sudoshakes

Being a PM type role, I feel constantly pressured to show I am not one of the worthless ones. People go in assuming you are an asshole useless empty suit and it takes so much work to build a reputation you are not every time you move groups or teams.

/SMH

I hate loving what I do, but knowing I am surrounded by people failing to serve the people we say we exist to serve.

Not sure what this has to do with the price of tea there

I have been using the daily stoic every day this year. It has been timely because I had major back surgery where my spine was fused and I have titanium hardware in my spine.

I suffered back pain for 17 years before finally relenting and having the surgery, because pain had gotten so bad I could not sit to work.

One thing that I have searched for as I went through the healing process over the last 5 months has been a way to not replay the anger and sadness inspiring events over and over. I was in pain, sure. I had legitimate complaints ( to include losing feeling in parts of my groin and legs), but I had control over how I chose to live in it, or through it.

I caught myself doing this thing before stoicism, where I would take a conversation or an event that made me upset, and relive that conversation or encounter in my mind. Physicians lying to me. Back surgery causing me harm than good. Malpractice lawyers being lawyers. People at work minimizing my pain, while I stood for 9 hours a day due to not being able to sit.

The list was getting so long!

So I tried something.

I remind myself that emotions are felt, and owned, and ask 2 questions to help me own them to motivate me or let them pass like water over a rock.

“Is your {strong emotion} adaptive or maladaptive? Is it helping you to take action ( like find another doctor who doesn’t lie), or is it just defeating you?”

This helped me really evaluate if I was the only one being harmed by my reliving these things long after they happened, or if I was finding helpful use in my feeling to get to something more.

When it was not helpful, I let myself experience it, and then after 5 minutes, said out load, “they can’t feel your feelings, you don’t need to replay them to be seen”.

It seems obvious and so elementary, but it changed my world and how much I was carrying around. I’m still broken, but I am not further burdened by my own energy being wasted reliving emotional events I can just let wash over me.

Not sure how I feel about a place that puts a radiographic source in a room with windows.