Turns out, that is not your fn problem at all
The day I realized this, my life changed
Write about something you believed was your fault for years—until you got more context.
I have a good example of this. Stick with me on this, it’s a bit of a journey, this story: at one point, I worked in a system that was never, ever meant to support or protect me, or anyone else who wasn’t white, male, and upper-middle class. But, I did well there, and pulled the right levers and because I made the company great money and built out new ways for them to make money, they left me alone and let me build.
And, that made me confident. So confident, in fact, that I decided to build a similar creative operation for myself, hanging my own shingle.
It was disastrous. Everyone I thought I could count on flaked out, every situation fell apart, random Very Terrible Things happened out of the blue. And, I assumed failure, or some kind of punishment or not-good-enoughness and shoved aside all that confidence (for a while anyway) because I didn’t feel like it was so deserved after all, and played really small for a while after that. I’d tried. I went big and it was a huge failure, so I’d just do it on a far smaller scale.
But that smaller scale hurt like hell. It was hard because I didn’t fit there at all. I got some wins, but when you’re building alongside other folks who want to play small, trying to build bigger or trying to scale up again usually results in a mess. You’ve literally surrounded yourself with people to protect your smallness; they’re not about to let you go big again. No way.
But, the ache was too much and I struggled in that for a long time.
But, one day, I had a revelation: not only had I thrived in a system that was never meant to support and protect me, of course it was going to actively harm me for abandoning it. Of course it would. And of course the people around me then were threatened by my effort to strike out on my own and go bigger. And of course the situations and people I’d lined up at one level didn’t want to go to the next level of things with me because that would mean rattling their own foundations.
Deeper still, What appeared like random shocks of terrible luck? In retrospect, every goddamn one of them was offering some kind of upgrade to my skillset or thinking. Because I needed to do things on a bigger scale, per my plan, so of course I subconsciously brought in ways to give that to myself, but I mistook them as signs of failure and didn’t let myself have the win.
I’ll say that part again: I mistook this series of challenges as signs of failure instead of taking them as merely information, muddling through, and giving myself the opportunity to emerge with skills and thinking expanded and ready for this bigger endeavor. Instead, I mistook it as a reflection of my own failings and shut them all down.
No, I look back adn think about how much I hurt and cried during that span or 3-4 years and how frustrated and heartbroken I was that my big dream felt so out of reach.
To be sure, I’m not at all some Pollyanna-ass “look on the bright side” person. But, if you find yourself saying “man, every time I try to go for it, all this shit happens” maybe ask yourself why that is. Is it really because you fucking suck and don’t deserve that dream? Or, are you so close to your big dream that you’re subconsciously drawing in ways to help you be ready for it? And might it be the case that the more you struggle against that, the harder those challenges get?
That framing might not be for you. But for me, it was fucking life changing. That realization turned this period of trauma and pain into dust in an instant. It didn’t make the shit that happened any less traumatic, but it allowed me to see that none of it had anything to do with whether or not I deserved a win, and everything to do with allowing a new frame to snap into focus and dissolve the old one.
