice Dr Wayne Dyer, and when I set off for work on Tuesday morning, I was armed with my podcast for my 40-minute drive, ready to start working on changing my thoughts. I wasn’t even on the freeway before I heard the messages I need to hear.

1) nothing is forever and 2) detach from the outcome. Simple – yes. Powerful? Absolutely.

I thought about this for the rest of the day and even the next day and something happened. My thoughts started to shift. The weight began to lift, and I realized that there absolutely was an element of choice about this job. In fact, before this current role even became available, I decided to leave the casual job I was in due to a toxic work environment, so already back then I was making choices. When this current role was presented to me, I looked at the skillset required, and the job description and made a choice to apply and move forward. When it was offered, I accepted it. I discussed conditions, salary and starting dates and chose to have 3 weeks off before I began the role. I wake up every morning and drive there, work hard whilst I’m there and am doing my best to make a difference in this business. I already care about the people I work with and want to see them grow and develop and all of this is coming from a point of choice.

I am making choices about this change everyday.

Because there is always a choice. A choice to act but even before we act, there is a choice on why we are taking the action, and getting clear on my why has been the shift I needed to make.

Last year when this pandemic hit, and I knew my business would stop, and I faced a fear that my husband could also lose his job, I panicked, and became very fearful of what could happen to us. Like all great disaster movies, I go straight to the worst-case scenario and the thoughts of losing our home or having to sell everything we have worked for, became very real. Then the fight to recover money for clients and the lobbying to governments for travel agent support became all consuming. Along the way I’ve accepted that so much of this is outside of my control and that decisions were being made on a global level that I was not a part of. Somewhere along the way I’ve blurred those lines and I guess I incorporated accepting this new job as part of that lack of choice, and viewed it as forced change.

And maybe on one level it is, however, I have very deliberately chosen it, and the more I remind myself of that, the more I ease into the new reality. I wanted to provide more security for my family. As my husband stays in the volatile travel industry and keeps our connection to the profession, we both love, I am fortunate to be able to move outside of that industry and create some income stability for us. School fees are covered, bills are paid, and I get to expand my career in a different direction. It takes me away from home more, but after sitting through 7 parent teacher interviews on skype over the last few nights, the feedback I’m getting is that Charlie is on top of things, is showing great independence and adjusting pretty well to school so far. We won’t mention the 2 detentions, but I’m feeling less of the working mother guilt after hearing, that despite me not working from home and being available 24/7, that my child is actually thriving.

Maybe it’s just been so much change in such a short period of time, who knows, but it’s been an adjustment, and still requires some tweaks and refinements. None of us are perfect and even as I listened to Wayne Dyer again this morning, he reminded me of how there is perfection in imperfection.

Hasn’t this been the greatest gift and the greatest curse from this whole pandemic. The recognition that so much of life is beyond our control and the lesson is learning how to adapt and accept some things which we would have viewed as unacceptable. I mean really, would you have ever believed that borders could have been closed and international travel banned!

I feel like many others, that I’m taking the advance crash course in change right now. At times it feels completely overwhelming but, I know that one day, I will look back and see what came from it.

The last thing Wayne Dyer said as I got out of the car this morning was this,

“cultivate a world of inner knowing, where you are clear in the knowing that you will be ok, that everything that happens for you is happening for your highest good. Know that what is for you will not go by you, put it out there and then let go. Detach from the outcome”

I’ll have me some of that thank you very much Dr Dyer.

Love and light

Jo

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