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Moving On Can Be Challenging – It Doesn’t Have To Be Hard

Personal Development, Reinvention, Vocation | 0 comments

Moving On Can Be Challenging – It Doesn’t Have To Be Hard

Making a change and moving on from any endeavor has its challenges. Fundamentally, when you’ve been pretty much totally immersed in anything for a while, it can be difficult to envision new possibilities. Or see how what you’ve done translates to something else. There are also stories of those who don’t make a successful transition, who never discover what more there may be for them or create a plan to get there, and flounder from one disappointment to another. You can avoid that path.

Get Support To Get Through The Rough Parts

Online magazine, The Sportster.com recently published an article called “15 Pictures Of McKayla Maroney During And After Her USA Gymnastics Career.” It featured the transition of the multiple gold medal USA gymnast who was a member of the famed Fierce Five team from the 2012 Summer Olympics.

After that thrill of victory, or perhaps as part of the agony of getting there, Maroney was embroiled as a primary figure in the case against former Olympic team doctor Larry Nassar. In January of 2018, he received the empassioned “I just signed your death warrant” sentence of 40-125 years in prison after a trial that revealed more than 265 girls and women, including other Olympians, had come forth with claims he molested them.

While at first, this may not seem like a story you can relate to your work and life, read on.

Getting to a place of success takes a lot of hard work. It may be a labor of love, whether in sports, business or professional practice, but it is still work. There are a lot of sacrifices. Other interests, relationship and activities get set aside. Sometimes there are serious setbacks, as Maroney’s experience exemplifies. This “challenges” part probably also applies to you in one way or another.

Fleeing From Or Running Toward?

Considering a move in a new direction can be based on challenges that are physical, emotional, or just the daily grind finally taking its toll. When you’ve reached that point of wanting something different from work and life, it can lead to what I call the “Fleeing From rather than Running Toward” syndrome. You may be moving at the same speed and in the same direction, but the energetic nature of the two are vastly different.

In Maroney’s case, the physical grind of being an Olympic gymnast is time limited in itself. She also had significant reasons to want to flee that world, and only compounded its difficulty if strengthening her sense of courage, determination and grit. Like her situation, there may be seriously good reasons to flee even as you finish something you set out to accomplish.

But better to get help and make a plan when the inklings to go first arise. It makes getting through easier and having something that pulls you forward despite what challenges exist.

Maroney was only a teenager when she rose to global gymnastics acclaim. At only 21, she was thrust into becoming a different sort of role model for women and girls as a voice for the #MeToo movement relating her pivotal story of abuse at the hands of Nassar in Tokyo when she was only 15 years of age. She is only beginning the process of discovering who she will become next and what she will do in the world, which may or may not include aspects of her first career or the inadvertent activism that was borne of necessity rather than a passionate pursuit.

Seeking Support Is A Sign Of Strength

Asking for help and allowing assistance are not often easy tasks for many, especially hard-working folks committed to personal best. But doing so is not a weakness – like thinking you “should know how” or that you have to do it all on your own might actually turn out to be.

Whenever the idea of making a change arises for you, take the time to look ahead, so you don’t find yourself later vaulting hair-on-fire away from something you’d rather not have define you. Better to start before you find yourself mired in the very thing that makes you want to flee.

If you’ve got a couple years before a pension or retirement plan vests – your version working toward an Olympic medal – you may want or need to stay through to that end. But that’s also the perfect time to methodically consider and plan what you want to run toward next. Because you may think just being free to do whatever you want is appealing, but it can lead to being scattered, lost and ultimately unfulfilled like Goldilocks in trial and error mode.

The need or desire to make a move can occur in early or mid-career, as well. Whenever the idea arises, it can take time to accomplish. Find the resources you need to design a transition toward what interests you most, when you first start thinking about it. That can save you from having to do something you’re not sure how to do in the first place, in the precious little free time you may not even have to devote to the process. That’s what makes it worth the investment.

The Benefits Of Outside Help

Getting support helps with maintaining the fortitude to speak up. That often primarily means admitting to yourself, out loud, that you’re simply ready for something new or you don’t want to be defined by your past. It eventually means finding the way to tell others. That requires being clear and confident about it yourself.

It also helps to have someone to brainstorm with, so you can try on new ideas in the process. After all, making changes is a journey not just a planned destination. There are a number of steps to take and there will be many things to respond to along the way.

Whether your journey starts in your twenties after being immersed in an athletic career, or several times after that, streamline the process to make the most of your precious life and contribute the unique brilliance that is only yours to share.

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If you would like to consider all this in a more holistic way – for your whole life – and learn how to put together a plan to make the changes for what you most prefer, move in a new direction, create a second act, design more exhilaration into your involvements, activities and relationships… it might be time for a MASTERFUL LIFE Redesign.
Learn more here: www.dollygarlo.com/services 

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