I recently attended a work retreat and in one session, we
started talking about employee satisfaction and someone made this comment about
another colleague:
“….they’re trapped. They can’t make the same amount of money anywhere else. They feel like they've been chewed up and spit out.”
Before I get into the actual post, I have to say that the
comment “chewed up and spit out” has always made me want to ask if it
would have been better if they’d been chewed up and swallowed. Being spit out means you might have a chance
of recovering from being chewed up, right?
Anyway, the buzzword that made my left eye twitch was “trapped”. It’s such an incendiary word that evokes
feelings of desperation and hopelessness, but it simply isn’t true. The Chilean miners were trapped, baby Jessica
was trapped, but you my friend have made a choice. It may be the choice of money over peace of
mind, but it’s a choice nonetheless. It’s
still puzzling to me when adults (particularly the 30 and over set) don’t
recognize that they make choices every single day. That includes being married, working, being a
parent – it’s all a choice. Telling yourself
you’re trapped absolves you of any responsibility you have for your own life,
your own happiness.
Things/circumstances
don’t have intrinsic meaning. They have
the meaning we assign to them. You’re
not trapped; you’ve simply assigned a negative value to your perception of the
alternatives. Leaving the job you hate
to make less money (and have peace) somewhere else isn’t necessarily an
impossible thing – you’ve only told yourself that it is.
Take sunny days for instance. Despite the wide belief, they are not
inherently good. For some, a sunny day
serves as a reminder of the worst day of their lives. That’s the meaning they’ve assigned to it. They welcome overcast and rainy days. Even
when faced with an untenable situation, you can choose how you’re going to
comport yourself in reply to the situation.
Anger and frustration, while part of the range of human emotions, don’t
have to be the defaults when facing adversity.
Gratitude and patience may even serve you better; make it easier to
think of a solution.
I just don’t find it productive to dwell on all that might be missing in my life. Usually it’s the material and
quite frankly, when I really think about it, they aren’t my heart's desire. Often, they're things that I’ve
been told that I should want, things that serves as a measure of success in the
eyes of the world. Don't get me wrong, I like stuff. It can make your life more comfortable, but things cannot bring you peace or a sense of satisfaction with
regards to your life. It’s nice to have
the latest and greatest incarnation of the iPhone, but if you have no family or
friends to talk to on it, it really is nothing more than an expensive
paperweight.
Be vigilant over the words you use to describe yourself and
your life. Words are powerful – throughout
history, rousing speeches have called men and women to action – ask Churchill,
King or Lincoln. Words make you feel
things – good or bad. Choosing them
carefully and thinking about things from the starting point of gratitude can
actually mean that you don’t feel like shit every time you have to go to work.
You aren’t trapped.
You’re grateful to have the opportunity to provide for your family. If you want more, that’s fine, no one is
stopping you from going after it. There is
a world of possibilities – a grand buffet of choices.
It’s not life’s job to tell us the meaning of our
lives. We do that every day with our
actions, with our choices.
The meaning of
our lives is what we say it is.
