What do you do when your life is not exactly where you want it to be?
Do you feel disappointed with yourself for not reaching certain professional goals you had set for yourself?
Let me tell you about a friend of mine. Let’s call her Lisa. She is a beautiful person inside and out, with a beautiful angelic face.
However, today she was feeling upset and angry. Which was quite unlike her.
Turns out a recent endeavor she had undertaken at work was not coming along as she had hoped.
As we spoke further, she noted that the project not progressing meant she was not organized. And to be not organized made her feel she was weak. That she had lost control of the situation.
She felt powerless and frustrated. Now she has started losing hope for the project.
She felt this was also related to agreeing to do something with a new colleague’s organization that was not exactly aligned with her vision for herself. Which made her resent the mismatch between her own values and that of the organization she was collaborating with.
She felt her efforts were unseen. And that somehow was her fault, stemming from the message she sent to the outer world about herself.
And her inner child was feeling unloved from all this.
There were so many layers to her emotions leading to her anger.
Almost an emotional downward spiral keeping her stuck in her progress. A common theme being “I am not where I am supposed to be”, “It’s my fault.”
This is something I’m sure you may have run into in your life too. I for sure have run into it.
Let’s see what gave us the idea of “point A: this is where I am supposed to be” at any part of our journey. What created that reference point for us to compare our journey with?
Are we willing to be ok with it if it is “point B where we are supposed to be?”, i.e. a different location in our journey? How do we feel about point B if it were a better way to get to something even better than A?
We, the working superwomen in medicine, have been trained so well to focus on outcomes. In the same way an athlete is trained to get to the finish line.
In fact our productivity has become a hallmark of our identity. Patient numbers become a mark of our efficiency, patient survey results a mark of our excellence as a clinician. Even the professional ladders we climb become a mark of our progress. Life becomes a race that way. So many steps that we are “supposed to” attain.
If we lose control of ourselves or our pace at any point, we may risk losing that outcome. Creating so much “need to be in control of ourselves” so we can go above and beyond to create that outcome. And when we break down that race to the finish line, we get several steps along the way that we need to “achieve” to see we are making progress.
We are so trained to fixate on tangible evidence of progress. To the point that, to progress without tangible, palpable evidence makes it look like we are failing.
Is that one way leading to perfectionism?
How do we know we are successful at the point where there is no tangible evidence yet?
Do you have any advice for my friend? Please reply in the comments below.
