Reflections

On Top of the World!

• By fannieb
• July 3, 2015
• No Comments

I can’t even describe the euphoria I felt when I woke up this morning! It’s been an amazing week. I don’t think I’ve been this excited since…… since…. I can’t remember since when.

Since the time I became an Independent Sales Director with Mary Kay? That was exciting. Building a team of consultants, branching out on my own, and becoming self employed full-time. But my motivation behind becoming a sales director, in retrospect, was because I thought it would cure me of my depression and rid me of the need to work someplace that felt oppressive to me, an escape from my unhappiness. And in the end it became its own source of pain. No, that excitement was different from the way I am feeling today.

Was it since my recent trips to Québec City? Yeah, I was excited then too. The anticipation of getting out of the country and practicing my French was thrilling. My first trip to Québec City last August was planned out of boredom with my unchanging surroundings. Since the death of my mother I had nowhere to go, nowhere to spend holidays or long weekends, so the anticipation for this trip was in being saved from the monotony that at that point was my life. Frustrated with my boss and my job and needing something to look forward to, something to ground me and keep me from doing something rash,  I planned my second trip to Québec City for April of this year. Both of these getaways were attempts to cover up feelings of discontent in my life. They were great and very much worth it, but still, in the end, merely escapes from my dissatisfaction.

Maybe I was this excited on the day I found out I was getting a new boss, a boss everyone said was wonderful, and who has been. That day I was so excited I couldn’t think straight and I couldn’t wait to tell everyone. This news was a welcome relief and in an instant the level of stress I felt at work became almost nonexistent. And yet the excitement of that fortuitous event pales in comparison to how I am feeling this morning.

How about way back in August 1991 when I started graduate business school? This is probably the closest time I felt this happy, encouraged, hopeful. Upon enrolling at William and Mary I was not scared that I would not be able to manage the work (as I had been when I started undergraduate school) and I felt that my life would change dramatically. I was able to feel the excitement of my future possibilities. And I wasn’t coming from a place of dissatisfaction, but rather the knowledge that this course was needed for me to reach my goal. Earning an MBA was the final educational step in my quest for success in business. During those two years I felt like I could change the world, like no one could stop me, which is how I’m feeling today. The excitement I felt at earning an MBA buoyed me and my enthusiasm of life until I became disillusioned with my chosen profession and began doubting myself. Nevertheless, this experience and the emotions I felt then come really close to how I’m feeling today.

Perhaps the reason it has been so hard for me to remember a time when I felt this excited is because maybe I’ve never really felt this kind of excitement before. It’s an excitement infused with anticipation for an event to unfold and filled with huge hopes for a new future, but without the underlying feeling that I’m trying to escape from something undesirable in my life. This incredible feeling is the product of my belief in a different future for myself and in a new way of life. The difference in how I feel today and have felt all week, since making my decision to attend coach training school, is that what I’m undertaking and the impacts it will have on me don’t feel like they will be temporary. It feels life-affirming, like I suddenly found a very elusive missing piece to the puzzle of my life. An essence that will bring with it something more than a momentary escape tiding me over until I need another one. It feels like I’m breaking through to a place where those kinds of  evasions are no longer the right prescription for me.  This remedy of retreat keeps me in a semblance of happiness that masks my discontent and which prevents me from experiencing true joy and profound contentedness.

Photo Credit: In Transit