In 2002, I quit my six-figure job on Wall Street to do something I deeply felt like I needed to do. I wanted to be making the world a better place. I wanted to help. I wanted to change lives. I wanted to do something good.
So I did.
I changed everything, turned our lives upside down to make this big change. I felt right every step of the way. I felt pulled toward this new goal. It was hard and challenging but I knew in my bones that this was the right thing to do. It was me walking in the direction in which I was meant to go.
It felt right.
But it wasn’t.
Once I started doing it, everything seemed to go wrong. I fell into an ever-growing spiral of despair and frustration. I think it was harder for me because I felt so strongly that the cause was essential. It was important and I didn’t want to mess it up. I owed it to the people I was trying to serve to do a good job. They deserved my best.
And my best just didn’t measure up.
Not to the ideal in my head of how good I had to be. It didn’t matter if I was better than others. It didn’t matter if I did a little good. I wasn’t doing the good I felt they deserved. I wasn’t measuring up to my goal. I judged myself constantly.
And it broke me apart.
I felt so ashamed of myself. Of my inability to create the change I so deeply craved for these people. I felt so incapable. So incompetent.
While the degree is different, I felt the same way today. That combination of “I so desperately want to do good here” and the “this person deserves better than I am.” I ached to help. I ached to be better than I actually am capable of being.
And that ache is painful for me. It sends me to the darkness and I don’t know how to find my way back. It is a reminder that I am not good enough to measure up to the person I want to be in my head, in my heart, in my soul.
It hurts.
So I did the only thing I can do. I apologized. I was honest and I cleared the space the best I could. Now I need to tend to the wounds I created for myself. The ones from that dream ten years ago are still there. While my head knows it was right to walk away, my soul aches for the person I wasn’t. But I want to know that I can forgive myself. I want to understand that sometimes when you want something so badly, it makes it harder because your measuring stick is misaligned. You’re holding yourself to a standard that cannot be met. You are setting yourself up to be crushed.
And I don’t want that. I want to be strong enough to get up and try again. Or strong enough to walk away without looking back. I want to disassociate my self-worth from the outcome. I am here with the gifts I have to give to the world.
My job is to offer those gifts and give freely.
The rest is not up to me.
Wow, how profound !
Thank you fo sharing
Yep, once again, I’m relating! For me, it was 14 years ago that I walked away from my amazing career to change my life and do something even better. And did it work out? NO! And I too, still have those visions in my head of what I thought life would be like after my big decision and “new life”. Yes, it is hard, and it is very disappointing. But I continue to believe that I was guided in this direction for a reason, a different reason that what I thought. And I also look at the positives; that gets me through the disappointment. Keep on pluggin’ away, Karen, because you sure are one talented lady! And ya know what, so am I; we just need to keep reminding ourselves of that every day 🙂
I woke up this morning and my first thought was what happened to my life? How did the one I imagined get hijacked to the one I am living now. It has been two years since I walked away from a job I loved, left my home and my friends and began again. Everyday is a challenge. I wonder if I made the right decision. There are days I feel lost and unsure yet I feel strongly this is where I am meant to be. I focus on the blessings which make me smile. Starting over is so much harder than I thought it would be.
Karen, when I pinned this the other day, I thought of you — Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do ~ John Wooden
http://pinterest.com/pin/77616793549236284/
Thoughts and prayers for peace of mind.
~Diane
hmmmm – not exactly sure what’s going on, my friend, but know you have lots of love and support out here. Good luck with your decisions! Know they’re difficult in spite of not knowing what they’re about. Say some prayers, have some faith, and move onward. Let the chips fall where they may – it’ll all work out in the end, you’ve seen that already with your past experience. 😉
Karen,
I didn’t walk away from a big corporate job but twice I have had a passion to open a business that I felt would brig me joy and possibly be successful. Both times I attempted this the economy played a huge part of their “failures”. My first adventure was a small store with home decor,collectables, cookbooks from around the world, special chicldren’s book’s and gourmet foods. The second adventure, a Bed & Breakfast for girls weekend gatherings. I had to fight the city for a special permit, did renovations to the house and spent many many hours pouring my heart into the project. Then 2008 hit and in the area of Michigan I am from one of the largest automotive plants shut down! I held on as long as I could but with no income I couldn’t continue to promote myself. I felt like the biggest ‘loser” of all time. How could I let my family down, how was I to pay the debt that I now had to get the business up and running and what was I thinking that this would be successful. I went into a complete greiving mode and could NOT get out of it. I couldn’t even go near the house because all I did was cry and it would put me in the dark side for weeks. One day it hit me that I shouldn’t beat myself up about failing, look at the success that came of it, I faught the city and I won, I made improvements to the home that would pay off, eventually when I could sell it, and I had the gutts to take that leap and pursue a dream. To this day I can’t go over there because now I have renter’s in there (young adults) that don’t respect other people’s property and care for the place like I would. If I do go there I leave with a empty sad feeling.
I guess my point is we follow our heart pursuing dreams and sometimes we fail but we need to look at the positive/lessons we gained from the experience so that when we do pursue the next adventure we can use those lessons from the past. I myself have some to the conclusions that if I have another great idea I’m going to tell someone else to run with it!!!! I keep thinking of all these “great ideas” thinking one day one of them will be successful and fulfil me but as of now there are no great ideas waiting to be pursude.
Life is a path similar to a maze. Sometimes we hit a brick wall, fall down and with our heads spinning wonder exactly what happened. Doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It means that it was the wrong path. No matter how difficult, we are expected to move on. And somehow we do…a little worse for wear.
I was once told to insert the world ‘different’ where I used better. For me, sometimes, it makes me see that I’m putting myself down unnecessarily. The opposite of ‘better’ is ‘worse.’ There is no such black and white opposite of different, because different is just different.
You say “I ached to be better than I actually am” and I understand you feeling not good enough. If I change one word I get “I ached to be different than I actually am” and that says, to me, that your strengths and talents are elsewhere, not where you expected/ hoped (then) that they might be.
Just sharing because it worked for me, although my situation was different (I left an unhealthy marriage, moved to a new country, leaving behind my home, my friends, my job, my financial safety net.) I have turned 40 and am not at all where I had once hoped and thought and even assumed I’d be in life, at this age. It is very difficult, and changing one word in a sentence doesn’t make it magically wonderful – but sometimes it does make it just a fraction less difficult, and that’s something worth holding on to.
Exactly how I felt this whole week. Left my job many years ago and tried different things. Didn’t work out, went back to the job again. Got laid off. Then tried something else again. Didn’t work out. Went back to school. Still not going anywhere because other students are producing better work than I can. Feel like an old dog trying to learn new tricks. Next week, I’m going to another country (where I don’t speak the language) for 5 months to learn yet more new tricks.
I’ve taken a totally different path from my friends. When I look at their lives (more self-bashing and judging), they have everything that any decent person would want. House paid off, husband, kids and a steady job. I only have a husband but a very supportive one. Had I stayed miserably in my old job, I can probably have the other things too. However, that’s not something that I would do. Would I not have tried at all? Would I work doggedly in my old job and NOT change/try something different/serve a good cause/learn a new trick? The answer is no. That is not me. I feel that I’m wired like this.
It’s extremely challenging but this is life. Sometimes we can see where we’re going. Sometimes not. Sometimes we can join the dots (as Steve Jobs said). Sometimes not. I read Paulo Coelho’s blog & follow him on twitter. He doesn’t have all the answers but he shares from a good many different sources. From there, I could see that we’re still at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to life. There is still a lot that we don’t know and can’t make sense of, even with the best of intention. So, I’ll just take it as it is. Find meaning in trying instead of the outcome. Some roads do lead to nowhere. There are no guarantees in life. We do not have GPS for our lives… yet?
Wow! I was very moved by this post. I have started reading your blog after taking the Big Idea Festival. I see you as a strong and courageous person to leave the familiar and the comfort-zone to pursue a dream and a inner calling. Your art is very inspiring!
everybody had so much to say but this post just left me speechless – I can relate so much