{"id":831,"date":"2009-08-16T17:51:05","date_gmt":"2009-08-17T00:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sarahdopp.com\/blog\/?p=831"},"modified":"2009-08-16T17:55:19","modified_gmt":"2009-08-17T00:55:19","slug":"the-answers-show-up-when-you-stop-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/2009\/the-answers-show-up-when-you-stop-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"The Answers Show Up When You Stop Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"
Heads up, this content is 17 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.<\/div>

When I realized it was becoming time for me to leave Cerado, I gave them three months notice. I spent the first month second-guessing that decision and trying to figure out how I could rearrange my contract and stay. When I finally confirmed the choice, I promised myself that I’d spend the second month freely exploring what matters to me and what I might be looking for next, without biasing that thinking with actual “real world” opportunities and limitations. And then I’d get practical in the third month. <\/p>\n

Yesterday was the last day of the Month Two, and I wasn’t feeling very confident that I had unlocked enough answers. I was getting stuck on the tension between “How can I be happy?” and “How can I be productive?”, and mostly just tried to pass the time by sleeping a lot.<\/p>\n

Magically, though, sometime around 1am last night, I gave up on sleeping and started writing. And a month’s worth of half-answered questions and quickly-scribbled post-it notes of wisdom finally clicked into place.<\/p>\n

The answer is that I already have<\/em> all the answers. I know exactly<\/em> what’s right for me and what’s not, what I should be doing next and what I shouldn’t, what matters to me and what doesn’t. I just can’t hear those answer while I’m thinking, while I’m distracted, or while I’m trying to numb myself. And it just so happens that I spend most<\/em> of my day thinking, distracted, or numb — habitually. Intentionally, in a way, to avoid those answers. Because accessing them is actually scary as hell. <\/p>\n

I can thank Hugh MacLeod<\/a>, Kate Bornstein<\/a>, John T Unger<\/a>, and a few other key smart folks for giving me enough post-it notes of wisdom to finally piece together why<\/em> it’s so scary: I’m still very dependent on receiving approval from the people I care about. Or rather, I’m terrified of their negative judgments. <\/p>\n

Sort of.<\/p>\n

This narrative’s admittedly a little old for me — I’ve had to smash through the “who I’m supposed to be” walls a number of times already for the sake of my own survival, and miraculously I didn’t lose anyone I cared about in the process. Some relationships did end up shifting, but it was usually to a place of greater respect. And yet somehow, the fear of becoming an embarrassment, a burden, or someone unworthy of love and respect as the result of doing what feels most right for me still creeps in and changes my behavior — enough to give me plenty of excuses to avoid-like-hell the activities that clear my head and let me see what’s next for me. I’m talking about little acts like having my coffee before I check my email, more intentional things like meditation or exercise, and gestures as basic as letting myself fall asleep without aid or a movie in front of me.<\/p>\n

I don’t need to think my way through this transitional period. I need to stop<\/em> thinking, clear my head, and hold onto the wisdom that doing what feels right<\/em> is worthwhile, even when it takes me further away from what’s safe.<\/p>\n

(Easy…. right? *snort*)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heads up, this content is 17 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.When I realized it was becoming time for me to leave Cerado, I gave them three months notice. I spent the first month second-guessing that decision and trying to figure out how I could rearrange my contract and stay. When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-story","category-the_creative_life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":843,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions\/843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}