PROBLEMS YOUR LIFE PURPOSE CAN SOLVE: #3. FEar of falling behind
Do you panic that you’re not where you should be?
BEING CONNECTED TO YOUR PATH, NOT YOUR PROGRAMS, BRINGS YOU PEACE.
Have you felt it? That sudden sucking in of breath, the racing heart, and the dizzy head.
Panic.
And all you did was start scrolling.
As you began to behold all the wonderful and fulfilling things that others are doing out in the world (or more accurately the social media world), the critical self-talk started streaming free-to-air…Oh my god, I’m so behind! Why haven’t I…? Why aren’t I…? I should be doing more. Argh, what am I doing with my life?!
All essentially versions of the same instant judgment: I’m not where I should be.
😧
When I returned to my workplace after 18 months of sick leave, I was on a rehabilitation plan working with an Occupational Therapist. This meant I was doing ‘alternative duties.’ It was a weird almost ‘out-of-body’ experience. I had landed back in this cut-throat corporate culture without really having a proper place in it and as a result, I was able to view the company, its culture, and my engagement with it through the unfamiliar lens of detachment.
One day I sat in a HR meeting and learned that a few of the consultants that I had managed prior to my sick leave were about to be promoted to the level ABOVE me. I was happy for them. But something bizarre happened. I felt blood rush to head and my heartbeat quickened. It was that instant surge of panic that you feel when you have a moment of thinking you’ve left your passport at home when you’re on the way to the airport.
It was bizarre. But unmistakable. The overwhelming sense that I had ‘missed something’ or ‘forgotten something.’ I was falling behind. I was straggling.
I was able to shake it off, but the incident sat with me.
To me it demonstrated how easily my need to perform, succeed and achieve could be ‘triggered’ simply by being in this time-sensitive, measurement-focused, and competition-based ‘corporate ladder’ culture.
Scary stuff.
At a conscious level, climbing that ladder was the LAST thing I wanted to do at that point. Yet subconsciously I felt a strange urge to climb it. Like an unwanted craving when you have an addiction, I felt the overwhelming impulse to get on my bike and begin trying hard to keep up.
I realised then that my true ‘rehabilitation’ was about getting a grip of how I could so easily be triggered and commandeered down a path I didn’t even want to go. The corporate culture was very good, if not expert, at pushing the internal button: “I’m not doing enough” and feeding the constant thought “I should be further along than where I am.”
The subconscious program ‘I’m not doing enough’ comes laden with an extreme fear of failure, and drives workaholism, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and the unconscious striving to ‘get ahead’ – all the things that had led to my physical, mental, and emotional undoing.
It was clear that if I had any hope of regaining true control of my life’s path, whether that was within a corporate environment or out of it, this program had to go.
But how?
I was at a complete loss. Clearly my efforts of trying to overcome it by working harder and being more perfect hadn’t worked, but the need to try hard and do my best was so engrained. This program had been running the show (and ensuring my success) for decades.
Then the very simple and beautiful knowing arrived:
This is not my path anymore.
And with that knowing, all the panic and anxiety dropped away. A sense of calm. A sense of freedom.
I had a choice. I didn’t have to climb that ladder because that ladder was not for me. I could let it go, and instead, make a conscious commitment to following MY OWN path. Even though I didn’t know what that path was yet!
💓
It seems that we’re all suffering from this ‘straggle shame’. The constant comparison with others, the nagging anxiety that you’re falling behind, the embarrassment that you’re not further along your path, and the critical judgement that you’re not where you should be.
Your straggle shame has the power to lead you down a path you don’t want to go. It will have you obsessed with proving yourself and overcoming perceived flaws. It will have you working for the sake of busy-ness, rushing, pushing, and taking short-cuts that undermine your ability to truly cultivate deep wisdom. It will have you feeling forever dissatisfied with your efforts and your progress. It will have you thinking that you must implement other people's strategies and replicate their approaches in order to succeed.
It will have you doing everything else but consciously honouring yourself and the life path you are destined to follow, in your own way and in your own time.
You have a purpose, a ‘blueprint’ for your evolution that is yours and yours alone. No-one else has ever had or will ever have the same path as you. And when you step back and truly acknowledge this, you realise the futility of comparison and the absurdity of measuring and timekeeping.
And yet, in a split second, when the straggle shame hits, you forget it and slip back into the pointless ‘not doing enough’ self-flagellation. I’ve heard many a client soothe themselves with the bumper sticker ‘stay in your own lane.’ But in my experience, this isn’t enough to combat living in a culture that demands progress, rewards short cuts and lauds ‘getting to the top’ often at all costs.
When it comes to ridding yourself of straggle shame, knowing that you need to stay in your lane and cultivating more self-compassion and patience will help. But it will only get you some of the way.
You need to take responsibility for consciously choosing to own your purpose, to honour your own path and then embrace your own pace in following it. When you do, there is no such thing as straggling. There is no such thing as hiding. There is no such thing as not being where you should be.
There is only discovery. There is only adventure. There is only unfolding. There is only evolving. There is only the perfect timing for you.
The PATH OF PURPOSE: 5 WEEK JOURNEY OF SELF-TRANSFORMATION will help you connect to your Life Purpose and your OWN PATH. It will help you to let go of comparing and the panic that you’re not doing enough.
This series of life-changing virtual workshops , a group experience with 5 INDIVIDUALLY kinesiology-tested reports to guide your way.
