Success is Not Always Doing What You Love

By Nancy Anderson

Often the way to reach a treasured goal is to do what is difficult for you. It’s not enough to say or write what you want and expect that it will happen right away. Change that lasts begins with altering the way you think, and that is neither quick nor easy.

For example, your unconscious beliefs about yourself and life are at odds with conscious thoughts and feelings. One part of you believes life has meaning, thus the optimistic face you present to others. Another part of you believes life is a slow wait for death. This hidden self is often projected onto the outside world in the form of depressed or chronically ill partners, habits that are destructive to your health, a messy environment, and conflict-laden relationships that raise your blood pressure.

If you are like most people, just thinking about looking inside for answers to life’s problems will provoke anxiety. To relieve the discomfort, you stay with what you know. You can’t imagine living without what saddens your heart and burdens your soul. In fact, you may take for granted that this is your lot in life.

To become aware of what is going on in the unconscious that works against your best interests, you will need to develop the ability to tolerate the anxiety that honesty provokes, to hang in there with fear and self-doubt until balance becomes the new norm.

Tolerating Discomfort
Some choices are easy to make, as when you decide to go to a different restaurant, or when you buy a new item for your home. When you take a bigger step into the unknown, however, up comes the fear of death, with its images of gloom and doom. The pictures running through your mind can frighten you to the point that you feel paralyzed.

Let’s say you want to change the way you work so that you have more time to yourself. Or you want to break a habit like overeating and drinking too much. You want to start a business, end a draining relationship, or admit feelings you have long denied, such as hurt and anger. Be assured, the insecurity you feel when you think about these changes is in direct proportion to the joy you will feel once the change locks in place.

Denied feelings contain a great deal of raw energy the conditioned mind finds unacceptable, and so it suppresses them. But these feelings are vital to your wellbeing. For example, anger alerts you when someone crosses your boundaries; sadness lets you know it is time to grieve a loss so you don’t get depressed.
When uncomfortable thoughts and feelings arise, don’t block them; let them tell you their story. Go for long walks, breathe deeply and meditate on positive images. If you need professional help, ask for tools that redirect the brain’s signals to the autonomic nervous system. Awareness is the best medicine; it will heal your heart, mind and body.

The Payoff of Struggle
One of my clients was nearing retirement from working as the office manager for a large law firm. Janet was so fearful about what would happen when she no longer had a paycheck, she could not take the first step to relieving her panic.

Panic was a familiar emotion to Janet. Her high-strung mother dramatized everything, a habit Janet copied. Even ordinary events were seen as threats. To help Janet gain perspective on her turbulent emotions, I suggested she cut back on contact with the mother. Rather than call every night when she got home, a task Janet dreaded, I asked her to call the mother a couple of times a week. I also asked Janet to refer to the mother by her first name when we spoke, a technique I use with my clients as a way for them to gain objectivity.

“Thinking of her as a person will help you to separate her fear from your fear,” I said.

The thought of not calling her mother every night terrified Janet. “What if something happens to her?” she asked.

“I’m sure a neighbor or the retirement home manager will call you,” I said.

Janet was too frightened to do what I suggested, so I said, okay, what could you change?

“I’ll call her every other night,” she said.

“Great, I’ll take whatever change I can get,” I said.

Janet went step by step through the process of leaving the past behind over the next three years, starting with getting accurate information from her investment counselor and the Social Security administration. To her surprise, she discovered she would have sufficient funds to live on, if she were careful. By the time she left the law firm and cleared decades of clutter from her home, Janet had not only improved the way she thought, she had transformed her relationship with the mother.

“I no longer get upset when she gets upset,” Janet said. “I see how she makes a big deal out of nothing, just as I used to do. It helped to cut down on the calls. They weren’t really necessary. She knows if she needs me she can reach me anytime.”

Janet was excited about the process of downsizing the mother’s living environment, organizational skill that came naturally to Janet.

“She’s totally on board with the idea. I’m amazed,” she said.

Janet is an example of how efficiently the mind works when it is free from conditioned thinking. Given her emotional bravery, it would not surprise me if Janet developed a business that helps women prepare for the success she’s achieved.

Nancy Anderson is a career and life consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area and the author of the best selling career guide, Work with Passion, How to Do What You Love For a Living, and Work with Passion and Beyond, Reach Your Full Potential and Make the Money You Need. Her website is http://workwithpassion.com.