You never know where you’ll get insight, do you?

Last week, I had a meeting with a coworker to go over something. She and her husband had recently sold their house and bought a new one, and she informed me that the deal had fallen through on their house, and the house was back on the market. As we usually do, we moved on from that topic to another topic and she told me that a psychologist she had once seen during a rough patch asked her if she was mad that her plans didn’t work out, or mad at how her life had turned out.

The difference is subtle perhaps, but there is one. If you’re mad that your plans didn’t work out, that may be indicative of having control issues. You’re not looking at how your life turned out: perhaps things you hadn’t planned for, good things, ended up happening. You’re so mad that these good things aren’t the same ones that you planned for that you don’t appreciate them for what they are.

And shockingly enough, I felt tears well up in my eyes, because that completely describes how I feel. I tried to explain to my coworker how my plans for how my life would turn out with respect to education and career are not at all what I thought they’d be. Because of that, I feel like I’ve been keeping myself from fully appreciating and accepting my job as something I could do for a long time. I like my job, but since it’s not what I planned I’d do, I feel like I’m not allowed to be happy with it. I should instead be flogging myself for not living up to my plans.

When people ask me how I like the job, I always sound like I’m forcing myself to say that I do like it when I really do. I just have a tendency to compare it to what I thought I’d be doing and well, compared to that, I can’t possibly be happy with what I’m doing, can I?

- – -
I got some insight into another area of my life that I am displeased with too: the fact that I have not found someone to love, and someone to love me. As I watch people around me settle down, I go through a range of emotions, from envy to anger to remorse, to thinking I’m single because I’m not pretty/thin/unselfish/kind/intelligent/cool/stylish enough. I figured being single when I want so badly to be in a loving relationship is a form of punishment for all of the above.

I stumbled across Boho Girl‘s blog. She is dealing with infertility, and she wrote about how she now sees herself as being blessed rather than punished:

I look back and see that even though I don’t yet have a baby, something I’ve yearned for so badly, I do have so many out of this world beautiful gifts as a result of this journey. Gifts that blow my mind.

So, I’ve given up the idea that I am being punished. I’m done with that. I don’t see it that way any longer. The clouds are parting and I see the bigger picture. I see that I needed this time to focus on my relationships, my photography, my growth and I am grateful…grateful that I had the space to do all of this.

…

It’s wild to go from feeling punished to feeling blessed. From victim to warrior. What a shift.

This last bit is going to be hard for me, but it’s necessary. I am not a victim. I am not being punished. It will happen when the time is right. I must instead focus on utilizing the gifts I do have to the best of my ability, keep my eyes open, and enjoy what I have, right now.

Filed under: Introspective, Job, Love? by jummy