again I'm not sure you all understand the scope of all of my dreams being crushed to pieces after 9 years of toiling away.
I really get it ... and I also think you've acted to shake things up a lot more quickly than many of us do, so you are ahead of the curve - and that means your emotions are on a fast track to catching up with your cognitive decision making.
I can't express strongly enough how hard it is to relearn the very old conditioning that decisions we make are forever. I think about it a lot in terms of careers and relationships.
We have this idea that decisions we make when we are in our early 20s are going to suit us (and those who make decisions with us) for the rest of our lives and it’s just not the case. We change, the world changes, the people we live with change. The person we were when we were in our 20s is a different person to the one we are now.
It’s thinking from a time when people didn’t live very long and didn’t have a lot of options. If you’re a Hunter in a tribe and you are only likely to live until you’re 35 or 40, it is absolutely acceptable to KNOW that you will marry your promised wife when you’re 16, you will undertake the ceremonial obligations your father taught you, you will have as many children as you can support on what your family and your land can provide.
That thinking is no longer useful for us and it’s OK to accept that.
ElBrad – I was a dynamo career woman on the fast track in the Capital when my marriage broke down. My mentors and I had all agreed on where I would be in 3 years, 5 years and 10 years. I’d just finished my second Masters degree and I was on top of the world. Youngest woman to do this, youngest person to do that. I was so full of pride (that it shames me to remember it!). I remember I even wrote a career plan that two of the most influential Mandarins in the Aust Government endorsed and committed to. Now I’m the Administrator in an Indigenous community in the middle of nowhere.
Is this where I thought I’d be in 5 years? Absolutely not? Is it where I’m likely to be in the next 5 years? No. Would I be anywhere else for all the tea in China? Not a chance. This has become the most fulfilling and useful thing I’ve ever done and when my friends-in-suits down south shake their heads and wonder when I’ll get over what they consider this self indulgent career detour I do let myself feel a bit smug – because they really don’t know what they’re missing.
Do the decisions I make today define the rest of my life? Only in so far as they define me – but I now understand that if I make a decision and it doesn’t work out …. I can make a new decision. It’s a very liberating thing to understand.
Take care.
V
Never make someone a priority, who makes you an option.
