Leaving safety

Taking a risk is what keeps us alive. Leaping – leaving behind the familiar – may not come natural to us. But a wise guy I know told me that he never met anyone who regretted making life-changing decisions such as moving from one job to another, one career to another, when it was only fear which kept them where they were.

I am fascinated by the process of decision-making in such situations. What keeps someone in an unsatisfying situation for years? The fear of making a mistake? The fear of the unknown? The fear that faraway hills are green and they will be just as dissatisfied elsewhere? It can be easier to stay and complain than to take the leap of faith in oneself, take responsibility for one’s own life and head into the unknown. It can be hard to believe that security is only real when it relies on oneself. Giving up the security of a role, income, etc. often leads to excitement, adventure, an expansion of consciousness and a life better lived.

‘Time, gentlemen, time’  as they may cry in pubs when it is time to clear the premises. Knowing the time to go, to move on, to leap into the dark.

Having lept, of course, things will not necessarily fall into place right away. You have left behind one synthesis for another – but the other may still be barely born. Financially you may take a hit – after all isn’t it that which so often keeps us in dissatisfying situations to begin with. But remember your resolution: if you only had a short time to live, you wouldn’t have spent it doing what you were doing. So do now what you want to do, see, explore, be, achieve before you die. Today is the day for that.

You have stepped up to the plate. You have risked failure. Whether you succeed or not doesn’t matter in the end. What matters is that you are alive. You have leapt. You have trusted yourself and the universe.

Creation can be a messy thing. Form takes a while to take shape. The world wasn’t built in a day. But create. Create something true and beautiful and worthwhile and fun. Dance. Express. Sing. Write. Focus on what you want. We’ll be pushing up daisies sooner than we think. Laugh. Detach. Be thankful.

Anger

Anger is a tough nut. It is neither right nor wrong. Anger can fuel us. Many an injustice in human history has been righted by justifiable anger. Even the holy books record their heroes being angry, such as Jesus taking up a whip and chasing merchants from the Temple. It’s what we do with our anger that matters. First, though, we need to be aware of it. We need to have an inner radar which alerts us to anger brewing within us. Once we cop on that we are angry, we then need to try to discern what we are annoyed about. Sometimes the ‘presenting’ issue isn’t the real issue. For instance, if I find myself snapping at my children it is often that I was angry beforehand and it’s important that we trace back to the original source. Happily I’m of an age that I readily apologise to my children and I’ll say: ‘Sorry. It’s something else I’m annoyed about.’

Now that we backtrack to the original cause of our disquiet, irritation, displeasure, annoyance – all politer words for the one emotion of anger – we can at least deal with the actual issue. We need to deal with our anger or it will deal with us. We need to have our anger or it will have us. We need to own it or it will own us.

Some people are irredeemably irritating to work with. They will never change. I refer again, as I think I did before, to a gorgeous piece of calligraphy on a simple card that I have on the wall of my office. One line says: ‘Have nothing to do with people who put you down, depress you or say you cannot do it.’ (The only attribution is ‘Your Philosophy’)

Life is too short to become embroiled with dysfunctional people.  And yet why do so many people remain in relationships, whether personal or professional, with people who do just that: depress them, put them down and say they cannot do it? It is surely fear, a bedfellow of anger. We may fear what may happen if we walk away. We need to have faith in ourselves. I have walked away from situations in the past that cramped me, depressed me and disrespected me. We can but speak our truth. And if no change results, we need to trust ourselves enough to walk away.