by : lacylit10 Life Lessons

When Hindsight is 20/20, and the Future is Bright.

A couple of months before I quit my job, I was talking to a friend about a friend. The friend I was talking about made a big, hairy, audacious decision (I’m tweaking “BHAG“), and her life flourished afterward. I explained that is how life is supposed to go. Things are supposed to fall into place when you’re making the right decisions. Under tears, I asked, “What are the right decisions that I’m not making?” Because both my work life and my personal life had gotten much harder. 

Going into the new job in 2021, I was aware of some reservations. Ultimately, I chose to listen to my head rather than my heart. And I was semi-conscious of that decision. I was coming to terms with things in my personal life, and I didn’t feel like I could 💯 trust what my emotions were telling me.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20. And I think blaming my emotions on certain issues I was dealing with personally was an excuse. Although that, I did not realize at the time. I thought I was being logical and rational.

It’s not a secret that my dream is to be a writer. While I do not think that is my immediate next step, the job I took wasn’t going to get me closer to that goal. That, I did know. But that job was everything I had been working for, and I’m glad I took it, because I would have regretted the “what if” if I didn’t take it. (And it got me closer to realizing what I do want.)

But I heard something on Instagram the other day that perfectly summarizes the uneasiness I felt in my soul.

The magic you’re looking for is in the work you’re avoiding.

My immediate reaction was, “FFFFFFFFFFFk.” If you know what I mean. I don’t know who said it. But it eloquently states what I absolutely knew was true.

I also read:

The only thing standing between you and your goal is the story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.

Jordan Belfort

What we see online makes everything look so easy. “Just go out and do it,” they say. (From people who have already done it and are successful at it. 🙄) I think that’s what I painfully enjoy about expressing my fears and insecurities here. You may have saw me excitedly post about my new business on Instagram, but inside, I felt sick to my stomach taking that step and declaring my next move. I want you to know that. I don’t want to live in smoke and mirrors.

Taking the leap of faith to find magic comes with less in some ways and more in others. As Mel Robbins says, “Choose your hard.”

And I have reached a place where I am tired of telling myself I can’t do it. I am tired of making excuses. I am tired of listening to my head when it’s not aligned with my heart. I am tired of letting what other people project onto me infiltrate my thoughts and instill doubt when I am confident in what I can do (and will do).

It irritates TF out of me when people tell you not to wait until you’re retired to enjoy your life. When they say, “Life is too short to do things that make you unhappy.” Then you make decisions to give you that freedom, that happiness, and that fulfillment, and they’re all like, “Ohhh, are you sure you want to do that?”

For the first time in a long time, my response to them will now be a deadpan, “Yes.”

I am certain this is what I want to do. I no longer want to allow other people to instill (more and unsolicited) doubt and insecurity in my life, when they do not have the courage to make BHADs themselves. So, while I hope to shamelessly project confidence as I move forward on this venture, you’ll know my secret: that I am choosing the hard that makes my dream come true. And I am doing it with fear, every step of the way.

by : lacylit10 Life Lessons

Just a Beginner.

I don’t know if I heard this from Mel Robbins or Brendan Burchard. Actually, I might have heard it from both of them in their own ways, but essentially they said, “Never feel ashamed of being ‘Just a beginner.’ We all start somewhere.”

As I navigate through this transitional phase and consider what I truly want to do next, I keep coming back to how scary it is to put myself out there. Generally, I know what I need to do, but, in some ways, fear is holding me back from implementation. It’s not the fear of failure. It’s not even the fear of success. It’s a fear of being vulnerable. A fear of being my authentic self in a world that is alarmingly cruel.

But this statement, “Just a beginner” keeps popping back up in my head. I am just. a. beginner.

What I’m realizing, though, is that I also have an underlying fear of not being a beginner. Perhaps, to the point of self-destruction. I do not want to be seen as an expert. In life (and in farming), we have to be adaptable and flexible with all of the unexpected things that get thrown at us. It has to be acceptable to grow and change.

I got to a point in my food safety career, where people considered me an expert. And it kind of terrified me.

Expert is defined as someone having comprehensive and authoritative knowledge in a specific area. By that definition, I was an expert. But I felt like I couldn’t be wrong. I couldn’t change my mind. I put so much pressure on myself to know and be right. Always. I burned myself out and kind of resented that I was supposed to be this end-all-be-all decision-maker.

But the pressure wasn’t entirely just me putting it on myself. There was an expectation that I was supposed to take the fault for a team of people who all contributed to the decisions made. I could be held personally accountable for natural environmental conditions where causes were nearly impossible to identify. This mindset was/is entirely unfair.

And the expectation was industrywide. Since the food safety representative held the certifications that qualified them as the expert decision-maker, they were the responsible party. Seemingly, it didn’t matter that the guy signing my checks could override my recommendation. And really, that’s all it was, because I wasn’t the final decision-maker of the business.

In this regard, food safety burned me. It made me feel like having comprehensive and authoritative knowledge was a bad thing. We live in such a litigious society that people need to hold someone accountable. That most likely person was me. And as things in food safety became increasingly complex and regulated, the more scary it became to be the responsible person. So much so that it drove me to leave the field altogether.

This was my experience with being an expert. I doubt that being an expert in different areas comes with these expectations and responsibilities, but it has made me fearful of gaining too much knowledge that people don’t give me the grace to continue learning and growing and changing. Of course, I know that I cannot control other peoples perceptions and emotions, but when people are so quick to make judgments and assumptions, it’s hard to not feel fearful of being vulnerable, especially without context. And people do not consider context.

For now, I’m just going to replay the “Just a beginner” mantra and remind myself that we all start somewhere. But realistically, I’ve been expressing vulnerability in this blog for years. Apparently, it doesn’t get easier. So I will just continue to feel the fear, and do it anyway.

by : lacylit10 Life Lessons

Insecurity.

I had a conversation with a friend who said he has no insecurities.  Now, given this specific person, I get why he would think that.  He is not short on self-confidence, that is for sure. 💁🏻‍♂️ But insecurity can rear it’s ugly head in a lot of different forms.  He is confident in his abilities.  But insecurity can be driven by a lot of outside factors too. When he was unsure of the stock market, he pulled out.  If he was not confident that the market was going to perform well and reacted to the instability out of fear of losing money, is that not insecure? 

Insecure is defined as: deficient in assurance, not confident, not stable or well-adjusted.  Basically, we can be insecure about anything that we are not sure of.  If there is doubt, there is insecurity.

In any event…

It is suggested that recent life events make up 40% of our “happiness quotient.” 40%! 😳

“The biggest negative contributor to happiness is the ending of a relationship, followed by the death of a spouse, job loss, and negative health events.”

Dr. Melanie Greenberg

All of those examples constitute loss: loss of a relationship, loss of a loved one, loss of a job, loss of health.  If we look at this through the lens of COVID, we’ve lost a lot.  So if you’re feeling a little insecure during this pandemic, you are not alone!  There are so. many. things. to be unsure of during this time.

Back in February, I went to the Touchstone Central Coast Leading with Love conference where the woman behind Happier, Nataly Kogan, spoke with us.  I recently saw this on her Instagram, and I think it is a helpful reminder that there is reason for our heightened insecurity during this time.

Insecurity can also be driven by perfectionism. What Nataly outlines is the fear of not enough. And while we may not consider ourselves perfectionists, if we’ve ever fallen into the trap of not enough, it may be time to reality check our expectations and what we are measuring them up to. Even if we are measuring our expectations up to our pre-pandemic conditions, reality. check. ✅ Pre-pandemic and “amidst a pandemic” are completely different animals.

It’s okay to feel melancholy.  It’s okay to feel lonely. It’s okay to feel insecure.  We are adjusting to a new normal, give yourself time to adjust and adapt!  It’s important to find joy in little wins all the time, but even more so now.  This is uncharted territory for us all.  Be kind to others, and be kind to yourself.  This too shall pass. 🙏🏼