I recently read a NYT article adapted from the book by Bruce Feller about managing life quakes. The article hit very close to home and inspired me to write this post. Per the article, the Italians have a wonderful expression for how our lives get upended when we least expect it: “lupus in fabula”. Loosely translated, it means “the wolf in the fairy tale”. Just when our fairy tale seems poised to come true, a willful scary thing threatens to destroy everything around it.
For many 2020 has been that year! As W.B.Yeats put it in “The Second Coming” – its been the kind of year where it seems like the center felt as if it would not hold. For me, amidst everything that was going on it was a tumultuous time where multiple wolves emerged in my professional fairytale. I could have stuck around and fought the wolves in my tale, but in the midst of hiring freezes and financial uncertainty, I chose to flee. It wasn’t an easy exit. Fear and anxiety of not having a job were rampant and I had to work on turning them into renewal and growth.
These are the steps I took to manage my life quake:
- Finding my transition superpower
- Identify your emotions
- Shed something
- Try something creative
- Rewrite your life story
Every transition has the long good bye, the messy middle, the new beginning. Some can close doors and never look back, but I am not one of those fortunate ones. I had spent two years putting my heart and soul into building something I was extremely proud of; overcoming a lot along the way and then I made the difficult decision to walk away and take a break. Overcome with anger and sadness I had to find my transition superpower. In the midst of the lockdown I took off to spend time with my family in NC. I had never spent six weeks with my extended family, but this transition gave me the opportunity to spend time with them and allowed me to renew and re-energize myself with their support. I couldn’t have handled the good bye and the messy middle without their support.
During the transition I had fear, sadness, anger – never a healthy concoction – and I had to deal with them all. I leaned on my family and friends; sometimes unleashing myself on anyone who could take it. I read uplifting and inspiring books to make sure I didn’t succumb to my fear and go back to my old job; just to deal with the untethered wolves again. I took the time to decompress and mentally floss out the negative emotions that were stuck and had to be purged.
Along with purging negative emotions, I finally prioritized decluttering the house. We had moved eight years ago and had accumulated a ton of stuff over time. It gave me immense satisfaction to finally get my Marie Kondo on since we were spending more time at home and had outgrown a lot of stuff. It was hard letting go of things that brought back memories – but it felt good to finally get some stuff straightened out.
I have always wanted to write. During my time in NC I created this blog. I feel like it will provide me the creative outlet I have always longed for and give me the courage to pursue other side projects. I look forward to continuing this effort beyond 2020.
Life quakes can bring certain things to a screeching halt but also provide an opportunity to write a new beginning. Professionally, I had never spent any time marketing or selling myself. I have always been a hard worker and performed well but never spent time on creating a personal brand. After I quit, I spent a month doing just that! It bore fruit in the form of 5 respectable job offers within two weeks of interviewing in the midst of the pandemic. While it made the decision harder and it’s still debatable if the choice I made was the best (without a crystal ball to look into the future), I am happy to be employed and have the opportunity to develop new skills.
As the article beautifully states – we cannot banish the wolves from interrupting our fairy tales. If you banish the wolf, you banish the hero. And we all need to mange our life quakes and keep our centers together and emerge as heroes of our life story.