Tag: step
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Searching for Your Next Step: How to Deal When You’re “In Between”
“A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery while on a detour.” ~Unknown
After finishing my master’s degree, I felt pretty directionless. I felt like I graduated with more questions than answers, and I really didn’t know what career I wanted, or where.
I figured I should take whatever opportunity came my way, so I accepted a low-paying teaching job in a foreign country, which didn’t work out for various reasons, and ended up leaving after only five months.
I came back to the U.S. the day before Christmas, feeling like a total and utter failure. I was unemployed, living with my parents in a sleepy midwestern town that I had sworn never to return to, with an empty bank account and over a hundred thousand dollars of student debt staring me in the face.
To add insult to injury, I almost immediately contracted the flu, which turned into pneumonia, and was essentially bed-ridden for almost a month.
I felt miserable.
What had happened to my dreams? My aspirations? My idealist musings about my dynamic, passion-filled, world-changing future career?
I felt more confused than ever and had figured very little out, except how to screw up romantic relationships and spend all my money in the process. I had to figure out what to do next, and fast, or flounder.
If I’ve learned anything from my encounters with Buddhism, it’s that moments like this, when it feels like the rug is being pulled our from under your feet, usually end up being the most valuable.
It doesn’t feel very valuable when it’s happening, of course, but being shaken forces you to stop for a while and take account of what’s unshakeable. In moments of utter insecurity, you realize what is really important in your life.
Here are my takeaways from months “in between”:
1. Don’t panic, and breathe.
Not having a next step can be scary. Really scary. Our culture is obsessed with progress, personal growth, and especially next steps, so not knowing where you’re going can seem overwhelming. It’s hard not to get swept up into that feeling of helplessness.
Stop, breathe, maybe meditate for fifteen minutes, and keep going in whatever way you can.
2. Focus on what matters to you, not other people.
This is an important, and difficult, one. When I was first considering leaving my terrible post-grad job, I reached out to a lot of people to ask for advice. I knew that if I quit the job, it might take awhile to find another hopefully better one, and that I might experience the cold, dark grip of failure.
Some people told me to finish out my contract, because it was safer. Others told me to do what made me happy. But ultimately, I had to sit with my anxieties and fears, dissect them, and figure out what was best for me, according to my goals.
I had to totally let go of everyone else’s ideas of success, security, and happiness and define what those concepts meant to me.
Did being unemployed, single, and homebound make me feel like a failure because I personally felt like a failure, or because someone else had told me once that those things = failure? Sometimes, it’s really hard to separate what really matters to you from what matters to the people around you, but it’s necessary.
Also, the job search can be oh-so-discouraging. It can be really hard to receive mass rejection email after mass rejection email (or no email at all) and not get enormously depressed.
Don’t take it personally. Know that you’re great, smart, and capable, and divert the energy you were going to spend weeping into writing a fantastic cover letter for your next job application.
3. Set realistic goals and get organized.
For a while, setting goals seemed impossible. How could I set a goal if I had no idea what I wanted out of a career? Every job description I looked at seemed unattainable, unrealistic, or unattractive to me. Goals? I couldn’t make goals! I was broke and stuck!
In truth, I was overthinking it. I didn’t have to know exactly where I would be in five years, or one year, or even one month. Sometimes I just had to have a plan for the week, or the day, or the next hour.
Setting small, realistic goals was key to moving forward in a productive way, and not staying paralyzed by fear and anxiety. For example, I set goals for how many jobs I would apply for in a week and how I would make enough money to get by, etc. I made spreadsheets keeping track of the jobs I applied for, as well as a strict budget.
Having daily goals made me feel like I was accomplishing something, even if the results weren’t necessarily tangible at the time. At the end of the day, I could say, “Well, I did everything I set out to do today. Good job, me!” instead of “Ugh! I still don’t have a job! What’s wrong with me?!”
A journey is made up of small steps. I had no idea where I would end up, but I kept moving and that saved me.
4. Relish the journey, regardless of the destination.
As mentioned in takeaway number one, not having a clear destination can be overwhelming, especially in a culture that is always leaning forward into the future. Perhaps the hardest part of the unemployment journey was settling in instead of looking ahead.
Being at a crossroads is a moment of opportunity. It’s at that moment when you feel like you don’t know anything, that you truly know. You know then that all those notions you’ve had about what you need to feel happy and successful are illusions.
I may not have had the fulfilling career, the loving partner, the adorable puppy, or the reasonable, plant-filled apartment I wanted, but I was alive! Being starved of the things that I thought were important made me take stock of all the things that really mattered and let go of the things that didn’t.
Every day, I wake up. I have an amazing, healthy body that is capable of some really miraculous things. I have an active intellect that enjoys reading and learning and doing things. I love a lot of people and activities and have regular access to many of them. I have a bed to sleep in, food to eat, books to read, and time to exercise regularly. These are all pretty amazing things!
Even when nothing seemed to be working in my life, there was so much that was working. This sense of having some unshakeable core to my experience made moving forward so much easier, and way less scary.
It gave me a wealth of patience to seek out and wait for the right opportunities, and leave behind the wrong ones. It gave me the liberty to dream up new possibilities that I hadn’t thought of before instead of putting pressure on myself to adhere to old, tired ideas.
It made me realize that being “in between” was, in a way, a blessing. I had the freedom to pursue opportunities where, when, and with whom I wanted. Settling into the journey forced me to treat myself more kindly and give myself the time and space to craft meaning in new ways.
Feeling suffocated by the seeming lack of direction in your life? Go for a walk and feel the wind on your cheeks.
Received another rejection letter and want to cry? Get out that new recipe you’ve been wanting to try and listen to your favorite jams while you cook.
Need a mental health day? Take one. Read. Go to the gym. Learn something new. Meditate. Celebrate your successes, job-related or not. Because if you can find peace in the midst of what feels like a total breakdown, you can find it anywhere.
Photo by Hartwig HKD
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A Simple, Tiny Exercise to Help You Make a Big Change
“Change is inevitable. Growth is intentional.” ~Glenda Cloud
Growing up, I never had that many friends. The concept of best friends is still foreign to me. For the first seventeen years of my life, I found myself happier alone than in the presence of other people.
I wanted to join them; I just didn’t know how.
In order to protect myself from people I’d rather not mention, I decided to join a karate class. For the first time I belonged to a group that was slowly starting to accept me.
In the months that followed, I began to go out with them. It was awkward at first (and didn’t seem to get any easier). I had several short nervous breakdowns out of pure frustration. I would often get home feeling like a truck had run over me.
What annoyed me the most was that even though I would hang out with friends, I couldn’t express myself. I couldn’t think of anything to say and even when something came up, I just said it to myself.
I knew that wasn’t me.
I was the loudest guy on the block in my neighborhood. I never ran out of things to say. I didn’t feel any pressure whatsoever. However, in this new group (or any new groups for that matter), I simply shut down.
One night we were out at a bar. It was karaoke night but nobody volunteered to sing, so we sat at a table to chitchat.
I found myself sweating and shivering for no reason. I couldn’t keep eye contact with anyone. Opening my mouth was out of the question. I got home feeling like my head was collapsing in on itself.
That night, I literally interviewed everybody I could find online trying to figure out “how normal people think.”
I picked a bunch of random friends on messenger and asked them something along the lines of, “What do you think of when you are alone and there’s nothing else to do? Do you think of practical matters or just imagine random stuff?”
I forgot most of the answers I received—all but one.
My Kyokushin instructor, someone I looked up to and still do, answered, “I think of how to grow the club, of how I can spread Kyokushin karate.” A couple years later, this man became the chief of the Romanian branch of the World All Kyokushin Karate Union.
The next day, my friends were whispering behind my back.
I heard my instructor saying to a colleague something along the lines of, “Take it easy on him. I think he had a mental breakdown.”
He was right. I tried to pretend like I didn’t notice, but he was right.
The only bright side to these breakdowns was that after each one, I became a little bit stronger. I gained more self-control. I became accustomed to the situations that caused them.
After a while, they stopped happening. It was still a pain to talk sometimes, but nothing serious. After too much socializing I felt the need to be alone, but even that started to fade away.
The awkward feeling in my gut and the excessive self-consciousness popped up less and less often.
I still couldn’t find anything to say, but it wasn’t because of feeling awkward. It was simply due to my lack of experience in the art of chitchatting.
These days the negative feelings related to socializing are pretty much gone, and whenever they resurface I just brush them aside.
I can’t say I’m an expert conversationalist. I’m a long way from that but I can say whatever I want, whenever I want.
I can laugh out loud for the whole world to hear. I can speak my mind in the middle of a bus full of people and watch them stare at me. I can look someone straight in the eyes. I can instruct a class of kids in the art of Kyokushin Karate.
And these days, even though I need my alone time, I also need my social time. If a couple days go by without talking to people, I lose focus and energy. I feel the need for connection.
I changed because:
- I wanted to change.
- I changed my environment. (I joined a group which encouraged me to be outgoing.)
- I took the time.
I used to be so shy that my head would literally shake like a leaf when trying to speak to strangers. I had to take a thinking pose so I could support my head with one of my hands and make it less obvious.
It’s been months since I last had to take a thinking pose (though these days I just do it out of habit).
The personalities we form in our childhoods have a lot to do with the environment we grow up in.
We end up shy or outgoing, strong or weak, a leader or a follower. This is not who we are. This is what our environment shaped us into.
But that can be changed.
You can choose who you want to be and then grow into that person.
Decide right now who you want to be in five years. Then grab a piece of paper and write it down in as much detail as possible.
What traits do you want “future you” to have? Write it down.
How will future you make a living? Write it down.
What contribution will you bring to the world? Write it down.
Once finished, grab one more piece of paper and write your future self’s first trait on top of it.
Bellow, write down twenty ideas on how to get there. Do the same thing with all the other traits.
After a while, you might notice you’ve written the same idea for multiple traits. These are the ideas you want to act on. Choose the easiest (or hardest) and do it now.
Socrates once said, “In order to reach mount Olympus make sure that every step you make is leading you in that direction.”
Each idea you come up with and act upon will bring you one step closer to your goal, and eventually, you will reach it.
Take a few minutes to do the exercise above and make your first step, for it is up to you to choose your path.
It is up to you to move your feet—so get moving!
Photo by Danny Fowler
