“What sorts of systems and structures may I put into place that will support me and not feel like a noose around my neck?”
What makes a system?
What makes a structure?
What makes me think of them as a negative or something I don’t want?
I love mission statements, I enjoy guidelines, what makes me feel like I’m being strangled is this:
The first time I was witness and a victim of a “according to procedure 467.3” mentality I had recently lost Marlena. I had taken on a job as a Program Manager at a home for the developmentally disabled. It was the start of my getting underpaid for my work because I was holding on by a thread and needed to keep holding on and it felt like the best I could do.
This man (The one speaking about procedures and repeatedly parroting them back to me) was a bumbling bureaucrat, former state employee. He had worked at the dreaded state hospital my mind always told “avoid, avoid, avoid” and then he did the droning on about numbers and “the state the state the state” was something of a God at that place I worked and that was a natural turn off and fear inducer for me.
I remember being sick over that stupid, didn’t pay enough job.
I remember when I was stressing out about something and Katherine jerked in my belly and I freaked out more. I was literally in a chronic state of fear, a chronic state of “I am risking the worst pain in my life in order to have something really great but damn I feel like I myself am on the verge of death all the time!”
He was tall, on the edge of portly and was losing his hair.
He wore glasses. He bent his neck when he looked down at me and droned on about whatever whatchamacallit he was worshipping.
I wonder how many times my subconscious mind said, “I will never be like that blow hard, I will never, ever EVER be like that blow hard.”
He was a caricature of a small time good ol’ boy and therefore to be avoided at all costs.
I saw him as systems and structures personified.
Note to self: this bumbling bureaucrat was NOT systems and structures personified, he was a buffoon.
- Let go of him as a representation of systems and structures – which are in place to support you – and start recreating your relationship with systems and structures which will keep your vision alive:
- spiritual practices (Gratitude, Art, Meditation, Prayer)
- timed writing daily
- a calendar to keep track of appointments and tasks for long, medium and short term
- a daily list of 5 passionate possibilities written the day prior.
These are systems that nurture and nourish.
These are structures upon which you may build your sustainable transformed life.
