Hello, dear one!
Have you ever examined your past decisions? How many of them were inspired by your passion, or rooted in fear?
Your brain is designed for survival. Whether you’re aware or not of each decision, you have this natural aptitude to remain in a familiar and safe zone. That’s how you’ve managed to live life maintaining the same standards, of health, wealth, and relationships.
Paradoxically, what protects you and keeps you comfortable also holds you back and stunts your growth. Letting go of the old takes self-awareness and courage.
Recently, a young lady expressed tremendous dissatisfaction with her job, but what impressed me the most was her keen awareness of her decision to stay on the job that no longer inspires her.
She bluntly admitted that the job pays her rent and all the other expenses, and for the moment, she doesn’t seem to have a better option. If she would choose to leave her job, she would have to move back with her parents and change her lifestyle.
As I praised her courage to face her situation, I told her an old Chinese folk tale for a fresh perspective.
A monk was on a walking journey and came close to a river. The water was deep, and he couldn’t swim. He took some branches off the trees around him and built a raft. The raft flowed him to the other side of the river.
As he continued to walk, he ran into a thick forest. The raft behind his back kept getting him stuck between trees.
He struggled to hold on to the raft because it helped him cross the river earlier.
But after a few attempts, he realized that the raft worked for the river had become a burden now to hold him back.
He finally unloaded the raft and moved on, effortlessly.
My young lady was deeply intrigued by this story and reflected on her journey with this job. It wasn’t a perfect match, but she has learned many skills since her employment. To achieve a sense of inner peace, she will have to let go of the agreeable old self.
She has been working for this company for six years, and the stress keeps climbing because of the constant staff shortage and increased work responsibility.
Being an agreeable and hard worker, she has found herself mired in endless work and hoped for a seemingly impossible improvement.
The more she feels anxious going to work, the more she wants to elude mentally and physically from work. As a result, she’s resenting herself because she acquiesced with silence in fear.
I shared with her what I learned from my mentors.
The word “courage” originated from an old French word corage in the 1300s. Corage means heart and innermost feelings.
When you decide on the heart, it usually feels expansive, adventurous, and even illogically exciting. Decisions from the heart may seem impetuous and terrifying, but they are seeds for growth.
On the contrary, the decision you make on fear will help you stay in the familiar zone, but anything that stems from fear will constrict.
Courage from your heart grows you. Fear from your mind rods you.
Because of the massive layoffs in her industry, she had been afraid of losing her current job by standing up for herself and articulating her arguments to her superiors.
We discussed the what ifs with her decision, from her heart and her fear.
If she decides to speak up, she may win a fair negotiation and improve her workload. Or, she may lose her job, which will put her on a different trajectory.
If that happens, she will at least experience a taste of standing up for herself. Chances are that she’ll become more resilient and make bolder decisions. With each heart-centered decision, she’ll elevate her level of problem-solving and grow self-confidence muscles.
People pray for faith. What’s faith? It’s nothing more than self-confidence, knowing what you want, and sticking to it when you’re in the darkness of the unknown. You often grow exponentially when you’re in the darkest, don’t you?
When you choose silence, you’re acquiescent to the treatment. It’s self-induced neglect.
People who complain usually remain, so what if she decides to remain?
She sure will continue to complain, learn to tolerate her imploding work standard, and develop a more torpid mind, which is deadly for her spirit. Will her short-term silence cost her long-term self-loathing?
The disheartening truth is that once she suppresses and tolerates one area of her life, the other areas are all affected. All of them contribute to her overall standard in life and eventually become her destiny.
Spiritually, whatever she’s experiencing at work is a blessing, for she’s tested for her character. Under adversaries, she’s forced to face her true self. She can either honor and evolve the self or suppress and abandon it.
At the moment, she’s still debating on her decision. Remember: Indecision is a decision!
Like the monk in the story, the brain would hang on to the past by instinct. But for where he needed to go, he decided to unload the past.
Now, for whatever you’d like to experience next, what are you willing to unload, thoughts, behaviors, things, places, or people?