The Dangers of Optimism

I know what you’re thinking. Wait, what ? I thought I was supposed to see the bright side of everything ?! Stay with me here…..

I’m talking to all you go-getting hard chargers. The ones who like to power through life no matter what happens. You tell yourself that you are strong and no matter what, you will overcome. You are intelligent, insightful and great at rationalizing feelings. You can easily tuck them into neat and convenient little boxes.

In certain instances, you are so deep in denial that you have even tricked yourself into the fact that you ARE ok. Because too many people count on you for you not to be ok right? You don’t “have time to deal with this right now”, secretly thinking that’s enough for the problem to go away.

I know you. I am you.

And I’m here to tell you that’s its ok to not always be ok.

At the end of 2014 I went through something hard. Really, really hard. Like a flip your life totally upside down type of situation. So what did I do? I did. And I did A LOT.  I uprooted my life, traveled extensively and chose to live out of suitcases (read more about it here http://jessicahetherington.com/hello-world/) . I was determined to tie up that bad chapter of my life in a nice box with a pretty romantic bow and be done with it. Wouldn’t that be nice ?! Well it didn’t work that way. I, like all of us, am and always will be a work in progress.

I learned the hard way that there is a balance between being and doing that should not be ignored.

That’s the thing with personal development. It never stops. Because life never stops. Things change and the idea is to live your best life given the circumstances you have today. That’s all we can do.

So, I’m not telling you to stop being grateful and to stop seeing the silver lining in situations. No, don’t ever lose that about yourself as it will take you far. What I am telling you is to be aware when you are distracting yourself from an issue that needs to be addressed. Be aware of the very fine line of being appropriately grateful and when you are straight up repressing and suppressing.  Can you live through it? Sure you can. But know that repressed emotions influence every aspect of our lives. Decisions, relationships, our views on ourselves are all affected by repression. Walking around with repressed feelings is like have a low grade fever at all times that can reach boiling points with negative outcomes.

Just because I am a coach does not mean I have this whole life thing figured out. What I do know is that I have lived a bunch of experiences that I believe translates into helping others. Coaching isn’t always about forward movement because the truth is, life happens and sometimes you just need to sit with it. You need to sit with the gut wrenching anxiety of the unknown and process the bad that inevitably happens in life.

So when something hard happens in life, I encourage you to actually say the words “I’m not ok”out loud to someone. Maybe it’s someone in your life you trust, or maybe you hire someone like a therapist or coach who is trained in the skill of processing. Either way, just do it.

Recognize that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is just be .