Ep.48 How to Pick Yourself Up After a Setback

"Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.”   ~Eckhart Tolle.

Excellent advice....but how do you do that?  Today I'm taking you through the process I used to take me from feeling like a total fraud to full acceptance.  The best part is - it's totally repeatable.  

• Feel the feelings
• Get curious
• Lean on your beliefs
• Accept as if you chose it

Click here for full show notes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. That, my friends, is from Eckhart Tully, and it's such a powerful ninja mind trick. It's something I held on to last summer when I pivoted back into a corporate job. I want to break down what that looked like and show you how implementing this mindset shift opened up things for me in some unexpected ways. Hey, hey, welcome to the Perfection That Required podcast. I am your host, Jamie Renee. On this show, we talk about building a business from the inside out, and today we're diving into reframing our challenges in a way that supports us and the journey we're on. We'll be looking at what happens when you choose to look for the good in this situation now instead of five years from now. Let's get into it. When I left corporate towards the end of 2021, I drew a line in the sand. This was the second time around, and I swore I was never going back. I announced on LinkedIn I was done with corporate, wrote articles and blog posts about being done. I started a podcast called Breaking Up with Corporate. I announced it to the universe and the world that this was no longer my path. Less than a year later, I was applying for jobs back in corporate. I was mad at myself. I was mad at the universe. I was mad at my husband, and I felt like a complete fraud. I was at a point where it finally felt like I was gaining some momentum. But you know, like momentum doesn't pay the bills. I was making no money and my runway was gone. So this is where I was when I finally got tired of my own shit. I know enough about energetics that I knew I did not want to be job hunting in this energy. So I want to show you in a really practical way the process I went through that made a huge difference. First of all, this is not about gaslighting yourself and pretending that things don't suck when really it kind of feels like they do. So, so the very first thing that I did was I allowed myself to feel all the feelings. Whenever you pinch feelings off or you don't feel them, you don't let them kind of work their way through your body, they get trapped, and then it becomes something that you hold on to. And it's not necessary if you just take the time to feel the feelings and process them. Some of the feelings that I that had come up is I was embarrassed. Like I said, I felt like a fraud. I was embarrassed that I'm like, oh yeah, I'm never going back. But here I am, like eating my words. I felt like a fraud because I was touting all of these women that were going out and leaving their corporate job and making their way and having the success that I was failing to capture myself. So I felt like I was just this complete fraud. But then I was also grieving this vision and this timeline that I really had in mind. Like I really thought that this was the time. And it just wasn't. And so I allowed myself to grieve and to feel all of these things and even the anger. Like I didn't want to go back to work. I didn't want to go back to an office. I didn't want to have to give up on my dreams and I didn't all of the things that I didn't want to do. But I let myself feel those things. Like I didn't want to shame any of my feelings because feelings felt are processed and metabolized. So that is the number one thing is let yourself feel all the feels. Whenever you're done with that, or whenever I was done with that, I started asking questions. I've always been curious by nature. So whenever these things would come up in my head, I would be like, okay, so if this were my best friend I were talking to, what would I say? If she were embarrassed about this situation, like, of course, there's nothing to be embarrassed about. You are doing more than anybody, than the people who aren't taking the risk, than the people who are never trying to go after their dreams. Because you haven't reached this goal, there's nothing to be embarrassed about. You should be proud of yourself. And so start asking the questions that can open things up in a way that your brain can really get off of the negativity, like where you can just start to be curious. So some of the other questions is like, how am I not like a fraud? If I'm feeling like a fraud, what what is the opposite of that? Like, how is this not fraud-like? The fact is, is I was very open and honest my whole journey about how I was not making any money, how I, the things that I was learning, the things that I was struggling with. I'm an open book. So for me to feel like a fraud, it just wasn't reasonable. It was just something that my brain was telling me, right? And then this one is kind of embarrassing and I didn't really talk about it to anybody, but I was really, like I said earlier, I was angry at my husband. I was angry. He wasn't really at him, but you know, he was okay, so we had a deal, right? We had this plan, we agreed on it beforehand. The plan was that I was gonna have money, income by now, like at this time, and I didn't. So really, we were just being accountable to the plan. But what it felt like is somebody telling me what to do, which does not sit well with me, if you know me at all. So I was really like angry with my husband. So one of the questions that I got curious about is what if I didn't have all of this responsibility to my husband, to my family, to this situation? What if it were just me? What would I do right now? And going back to corporate, going back to work, getting a job, and bringing an income, like it was like a no-brainer. And asking that question let me let go of that resentment I was feeling towards my husband and that I was building up this thing that really shouldn't have been a thing. So, like getting curious. And then finally, what could be good about this? What could be good about this situation? So it's never like the circumstances that we're in, but it's our response to them. It's how we choose to see things, it's how we choose to interpret things. So when you can get curious, you can start to see things in a different light. So, what could be good about going to corporate? And it was like, okay, having a steady paycheck, having health insurance, going, this was not a positive at the time, but it actually became one, but going back into the office to see have that camaraderie with people. Moving on, there is a belief that I hold that also helps me get through this. And that is everything is happening for me. It takes some time to get back, like you have to feel all the fields and you have to question and you have to get curious. You can't just, well, for me, I can't just get into everything is happening for me until I kind of go through these other processes. But it is a belief that I hold. And so whenever I finally got through all of the emotional state that I was in and really got to a place of calm, whenever I open that up, that everything is happening for me, whenever I hold on that belief, it opens things up. So you can start to ask questions like, what is it? What is it that I that I need to learn that will help me on this journey? It gives you access to more expansive ways of thinking and it allows you to pull the benefit from the situation now. It allows you to make peace with the situation. Because if you have any sort of growth mindset, whenever you look back on a hard time, if you had things that didn't go according to plan, if you had things that were really troublesome or upsetting or awful or whatever it is, given enough distance and space, typically you can look back and say, Oh, I had to go through that to get me X. I had to go through that so I knew how to stand up for myself. I had to like whatever it is, we can typically find some sort of silver lining or some sort of lesson in our hard times or see how lessons are redirections, our setbacks are redirections. Our setbacks are only setbacks because of the story that we're telling ourselves, not if we could see the big picture. So believing that everything is for me and having that belief, it allows me to look at the situation and say, Well, okay, this is obviously not the end of my journey. There is something left for me to learn. There is something that I need that will benefit me and my purpose on this path. And that's why I am in this situation. That's why I can make peace with right now. And so, like, whenever you do that, things open up. Your way of thinking, your creativity, your expansiveness, like all of that opens up. And just think about that put me in such a better position to go and find a job that I'm so pleased with. Find a job that is really everything that I had belief in in that moment, that there is something left for me, that what I'm doing is exciting to me, that that's available, that this is a piece of my journey that is yet to unfold. And so it's not the story that I was telling myself about being a fraud. It's not the story that I should be embarrassed about having to go back to work. It's not the story that I have to be pissed off at my husband because he's holding us accountable to what we agreed to. So it opens, it just opens things up. And then getting back to that opening quote from Eckhart Tolle, accept it as if you chose it. Whenever you do that, so obviously you can't get there straight from being angry and pinching off feelings and just kind of pushing them down and not feeling them, not getting curious, not having this bigger belief, not seeing a bigger picture. Like it's hard to really accept a situation if as if you chose it, whenever you don't go through those other processes first or something similar. But I want to tell you, as soon as I accepted that job, the way that my behavior immediately changed, immediately changed, even though my circumstances had not changed. Like I still had the same amount of money in the bank, I still had the same bills coming up, I still like everything else was the same in that present moment, except that I accepted a job. And the way that my behavior shifted, the way that there was this relief in my brain, I scheduled a massage that I had had a gift certificate for since Mother's Day for like months before. So, like all of these things, they didn't feel available to me, which just revealed that I was dealing, obviously, with my own shit around money still. Even though I've done so much work on money mindset, on learning to receive, on charging, on worth, on all of the stuff that has come up for me, uh, like in this entrepreneurial journey. Like, I thought that I was good. But as soon as I accepted the job, I just watching that to where I'm like, well, isn't that interesting? Because nothing really had changed yet. But all of a sudden I felt free to do these things that I was not allowing myself before that, which obviously says to me that there's still more work to do around mindset and money and all of those things. So, along with accepting it as if you choose it, you need to choose stories that support you. You can find the truth in something. Like you're not lying to yourself, just focus on the stories that support you and get lined up energetically behind what you're accepting. It just helps things fall into place. So when I accepted the job, whenever I was like, okay, I've made peace with this. There are good things that are going to come from this. This is how it is, it's that acceptance and going into a situation as if that is exactly what you want to do, the way that that opens up. And the way that that opened up for me was I found a job that I really, really enjoy, that I'm really good at, but also it challenges me in ways that are really exciting. Like I'm expanding my skills and areas that I'm interested in, and I can see how they can translate to my bigger plans down the road with my own business, the things that I'm learning, the things that I'm putting into practice. And then also I'm just really happy right now. It is a lot doing a full-time job and podcast and growing the way that I want to grow, all of those things. So it is a lot, but I'm happy. And had I stayed in that initial energy of I don't want to job, I'm pissed off, I don't want to go back to work, I think it would have been a really different story of where I ended up had I not gone through this process. So I really just wanted to share that with you and hope that that helps in some sort of way. And if there's anything that I can do for you, just shoot me a DM over on Instagram. That is where I am. Yeah. Hope you guys have a great week.