Does Any Of My Story Sound Familiar To You?

What did I need to cover up? Unable to fall asleep, I tossed and turned for hours. Behind locked car doors and windows, I made the call. I don’t know what happened to me today, I began. And then I just kept going. The nurse was a pro. She asked if I had had any suicidal thoughts. I laughed, embarrassed by the question, but she pressed on. Situational anxiety was her diagnosis. She didn’t baby me, and she told me to see a doctor. And I did just that. What I was looking for was a way to hide the anxiety should another panic attack come on. I just didn’t think my career trajectory could afford that kind of setback.

Write Me A Letter

I also acquired a whole new set of tools for camouflaging an oncoming blast of anxiety and stress, which happened on a fairly routine basis. I would start to sweat. Perspiration is the body’s cooling mechanism. My new set of tools could prevent or at least disguise the fact that I was sweating, and that could maybe nip in the bud the anxiety attack that might follow. That’s why I was always on the lookout for clear deodorant, and it’s why I kept a good supply of it at the ready. I swabbed it on my hands in case of sweaty palms, and I strategically dabbed it on my forehead and on my face so that any sweat that did occur wouldn’t show. I soon realized that the cases produced a rattling sound, so I instead stuck the pills onto a strip of Listerine Cool Mint. I thought so, although in retrospect, it’s more sad than clever, no? I figured people were assuming I was knocking back a breath sweetener, while in reality I was reaching for something to prevent the fear I kept under wraps from suddenly breaking loose. Of course, I still fought the Sunday Night Scaries because the cause of the Scaries hadn’t gone anywhere. In fact, in ten years of Sunday Night Scaries, I never even managed to ask myself what I was scared of. My career was going gangbusters, I was making money, I was getting the titles and the promotions and the prestige of it all, and in my own way and with the help of Xanax and deodorant, I was coping. It never even dawned on me that there was anything odd about adjusting my behavior in this way, nor did it ever occur to me to ask myself whether I just might be selling my soul.

Hand In Hand

Does any of my story sound familiar to you? Anything ring a bell? What did you relate to in what I’ve just told you? Or maybe working from home through the whole long pandemic just got you questioning whether you were really going to spend your whole life on a career path that suddenly looked so safe you might as well sleep through it. It sounds so rational. It sounds like something you can do. You can write your own script, and you can dress comfortably in your own skin as you do it. Finding a healthy, fulfilling career means doing it your way. Within them, the possibilities for you to find the career and the lifestyle right for you are endless. But getting to that career and lifestyle is a process. I did it because I knew that, one way or another, it would put me on a path that did not leave my life behind. What’s more, I knew that if this restart came apart at the seams, I still had the strategies to continue to refresh my career. These are the very strategies I’m going to share with you. It’s what I failed to do for as long as I could keep my reality in the closet, and if it’s where you are right now, trust me, you’re going to have to go back in time, do a reverse, and retrace how you got here. It’s time to challenge the blueprint we all grew up with, the one that sketched out what our future should look like.

Into The Great Wide Open

Then I’ll help you create a whiteboard where you analyze what’s wrong with your present career, set new priorities for the career you want, and review the practical options for achieving the career and lifestyle you seek. I can’t emphasize enough, however, the importance of being totally honest as you approach each of these strategies, especially the very first, breaking the blueprint and taking a good, hard, accurate look at your life right now. You’re going to have to overcome all that corporate training and open yourself up so you can see inside. I used pills and clear deodorant to get through ten years of a career that was considered super successful by everybody but me. Believe me when I tell you that there isn’t enough Xanax or deodorant on earth or in the heavens to keep the walls from falling in on you, especially if, like me, you put some of those walls up on your own. The only requirement is honesty. Growing up, I always assumed that success was a good job in a good organization that would take care of me as long I did what was asked of me. One thing I didn’t count on was the Sunday Night Scaries and a deep sense of unhappiness. Finding a healthy, fulfilling career means doing it your way. But getting to that career and lifestyle is a process. Challenge the blueprint! The only requirement is honesty. We all grew up with one. A blueprint was the unwritten plan for what kind of life we would live later on. It contained all those unspoken expectations and norms and pressures that we accepted without even thinking about them. They were built in, part of the structure of our lives and our families, like Thanksgiving and summer vacations. Put another way, the blueprint instilled in us what we should do to personify the model of professional accomplishment.