…but might be your responsibility.
For many of us, surviving is pretty tough right now — financially, emotionally, in terms of mental and physical health, maintaining relationships and community connectedness, keeping alive the spark of passion and joy.
There’s a lot of pressure.
Most of us feel it.
All of us see how the pressure impacts on other people.
Stress. Anxiety. Depression. Illness. Overwork. Overwhelm. Fractured family dynamics. Social dysfunction.
Pressure.
Perhaps you know people who have broken under that pressure.
Perhaps you’ve broken.
Some years ago, I did.
Looking for ways to survive two approaches are often suggested.
The first says: ‘it’s not your fault. Someone else is to blame.‘ That way you just shrug and get to feel sorry for yourself, and powerless.
The second says: ‘you are responsible for your own experience’; ‘mindset is everything’; ‘create your own future by manifesting it into existence’.
This sounds empowering. It contains some truth, but is not complete. It privatises suffering and struggle — as if what’s happening outside of us is somehow a natural phenomenon that can’t be changed.
It’s useful to those who run the systems we struggle in if we believe those systems are unchangeable: ‘that’s how the economy works’, ‘that’s ‘human nature’’, ‘that’s democracy’; ‘that’s life’, ‘there’s no alternative’. That’s why ‘mindset’ work is so dominant in the coaching world – it does not challenge the system we all work within.
Almost every system we work in is human-created. Almost all can be human-altered.
Very little is fixed and unalterable.
It might suit those who enjoy power over us if we believe their power is inevitable. That doesn’t make it true.
However, if we claim the struggles we each face are purely someone or something else’s fault, something that’s done to us, we deny our own responsibility and agency.
Doing work on yourself can, and clearly does, transform life. It’s a game-changer
Faced with overwhelming pressure or toxic situations, reconcile these two responses.
They’re not contradictory, they’re complementary:
1. Work on surviving better. Develop the mental discipline to break overwhelm into manageable tasks; stop doing what doesn’t need to be done; see what you can change within a specific situation so it becomes less toxic; become present — replacing the constant thoughts of ‘what if’ with connection to ‘what is.’ When you’re struggling to survive a toxic system, protect yourself from its poison.
but also:
2. Decide a strategy to leave a toxic situation altogether. You’re not here to spend your life-force trying to survive broken, inhuman and life-destroying systems. Get out. Find something better. Start anew in a fresh, nourishing place. New job. New career. New community. New (or revived) passion.
If you only do 1), you’re accepting the system’s right to poison you.
If you only do 2), you’re denying your own responsibility and agency.
Do both.
Put bread on your table however you must in the short-term. Ssearch for healthier, more sustainable ways to live in the long term.
Every system can be changed, or left behind.
You have power over both your inner and outer life.
Do it before you break and have to focus all your power on the simple act of slowly putting the pieces of you back together.