Living in the moment – and rediscovering Clairboyance

From burnout to presence

Promotion to numbness

So the last year has been a challenge, normally I’m an optimist. I see the best in things and can find comfort and learnings in the most difficult of situations, to borrow a term from Simon Sinek I am ‘clairboyant’. But the last year I’ve see that side of me diminish. It happened slowly without me realising. I became more cynical, more negative, more helpless. I became a victim. This doesn’t sit well with me. I also think I’m a very resilient person, with the ability to bounce-back from challenges and I didn’t seem to have the energy for that anymore.

Let me tell you what has happened. I was promoted at work, I thought this was it, I had achieved one of my life’s dreams and was on a path to fulfilment. I had a job that included a nice mix of international travel, varied role, nice colleagues, growing organisation. I should have been thrilled.  But I actually felt quite numb, I was overloaded, I did not have enough support, I was experiencing some health issues and the people that should have supported me were doing the exact opposite. I can’t speak to their motivation but they saw me struggle and chose not to offer help, they chose to let me struggle and then they became persecutors; I thought it must be me, I must try harder, I must take the feedback and find the learnings and the areas for improvement. Maybe this is what being a leader is all about. I needed to learn how to do this, right?

Alongside this we were facing challenges with obtaining the right care for my disabled step-daughter. Anyone who has experience of fighting for the right care and support will know how demoralising this is. But let me describe it briefly for those of you that haven’t yet experienced it, as a family you are facing additional challenges, the system is supposed to help reduce those, but they make it impossible to navigate, but unnecessary barriers in your way and frankly make you feel like you are asking for something unreasonable at every step. It’s horrendous. During this period we experienced horrible and biased judgement from the social workers involved, which we then complained about and that has been upheld. But the complaints process is also misery inducing and lacking in any proper closure. Imagine if they just apologised and meant it, how validating and recognising the harm caused could help those they hurt. Wishful thinking!

Back to my job, I vividly remember attending a conference in Munich, a city I’d always wanted to visit, and feeling completely numb. I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t sad, I didn’t have emotions. I just kept going, thinking it would get better. It didn’t. I had another trip planned for December to Chicago, and I was going to see my Dad en-route in Mississippi. I thought a few days with my Dad would give me the respite that I needed and it did help, but no-where near enough and I firmly had a mask of ‘everything-is-ok’ in place when it wasn’t. My stress levels were so bad that I fainted on the plane.

Fainting on a plane and crying at work

When I got back from Chicago I was regularly crying after work and occasionally at work. My mask was slipping, people were seeing I wasn’t ok and eventually I admitted to myself that I couldn’t continue, I went to my doctor and explained what was going on, he was wonderfully empathetic and agreed I had to have time off. He encouraged me to get back to the things I loved doing the things that I had neglected.

I had neglected me, so at first I had to recover, I had to reduce my stress levels. I did a lot of journalling, I gave up alcohol, I ate healthily, I did yoga, I read lots. The improvement was noticeable, I started to feel feelings again, I realised how bad I had been feeling on that trip to Munich. I still thought the situation at work was resolvable, but over the next month or so, that became clear that was unlikely. I became very obsessed about the future, I was in this limbo period and suffering a huge loss of identity. I hadn’t realised how much of my identity and my sense of self-worth had come from my career. I wanted to change this, but that was scary!

Unfortunately this sent me into a fresh state of depression and anxiety. I developed some negative thinking patterns, or maybe fell back to the earlier negative thinking. If I just try harder it’ll be ok. What I really needed to do was recognise my own self-worth right then and there. But my brain needed re-wiring.

Yoga in a field and other small miracles

I’d like to tell you a nice story of how I did that, but actually it was a very up and down ride of trying some things, seeing what worked, being knocked off course and trying again. Fast-forward to the end of May, by which time I’ve been off-work for five months, I’m flipping between excitement for all the potential new things I could do with my life and paralysing fear that I can’t do anything and it will all go wrong. Then a couple of things happened, I did a whole day of yoga in a field and loved it, and I attended a friends birthday party and danced the whole night (completely sober, much to the amazement of a couple of my friends). This made me think that no matter what, I could always dance to my favourite tunes or do yoga in a field. This sparked a thought, whilst I might be lost at the moment, I could always enjoy where I was right now. Enjoy this moment right now. This thought came and went, but the more I held on to it the better I felt.

Then we received a letter from the planning enforcement team, someone had complained that we were running a business from a residential property. I have a bike workshop in my garage, I’m a keen cyclist and this is for fixing my bikes, but it is commercial standard workshop and so we open it up to friends and neighbours and run a community workshop or hobby business from there. I’ve been doing this in various  guises since 2018. I’d checked planning laws and the guidance says incidental use does not need planning permission, so thought this was fine. Guess what, the planning enforcement team thought otherwise. This knocked me for six. I was right back to that victim state I’d been in in January. I knew I needed to tell people as I was incredibly low, I thought about going back to the doctor but instead I put a heartfelt post of social media asking for practical help. I got loads of support, I hated being that vulnerable, so much so that I’ve since hidden the post. Everyone was super supportive. And actually had practical suggestions, asking for help was the best thing I could have done even though it felt uncomfortable. Thank you friends, thank you universe.

I took some time to think about my negative thinking patterns and how I had adopted this victim mindset again, everything was out to get me. And contrasted it to when I had felt really happy, and the mindset I had then was everything happens for a reason, sometimes that reason is to learn something or to change something. My optimistic mindset or my ‘clairboyance’ mindset. Everything happens for a good reason. And so now I’m working on retraining myself to get back to that mindset. It requires effort and can be knocked, but I can chose to be clairboyant rather than accept the victimhood that was growing inside me.

I can still dance

A relevant quote has just popped up on my feed;

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them. – Washington Irving.

To me this spoke to broadening my thinking, not taking my optimism for granted and needed to do the work to see what the universe is trying to teach me.

So I don’t know what the future is for me, my career or even my hobby business. I don’t need to know, I can enjoy right here and now and I can be optimistic about the future imaging all the fun and wonderful possibilities that might happen. I am not a victim and I am not a hero. I am just me being happy and healthy right here and now and can see the wonderful possibilities in the future. I shall not waste time catastrophising and when I catch myself doing that, I will be compassionate and then remind myself I can still dance or do yoga in a field whenever I want to. I choose to be in the moment and mindset of clairboyance – and that’s enough.

Some resources that helped me

Impact coaching – I regularly have coaching with Helen, and she helps me challenge my negative thinking and catastrophising

Yoga with Adrienne – straight forward yoga on youtube

My journal (affiliate link)

The Artist Way – and morning pages (affiliate link)

I Am Sober  – app

Free Happiness – app (no longer available)

Resources created by me

Relaxation workbook (PDF download)

Guided visualisation – In the Woods