Hello fantastic coaches,

I have been really working on the concept of “Arriving at Happy Before I Leave” for a solid year now with respect to my job. I have brought it to many coaching sessions, bored my peer coaches to death about it, and have written all through my journal about it. I recognize that I am occupying somebody else’s dream job and that other people’s thoughts about it are different than mine.

I am working on building my own dream career – my coaching business. The pathways in my brain are so well grooved with negativity toward my job (14 year long grooves) that during my thought download today, it surprised me to uncover a new (and even more negative) thought about it: I am afraid to let go of the negative thoughts about the job because if I do I may run the risk of developing Stockholm Syndrome. I genuinely believe it to be an abusive relationship where this agency is my abuser. This thought made me feel physically nauseated and I burst into tears.

I am now curious on whether it is simply not useful or whether I should finally listen to it since even with intentional positive thoughtwork, this new thought is the most negative yet. When thoughts cause physical nausea is it just a feeling or is it crossing into something more than just a feeling? I now have chronic stress-induced eczema.

I don’t want to give up on really learning the concept of “Arriving at Happy Before I Leave” if I haven’t yet cracked it. Intellectually I understand that my thoughts are extremely negative about something that others’ thoughts could be extremely positive. I don’t want to become better in this job. I have always believed it to be a waste of my natural talents, strengths, passions and abilities, and I have blamed the job for that. This is ridiculous because it isn’t the jobs job to figure that out for me or mold to my particular self. If I believe this, why would I want to try to be happy in my current job/circumstance?

Or is it just the knowledge that I can chose to be happy with the income that it provides, that is the only reason I am here for now, and that is okay? Perhaps leaving to better utilize my natural talents, strengths, passions and abilities is leaving “Because I Want To”… Somehow there is added awareness as I’m typing all this out with the intention of sending it to you. There is extra power and wisdom in my current thought process with this which is interesting. Happy is only for me & my health and I’m making it much worse by choosing stress and negativity. I have believed I will arrive at actual & natural happy (not thoughtwork-required happy) when I get to be full time in my business and get to spend my time capitalizing on my strengths that are underutilized in my current position.

I am certainly expecting the 50/50 in my business for sure, but I am also expecting to be naturally happy to be doing something that naturally ignites me. But if I can cultivate the thought work-induced feeling of “ignited” now and start leaning into it, it would feel better and would probably make it easier to be here and a better, more creative space from which to build my business.

I want to learn how to better manage my stress now so I do not carry that into my business and I want to place more intention on having fun. I have been trying to have more intentional fun because I haven’t for a very long time. My well-worn grooved brain still delivers to me that it is the fault of the job.