Assignment begins below. Please take the course of your week to complete. If it takes you longer, that is okay. Be patient with yourself as you thoughtfully think through it all.
Goal
Going TOWARD the storm is the way through the storm. #goal
I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching lately partly because life has been pretty tough, but partly because business has been complicated and we are all feeling the pinch of the looming recession. But if I’m going to be honest with you (and I am) then I gotta tell you that the storm I’m looking at is one I saw coming long before this COVID pandemic and subsequent recession. I had just been moving myself further and further away from it hoping the storm would die down. It LOOKED messy too, y’all…picture a tornado off in the distance twirling around, teasing you from afar. You would avoid that too!
I was listening to somebody on youtube talk about this very thing. He said something interesting. He said that looking at the storm he was trying to avoid gave him anxiety and made him sick. And that was just looking at it! But one day, he just decided that his good life was on the other side of it. He was going to HAVE TO go through it and stop dodging it.
I translate this in the following example just to make it clear: Take a relationship. You can see that it’s not working. IT’S JUST NOT WORKING! The storm is twirling and teasing you from a distance but you avoid it by sweeping things under the rug, celebrating anniversaries like all is normal, biting your tongue etc. You are hoping this storm will just die down but it never does. This breakup that you are avoiding because breakups suck and they hurt is causing you even more anxiety because you know you don’t belong in this mess. Peace and happiness is on the other side of that breakup. At some point, you just gotta move to it. Got through it.
Did that make it clear? Well now apply it in other areas.
Identify
Now that we know what the storm is, can you define what YOUR storm is? How is it affecting the lifestyle you are trying to have? Get your journal out and write about it. Give yourself every detail about it. Is looking at the storm giving you major anxiety but you know there is peace on the other side of it? What does going through the storm look like? What will have to happen? List it all out. Read it to yourself when you’re done.
How long before you decide that the only way through it is THROUGH IT?
Affirmation
Storm is not the enemy. Storm is the catalyst to the best me.