The One Step to Take Before Blowing Up Your Life

Wake-Up Call #41

There is this common compulsion…

Once we know who and what makes us come alive, then realize we’re not with those people, or doing those things, we rush to hit the eject button.

Every minute spent fitting our round peg souls into a square holed job, relationship, location, or life becomes torture.

We tell ourselves, sure it’ll hurt to walk away, but the pain and disruption will be nothing compared to the suffering of a life that perpetually drags the sand of misalignment and discontent into the machinery of our hearts and minds.

We counter any potential loss or pain with a dreamy escape scenario, awash in freedom, relief, ecstasy, and possibility.

We envision the open arms of abundance rising up to meet us, as we step into a world that immediately recognizes our authenticity and lavishes us with opportunity.

One where all the bad, all the pain, the stifling, the disconnection, the conflict, the lack and misalignment, lie in the rear view mirror.

One where, as Timbuk 3 promised, the future’s so bright, we’ve gotta wear shades.

Sometimes, that vision is real. In its glory, and necessity. Other times, it’s complicated.

Especially when we’re subconsciously a wee bit complicit in deepening the pain to a level that helps us justify extreme action, or what I call the nuclear option.

I’ve seen this unfold in my own life.

I’d be in that “hallway” moment, having realized my current reality wasn’t what I wanted. Though I also wasn’t entirely sure what my next move might be, what door to walk through, or whether to just keep on keeping on.

My impulse was—just blow everything up and start fresh.

Start a new job, launch a new company, find a new relationship. You get it.

Many times, I did just that. Some worked out great. Others, not so much.

The more I’ve reflected on those moments, and truly inquired into them, I’ve realized there was often something else going on. Something I was entirely unaware of.

Not all the time, but more often than I cared to admit.

In the heat of the experience, my heart craved release, but my brain craved reason.

I wanted freedom, but also needed to explain, to myself and to those whose perception of me mattered (for better, or worse), why I was taking such extreme action.

So, I’d find myself doing this weird thing…

I would do all manner of things, seemingly-innocuous, yet damaging in their accumulation, that deepened the pain of my current reality. Agitating and amplifying the suffering I was setting up as the basis of my impending exit. Not big things, that’s what made is so insidious. It would be little things, ones not big enough for me to have to own.

I’d show up late, blow off a commitment, miss a deadline, stop caring or creating or serving at a level that made me feel good, turn in sub-par work, avoid hard, yet important conversations, ignore opportunities, or drop into phone-it-in mode.

On a relationship level, I’d stop communicating, spend less time with a friend or partner, keep things inside, hide, save my best, most open, kindest, most genuine self for others.

Each seemingly innocuous behavior, a consciously unintended, but subsconsiously wildly intentional notch in the self-saboteur’s belt. It was a way to deepen the core pain that was driving me, ever quicker, toward the eject button, without having to point any part of any finger back at me.

Why would I do this? Simple.

It gave my brain, which needed to point to how bad things were in order to justify extreme action, the evidentiary fodder it needed. “Look how terrible it is,” I’d tell myself, “I hate it, and besides, it’s not giving me what I need, it’s keeping me from my next best self, adventure, job, or relationship. Life’s too short!”

Indeed, it was.

The question I wasn’t asking, “how much of that was on me?”

Truth is, reality is sometimes exactly as harsh as we make it out to be. Regardless of our contribution.

But, there may also be a second, more obscured, yet equally compelling truth running beneath our conscious experience. We may be at least a bit complicit in the deepening of our demise, in ways we either don’t want to, or cannot see.

This can happen when we get to a point where the thought of continuing to work at making something better is overtaken by an awareness that we live in a world of possibility that feels bigger, more opportune than the thing we’re grappling with.

Surely, other things, activities, people, experiences must be easier. Better.

In truth, maybe they are. At least, at first.

But, at some point, not always, but enough times to merit consideration, an odd thing can happen.

We find ourselves deposited squarely into our new “supposedly” better reality, having endured and contributed to the pain of an ending, yet somehow, we are the same frustrated, stifled, unexpressed, bundle of humanity, but with different paint on the walls, drapes on the windows, people and partners, colleagues to commiserate with, and things to grumble about.

Bound to repeat the same patterns and inevitably shatter whatever temporary illusion of better we’ve run to.

Turns out, our patterns follow us, until we unfollow them.

To the extent we contributed to the situation we left behind, even if it’s just the icing on the exit justification cake, we recreate the same morass of dysfunction and, eventually, pain we fled. Because we’ve never examined and processed the part that was coming not at us, but from us.

Not that it’s all on us. It never is.

The dance of dysfunction is always a conspiracy, never a solo act.

But, if there was a part that was on us, it remains with us.

In new clothes. Over to a new coast. In a new house. At a new job. With a new crew. A new person. And, we continue to blame a world that feels perpetually positioned against us. Never realizing a simple fact.

In the end, we are still the same un-flee-able we.

A truth I’ve learned.

The light we so desperately seek will never shine upon us until it first shines within us.

What if there was a better first step?

What if, instead of blowing up what lies outside us, we broke open what lies within us?

What if, before burning down our so-called malignant existences, we first hit pause and took the time to look inside. To wake up.

To ask the question…

Is any of what I’m so feverishly feel compelled to leave behind at least, in part, on me? And, if so, is there a way I can play a more active role in healing that part, or, at a minimum, stop deepening the pain, so it doesn’t keep nudging me into the abyss, off cliff after cliff?

Then, what if before we hit the eject button, we got honest?

Did the work needed to reshape our best possible reality in the existing container and connective-tissue that already defines the inner seeds of our humanity and outer seeds of our daily lives?

What if, instead of checking out and subconsciously piling on, we did what we could to make it, and us, as good as we could be, before considering the possibility of leaving it all behind.

Is this always possible? Or our responsibility?

Sometimes, yes. Other times, no.

I am not suggesting or in any way condoning martyrdom, or encouraging anyone to stay in the path of genuine harm.

What you are feeling, and have felt is real.

There will be times in our lives where the only option is the nuclear option.

There will be truly destructive, high-risk people, culture, workplaces, or circumstances that must be abandoned. The abusive or horrifically toxic partner. The physically and emotionally treacherous person or place that is, for all intents and purposes, unfixable, unchangeable. Beyond becoming. At least by the mechanism of our own heart, hands, will, and being.

It’s not about you, nor was it ever.

There will be other times when we’ve done all we can do. We’ve righted the part of the ship that’s rightable by us. We’ve gotten honest. Mended what’s mendable. Both internally, and relationally. And things are still not okay.

In those cases, the pain of staying truly is greater than the pain of leaving.

Even if there is some level of our own work to be explored, we must alight to a place of safety, space, and, eventually, grace and recovery. And, if we don’t have the insight, objectivity, or clarity needed to understand what’s internal versus external, we need to ask for help from those who do.

That way, if we still choose to walk away, at least we’ll do it from a place of not only far greater conviction, but also embodied self-knowledge and the sense of alignment and radiance that often generates a level of clarity, honesty, self-compassion, and possibility not available when our exit is more “cut and run” than “did the work.”

And, a future mapped by a more genuine capacity to create something not just new, but truly better.

With a whole lotta love & gratitude,

Jonathan

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Wake-Up Call #41

What are you feeling the urge to leave behind right now?

Explore the circumstance. Really look at it. Look at what is happening, who is participating, and what, if any, your contribution might be.

Not saying you are making things worse, just ask the question.

This is not about shame or blame, it is about opening a window to both responsibility and possibility. Turns out, the more we contribute to the conditions that disturb us, the more agency and power we have to change them.

You cannot change the scenes of a play in which you’ve relinquished any semblance of authorship.

Now ask, “what, if anything, might I do to make this as good as it can be, before I bring it to an end?”

Again - this is not always appropriate or possible.

No one should stay in the face of harm or be a martyr. And, if you’ve done the work, there’s peace in your decisions.

But if you’re getting that intuitive hit that some things are not only within your control, but also capable of meaningful, positive change, what might that look like? And what might your first steps into that experience be?

Think on it, journal on it. And, if you’re inclined, share in the comments.