When You’re Stuck In The Pickle Jar…

Sometimes I feel stuck.  I’ve picked up a brand new career track post-cancer and some days are better than others.  Sometimes I feel like I have it all figured out and sometimes I spend weeks feeling so very stuck on something.  For a couple of weeks it was the budget and strategic planning documents that I was putting together with my board.  For another couple of weeks it was the lack of validation that I was receiving about this new career path from some important people in my life.  For yet another couple of weeks, it was a cold that just wouldn’t go away and was severely compromising my marathon training that I had so very proudly just begun.

Each time I obsessed over what was causing the trouble and what might fix it.  I spent hours and hours and hours pouring over that budget and strategic planning document.  Willing them to be just right.  I worried relentlessly about the choices I’ve made along my journey and whether creating an organization was a good fit for me.  I cursed myself and that cold while refusing to actually take care of myself emotionally, in a way that might have brought about less anxiety.  Each time I held onto my fears and doubts and hang ups as if grabbing onto them properly, not letting them slip away this time, would conquer them into submission.

Instead of embracing myself for who I am and for the process I am taking, I allowed my fear of not being enough to dominate.

Have you ever heard of the Pickle Jar analogy?  You are obsessed with a something…in this analogy that something is a pickle.  You ruminate over it, contemplating exactly how and why this pickle is necessary to your life; why your life will be so much better and complete once that pickle is yours.  Whether you actually stop and think about how much you will actually gain from having the pickle, whether that pickle will love you back, is really at the crux of the matter.  So you reach your hand into the jar and grab at a pickle.  With your fist surrounding the pickle, you try and pull both your hand and the pickled cucumber out of the jar…but your fist is too round to fit through the opening.  You must let go of the pickle in order to free your hand.

Would having the perfect budget and strategic planning documents love me back?

Do I need to be employed as an aerospace engineer to be loved and to be loving?

Does a cold mean that I am not hard working and committed?

No.  No.  No.

Let go of your doubt.  Let go of your fears.  Let go of needing everyone to agree with all of your decisions and choices.

You are enough, just the way you are.