Being Your Job

Simon Sinek helped change my attitude. Here's how:

When I was at my steady job last night there was one particular hour that got exceptionally busy. The top of each hour and sometimes the half hour are called 'flips' because this is when all the rooms can potentially open as one massage ends and another massage is being prepped to begin. However many rooms a clinic has means that many clients coming out as the same amount are simultaneously going in. Managing the flow of this time is critical to for the most therapeutic experience to every guest and I take it very seriously. One client took notice and as I juggled multiple clients and directed them to their appropriate therapists while answering questions from all fronts this client pointed out how amazed he was at how I was handling everything that was happening in what was really a matter of seconds.

The next hour came and this same client checked out with me and brought to my attention again how amazed he was at how I had handled the influx of client and therapist dilemmas, navigated significant concerns and made each person feel valued, even if I had to let them know they would get my undivided attention as soon as I helped clients and therapists connect. Everything was chaotically smooth. I thanked the client for noticing and I lightly passed it off something I learned to do early since I had worked in medical my entire life and since I started working after school at 14 in a medical office I thrived in environments that require quick-thinking, triage skills and optimum client and patient care.

This morning I woke up still thinking about this client and how he was so impressed watching me that he mentioned AFTER his hour session went by. This means he was thinking about it during a session for HIM. Then I signed in to Facebook to see this video in my Facebook feed by Simon Sinek addressing the quote I took a screen shot of and shared above. I remember when he shared this quote and I remembered feeling defensive but something shifted in me regardless and after listening to his idealistic explanation I figured it out...

If you don't love your jobA little video to comment on the quote I posted last week - “If you don’t plan on doing your job forever, than why are you doing it now?"

After this quote I chose to step into my role at work in a more grateful way. Instead of resenting the fact that I no longer made what I did before the economy crashed I am grateful I have a job and a manager that cares about being a leader so I decided to ask him for more coaching and as a true leader he jumped at the chance. My sales numbers have been higher than they've been since I've worked there for 2.5 years. I enjoy BEing at work every day and after watching this video I realized it's because this quote helped me realize that I have the choice to BE who I am wherever I work.

My goal is to work with all sizes of companies to be available help any employee going through various types of crisis, ideally as part of a Wellness Program the company plans on creating or has already. My manager has even made comments that he knows when I show up to work because he hears the conversations shift to asking for guidance on a significant dilemma someone is going through. From Millennials to Baby Boomers my co-workers all see me the same and refer to time with me as "therapy". My co-workers can truly 'show up' to do their work once they've had the opportunity to process something painful they are going through or get a fresh perspective on a frustration they have from work or not. They feel a sense of calm and peace after visiting with me for a few minutes and then we step into our assigned roles and everyone's numbers improve and the bottom line does too. When I work at different clinics I get messages asking when I will be back to their clinic because they miss me.

You see, as I decided to own where I'm at right now with a sense of gratitude and seeing it as an opportunity to become better at whatever it was I needed to be 'better' at, I began working on my dream in the process. Working on my ultimate goal has shifted my mentality so significantly that I am clear not only on what I want to do with the rest of my life but how I am able to start TODAY. The client noticing that I thrive in high pressure, that I can remain grounded in a crisis and remain incredibly focused and efficient in chaos and make sure that every single person I interact with leaves feeling heard, validated, and cared for only solidified that. Even if, on the outside - my title - isn't the job I plan on doing forever, HOW I do my job, being consistent in WHO I am when I'm at work or not, and WHY I show up the way I do every single day means that ultimately I AM doing what I plan on doing the rest of my life.

Healthy and Unhealthy Vulnerability

You will hear me discuss different words and concepts that have both positive and negative attributes and this blog will address vulnerability. Many words are interpreted by different people in different ways and typically it's with a myopic lens because their frame of reference is just as limited as mine or anyone else's. We all grow up and live in environments that favor a particular view on a word such as vulnerability, judgement, and ego to name a few. The thing is though, these words carry with them a vibration and depending on how big these words have been in your life you can feel an immediate response when hearing or reading them. Read and ponder each word individually and tune in to your breath and body as you do so and then notice your thoughts. Do you feel defensive? Is your mind flooded with opinions or stories around any of the words? Do you feel tension or a release of tension anywhere? I definitely have opinions and tension when I see or hear these words thrown around; mainly because the English language seems to limit a lot of words that are more complex than we give them credit for, 'love' being the biggest example for me.

My parents came to visit me the other day and my mom said something that keeps spinning around and around in my mind. My mother said that for years, as I struggled with my romantic relationships my father would go back to the same observation every time they would visit me and that was that I was so vulnerable. Now that word continues to hang in the center of my mind like a brilliant chandelier covered in dust and I'm trying to reach it to clean it off. Terry Crews hasn't helped with my current fixation. His vulnerable and viral videos about his porn addiction (Dirty Little Secret Series) really got me started before my parents visit and to illustrate my point I'm going to put gender aside (please go with me on this) and use him and myself as an example of the opposite ends of the spectrum / vibration of the word vulnerability.

If you have seen my YouTube channel then you know how I have struggled for years with Love Addiction and that has affected my life in a major way. Recognizing when you are obsessing over an idea of someone or a fantasy of what your romantic life should be can be crippling, especially when the realities of life come in and you feel nothing but terror as your dreams (fantasies) are dashed and there's another human in the room with you, not Cinderella or Prince Charming - not that we are all quite that naive but you get my meaning; there are various levels of delusion we put ourselves through in order to believe we can have "that kind" of love, whatever "that kind" means to each of us. So, when my hopes and dreams feel betrayed I withdraw, I feel sorry for myself and that has either forced the man I'm with to try to reach me, to the point of violence because of his own unaddressed needs, or with other men they choose to abandon me - or it feels that way to me - when in reality they see my imbalanced expectations and run OR they are just plain self-centered and take off until I get my head straight and then they are back again to enjoy only the best parts of me -see Emotionally Unavailable Love Avoidant.  By now I'm hoping you can see how I can become vulnerable in an unhealthy way. From my perspective I continued to feel more and more victimized and used. To be honest, I contributed a great deal to this cycle because I became desperate to feel and see the love I had fixated on in my mind since I was young.

Now to go back to what my parents had brought up about my vulnerability, the observation is a profoundly important one because healthy vulnerability is empowering not only to one's self but to others - back to Terry Crews. Terry Crews is able to share his story as an observer of his former self in a way. He is not attached to the drama but he shares it in a way that helps him to be compassionate and understanding of his former self while recognizing what brought him to that point and how to never again fall back into the cycle that brought him there. It would be safe to say that he is no longer a victim of his addiction and he has emerged a better person for doing the work and facing it. This is an important point too though, it took vulnerability at his lowest point to admit he had a problem at all and that vulnerability is why he has come so far.

Now speaking only as a woman who lived her life in an unhealthy state of vulnerability I attracted and was attracted to men who, whether they realized it or not, felt the desire to "rescue" me. They were struggling with their own unmet needs, their own fantasies and that is what attracted us. When two people meet when they are both in an unhealthy state of vulnerability then that unhealthy state begins to grow and expand just as much as two people in a healthy state of vulnerability can grow and expand together. Sex was often what the men would hide behind to keep from becoming too emotionally intimate and I used sex to try to get them to be emotionally intimate. I have learned that this dynamic or how it shows up isn't exclusive to either gender as many Millennials are confiding in me what they are going through.

Being mindful of how we use the word and show up in vulnerability is key. When I was in an unhealthy state vulnerability, just needing to be loved by a man so bad, I allowed myself to be taken advantage of; I was blind to the cycle I was in and began to wonder if all men where the same when really, all people who are still in that state are the same. And what healthy person is going to risk their own health to step into that? When we grow and become healthier people we take great care in what we expose ourselves to whether it be physical, emotional, mental or spiritual. Now I'm working on being the healthy vulnerable; letting go of any attachment to my story or how I have identified myself in any role that made me feel victimized and using what I have experienced and learned in an empowering way for myself first and hopefully others in the future.