Patience Pays - Journey to Employment - Travel Blog Entry 2

Like a cat be still

Until one-pointedness

Directs the pounce.

Patience pays.

Hold the brush high until the heart

Moves the hand.

This is art.

Judge not at all

Until the facts

Speak first.

Act only then.

All this is written.

Tej Steiner….

For some of us, especially Executive Leader types, the doing is the easy part.?It is the part that comes naturally and easily.?Doing with abandon, believing that the doing leads to controlling, and controlling leads to success, and success ultimately leads to freedom and worthiness.?Doing feels good.?It allows us to lose ourselves in the present moment, the work, and assuages our most deep- seated fears or core wounds.?It affirms that we are in control of our destiny in spite of external circumstances.

The problem with this belief and practice is that it is simply not true.?Anyone who has ever been delivered a life changing diagnosis or received news of the death of a loved one, or experienced an unexpected injury, or in my circumstance job-loss, knows this to be the case.?But still we cling to this belief and doing as westerners, individuals, and in terms of people like me, call it the ‘high-achiever’ mindset.

When I travel, I have been known to travel blog.?I find it to be a time of reflection.?The absence of work and the doing creates a void, and the void creates space, and in the space the creativity of my true self can come forward.?And so, with trepidation over receipt, I take up the keyboard and begin a travel blog of sorts describing and documenting my quest to find the right fit in terms of my next career.?Over the past four weeks, I have come to realize that this is perhaps one of the most significant journeys I have had opportunity to embark upon, and so I present my ‘travel-blog’ of the unemployed and seeking.

Today, my focus is on patience…..Like a cat be still…..patience pays.?

Patience sucks.?Patience is hard.?For the past ten years, I have not had to employ much patience at all.?I have been doing and doing and doing, and had purpose, and most importantly people to help me.?If the copier is broken, there was someone who never made me figure out how to work it myself, they would simply take care of it.?If I couldn’t get the volume on zoom to work, the IT guys would remote in without my asking to take care of it.?In fact, I realize now that the most patience I have really had to practice was waiting in a long pharmacy line, or the airport, or recently backed up grocery aisles.?But guess what?!?I solved that because I simply began using Door Dash, or Costco home delivery.?So now, thrust into a forced ‘break’ period, I am getting to ‘explore’ patience.?Or at least that is the term my therapist type friends use.

Patience is hard because it requires trust.?Trust that all is and will be ok.?It requires letting go of control, and apparently, that is just not something I am good at, along with fixing the damn copy machine.

What I want to do, is order up a job like I am a patron at Denny’s. ?"I will take:

A Senior Leadership, preferably with a C Title please – VP would be ok if needs be…

With a salary of XX$$$$

A terrific cultural fit in an organization focused on helping people.

Start date of…."

And blah, blah blah.

Unfortunately, this is not Denny’s.?Instead, I am in a place I haven’t been for the last six years of my career, actually looking for a job.?And so, I find myself on a roller coaster through the emotional spectrum of confidence and fear.?Some days I am able to relax, often through the doing of helping others or my go to of physical activity, and other days I find myself caught in the throws of panic and incessantly combing through job boards.?All this time, watching my core wounds of fear of insecurity, financial trauma, and mid-life crisis thoughts about where the heck am I going surface and bubble up. Here the anxiety sits like polluted scum on the top of a pond, foamy and tinged with rust.?Bleck.

Patience Pays……months ago, my neighbor who has become a friend told me that during really tragic times in her life, it has been the people who are acquaintances, or that are not the closest to her who have carried her through.?She said this is true because often the people who know a person intimately are at a loss for words when someone they love is in grief and they feel paralyzed.?When I first shared my experience with others two weeks ago, my closest and most trusted friends in my darkest moments, their responses scared me.?Their lack of words affirmed my worst fear, that I was no longer who I thought I was and all that I had worked for and strived for through incessant doing was for not.?Indeed, it has been the kindness of the unemployment office workers, who have so patiently and compassionately, showed me how to fill out forms, or the outreach of former employees I didn’t even know were paying attention to offer words of affirmation that have buoyed my spirits and carried me through.?

So, the growth minded me, wants to focus on the opportunity I have been given to explore humility and patience, while the doer and the fear based construct of myself combs openings and wants to scream, “Can’t you see, I am exactly what you need??Mission focused, strategic, financially astute, and more….”?And like someone put into a straight jacket at some point that construct must give up and give in, and relax into letting life lead.

While the above poem is about waiting for all threads of a tenuous and threatening situation to become clear, the most important line for me right now is; “hold the brush high, until the heart, moves the hand.”?

As I relax into the straight jacket of my current circumstance, I realize I am really at a point where dollars and title are no longer enough.?While indeed I need to take care of myself so that others do not have to, what was driving me five weeks ago has softened and as we hear the rumblings of war, ?my desires have changed.?As I look at many opportunities and they look at me, I am hopeful that I have the wisdom to let my heart be an equal partner in any opportunity.?Whether that means closer to friends and family, working for an organization I respect for their service, or a heart and head directed physician team, the heart has many faces and I am seeking one I recognize.

Some may wonder why I would share all this with you, including myself at times. I guess, at this point, this is my way of leading. Right now, this is my journey and my vulnerability, but my sense is we all have our own journey and personal battles going on every day. Increasingly, I am committed to the belief that through sharing candidly and authentically, and with kindness, we have more to gain than by hiding in blazers and suits and carrying our sundries in black structured handbags, tightly fastened so the melted lipstick and wrinkled receipts that mirror the fear and anxiety inside, are kept tightly away from scrutinous eyes. Instead of hiding until things are perfect, I am dumping the contents of my bag right out on the table and in so doing perhaps inspiring others to share more of themselves as well.

Patience pays……and is hard.

By the way, we really don’t read enough poetry anymore.?If you would like to remedy that in your own experience, you can find my friend’s down to earth book of poems written over a lifetime of significant journeys at www.tejsteiner.com.

?