This time around it's taken me by surprise. I guess because it's some years since I've been down this track of a sizeable change, and I'd forgotten how I react in such situations.
Following the closure of my furniture paint company, I have started to feel quite lost and alone. Without the busyness of planning the next promotions, managing my team, ordering supplies and keeping social media ticking along, life feels empty.
With a history of depression and anxiety, which over the years I've learned to manage most of the time, it would be easy for me to slip into negative thinking, which in all honesty, the last few days I had.
What I know to be true for myself is that it is important to feel it all. To recognise, connect and feel my emotions in relation to any situation, and to move through them. But, the thoughts I've had recently were taking me down a slippery slope. I started to beat myself up for not continuing on with the business, for letting people down by closing it, and for not hanging out for a sale of it. Underneath these thoughts have been ones of feeling anxious about what is next, and trying to figure that out, when what I really need right now, is rest.
It's been a long nine years since I left the corporate world and with two successful businesses during that time, I need a break. I need to take time out to recharge, to recalibrate and to do things for myself.
So, whilst I'm feeling my way through this enormous change, and acknowledging what it is, I'm watching out for where my thinking goes, and turning that around. The truth is that I have worked my butt off for nine years and made a huge success of both businesses. This in itself is to be celebrated.
Knowing why I go down the rabbit hole of depressive thinking is important too. For me, any grief always takes me back to the feelings around losing my mother. Keeping a clear perspective on this and separating this grief and that grief, helps me to see this for what it is.
Looking at your own life, how easily do you navigate change?
With love,
