What to Do When Life Seems Stagnant
You’ll never know how much “pause” you need until you’ve got so much work to do that pressing the brakes can only lead to disaster.
One guy I met at Bumble told me about his life being stagnant at the moment. He belongs to the travel industry, which isn’t going full steam due to current events.
His sentiments reminded me of my younger years, when I was still figuring out if I could really make a career out of web design, and the ratio of 50 cover letters to zero client responses debunked my “Pareto Principle”: that sending out 20 applications will finally lead me to one interested client.
Disclaimer: Zero is exaggerating. I’ve received a few responses out of 50, really, but all of them are rejections. For my 20:4:1 theory, they don’t really count.
Night Time
There’s this book that holds a special place in my heart and there’s this part that changed my outlook in life during dark times:
We wouldn’t say that “business is dull” with the plants during the night or that they are not receiving their good [sunlight]. On the contrary, we have many times seen a transformation through the night. A plant that had seemed almost dead for lack of moisture and the ability to draw from the earth the required elements will be crisp and strong and very desirable in the morning!
… When “nighttime” comes to us, we should use it as a quiet time of great help.
When life seems dark, I go back to this excerpt and repeat an inner mantra to convince myself that everything happens for a reason and “it’s always for me, never against me”.
Things happen for a reason. I know some people who take this as truth in a different approach: that adversities happen for a reason, and the reason is because they are not deserving– to pay back for the wrong they have done in the past.
I am in no place to judge other people’s beliefs. If it serves them well, then what they believe in may have served its purpose. Our motivations, no matter how ridiculous, can sometimes propel us in unexpected ways. Yet I lean on the sustainable and less toxic understanding that if nothing is happening, then I’m not ready. I need to grow, this pause is for me.
Just because you want it badly doesn’t mean you’re ready for it
A better job, a higher salary, a closed deal…
Just because you want or need it doesn’t mean you’re ready to receive and appropriate it. Sometimes you need to expand your “container”, your capacity, in order to receive what’s about to come.
If there’s a hiatus, start asking “what am I lacking?” and make room for growth. Use this time to read relevant books, communicate with people, improve your health and plan how you’ll manage things if ever you succeed.
Don’t lose hope. Know that the more stagnant you are, the bigger the opportunity that’s about to come. It’s just waiting there for you to make room for it!
