Changemakers Lab Module 4 - Setbacks, Sacrifices and Self-Worth

I feel like my career trajectory shapeshifts every decade or so, and starts moving down new paths. As someone who deals fairly wellwith change, I believe I have shapeshifted and gone with the flow. Bruce Lee once said, Be like water, my friend. 

All the times I have been water, failure has been a teacher, setbacks have made me stronger. As trite as it sounds, flowing like water really works. 

All those times that I have resisted the change, I ended up drained of energy, deeply unhappy and unable to see the way forward with clarity. 

After the first 12 years of my career, I quit my position in a leading dance company (where I could have stayed and continued to get complacent with my art), as there was no more room left for me to grow. I left the country to continue higher studies in dance and performance and had to start from scratch when I came back.  After the next decade, I shut down a fairly successful studio, closed down a professional dance company and decided to focus on independent arts work within the realm of social impact. At this point, I did get raised eyebrows. However two months after I went independent, the world as we know it went haywire. Something in me breathed a sigh of relief. Some Universal alignment had led me down this path of what most people around me called a failure, but this decision protected me and ensured that the hard life that was to follow over the next two years was not compounded by the necessity of having to run an entrepreneurial venture in an unprecedented and unstructured field. 

So yeah, sometimes "failure" can be great! It helps you dodge a curveball. Setbacks are beneficial - they allow you to slow down and see with clarity. Sacrifices teach you humility and  the necessity of staying grounded (of course within boundaries, and only if it feels right to you.)

Self-worth can be a tricky word, feeling and skill to navigate. And failures sometimes tend to activate that little voice in your head - you are not good (strong, skilled, experienced etc. - you get the gist) enough. Its important to learn when to whack that little voice down like a little mole, and when to allow it to come out, do its thing, listen to it and then say goodbye to it. 

Something I have begun to do is this, I really have a conversation with this mole.

And for every not enough word that comes up, I counter with an adjective that describes why I AM enough! It works! (Most of the time ;))