I’m a hypocrite.
It had to be said. And no, I’m not being unjustly cruel to myself or speaking in a way that will hurt my soul. I’m a realist and my brain is nodding at the name I just called myself.
You see, I sidestep the hard stuff all the time. You probably do too.
The Universe Has a Lesson for You
I’m the kind of person who chugs along (this is not a drinking reference no matter what you might have heard about me in college), getting the work done. I’m goal oriented and directed. I generally do what I say I’m going to do (except when I forget).
I’m a good egg.
But…
Because I’m a good egg, I get myself into more than my share of binds. I get committed to things that I have little interest in. I feel responsible and do things because they’re expected.
Maybe you do the same thing.
If so, you probably say yes to a few too many things or you stay on a course or path too long. That’s all fine and good until it comes to the point where you have a mental breakdown or conniption.
And you realize something has to give.
A healthy individual will speak up long before this point. But just in case you’re like me, and you revel in your ability to sidestep a serious conversation, you may find yourself in a bad spot.
The problem I’ve found with avoidance is that it’s temporary. Let me reiterate again, I am REALLY GOOD AT AVOIDING THINGS. (It’s in caps so you know it’s true.) But…
Avoidance is a short game.
You can (only) avoid things in the short run. If that were an Olympic sport, I’d be in Paris this summer.
But it’s not because life (for most of us) is a long game.
You can only avoid things in the short term. Eventually they catch up to you and that lesson you were trying to avoid — or that hard conversation — is going to happen whether you want it to or not.
When I worked on political campaigns, I advised the candidate to always:
Get in front of the ugly.
If there’s something you’re embarrassed about or trying to hide from the electorate, get out in front of the issue. That way you get to frame it on yourterms. Most of the time the candidates didn’t listen. They thought they could sidestep the photos of people who weren’t their wives (or husbands, let’s give equal roasting to everyone).
But they coudn’t and you can’t.
When you try to avoid the hard stuff, it doesn’t go away. But your ability to decide what to do about it does. When you confront it on your terms, it’s devastatingly hard but it’s your decision and you can shape it (at least to a certain extent). When you wait for the universe to do it for you, it rarely goes in your favor — at least not initially.
But I don’t take my own medicine either.
Relationships Are Hard. Real Conversations Are Harder.
conversations with inanimate objects are even harder
I don’t care if you’re talking about your significant other or a client, relationships are difficult, especially when a hard conversation is required. Human interactions are especially challenging if you’re like me and you view most people as unlikely to change.
Then instead of having the difficult conversation with them, you have it with yourself, assume they’re less likely to move than Mount Everest and you end the conversation before you ever had it because you already invented an ending.
No one is better at this than a writer.
But I’ve found when you put off the conversation or decision (for whatever reason), the universe eventually inserts itself and rights the situation. However, just like the candidate with the naughty picture I referenced earlier, the universe will do it on its own terms and when it does, you might not be ready for the rogue wave it throws at you.
Safe Is a Four-letter Word
Many years ago, I was unhappy in my job. I felt undervalued, unchallenged, and felt the department was broken. I’ll spare the details because according to 85% of you feel the same way.
I told myself over and over, I needed to leave. There was nothing more I could add there. But I was a single mom to two littles. And they liked the finer things in life like food and shelter. The handcuff of a steady paycheck was pinching me to the point I felt like I was losing all feeling.
Every morning as I drove to work, I concocted a different resignation letter accompanied by a dramatic show that I knew I would never have the guts to perform.
The theme song for that period of my life could’ve easily been “9–5” if I cut back my hours.
But I stayed.
And stayed.
And stayed.
Each day over my lunch hour, I went out to my car and wrote chapters of what would eventually become my novel “Someday, Never, Always.”
As much as I wanted to be a writer, I couldn’t do what JK Rowling did. Writing in my car was one thing. Living in it…well, I guess I just didn’t want it that badly. So I chose a steady pay check and uninspiring work that I was decent at.
By this point in my career, I had made a teeny, tiny name for myself in the niche market I worked in. I thought for that reason, if no other, my company would keep me on as long as I wanted.
<Queue music fraught with dramatic irony.>
A few minutes after returning from my car/writing space, the president of HR called me. She asked about my goals and what I wanted to be doing. I was ready with the usual goal-oriented nonsense that I had been polishing since I was a senior in college about where I saw myself over the next few years. As I was giving my spiel, I tried to think of some professional development course I might ask for since she sooooo clearly wanted to talk about my future.
Little did I know, her questions about my future had nothing to do with the company.
Looking back, I can only assume she hadn’t fired enough people in her life. Because I never saw the hammer coming. She asked me about my goals, waited for me to answer (in embarrassing detail now that I think about it), and then gave me the corporate version of “We’re just not that into you,” that sounds like, “We’re going another way.”
I’m not too proud to admit — I cried. The kind of big, fat stinging tears that somehow feel like they’re pouring out of your eyes and your nose.
Gift Horse or Dead Horse?
Over the course of thirty minutes, my long-time dream of leaving my company had been gifted to me, served up on a silver platter pink slip. But I wasn’t ready. I had rent and a car payment. There was some money in savings but not a year’s worth. Maybe a few months.
The universe had called my bluff.
You want out? We’ll give you out. I could imagine the person in charge of this vast world saying.
I went home and felt sorry for myself. Then I mourned the fact I was an idiot. And then I created a plan and executed on it.
Fast forward over a decade and things turned out fine. Not JK Rowling fine but good enough. I survived.
But the thing I hate when I think about it is all the wasted time I spent there.
I stayed because it was safe.
Or at least I thought it was.
If you get nothing else out of making it through this article, I hope you know this one thing…
Nothing is safe.
N-O-T-H-I-N-G.
If you want to stay at a dead-end job or in a lifeless marriage or a toxic relationship, or whatever thing you’re trying to talk yourself out of doing, do it for 100,000 reasons but not because it’s “safe.”
Safe is only safe until it isn’t.
And, if you’re like me, you’ll realize that if you had done the hard thing — the thing you wanted to — you could’ve done it on your terms, not someone else’s.
So, if there’s something you’ve been putting off — looking for a new job, going off on your own, firing that client who is not the right fit, leaving your hometown — know that you’re not going to wake up one day and forget you wanted to do it.
That gnawing feeling is there for a reason.
So do the hard thing. Don’t sidestep it. Go full speed through it and get to that other side — the side where you want to be.
You can get there on your own terms or through the universe pushing you that way.
Just know that if you go with the latter, you won’t be designing the outcome.
Written by : Christina
