Are you in the desert?

Are you in the desert?

We’re not going to do a “looking back over the year” just yet. Rather, this week’s post is for those readers who find themselves stuck in the middle of nowhere: you are not where you were and also not yet where you wanted to be by the end of the year.

Let me explain…

I recently heard of a childhood friend who moved his family to Auckland, New Zealand about 6 months ago. He is not having a great time and is seriously doubting whether this move was the correct one. Whether the move will work out for the best remains to be seen, but his story reminded me that all of us are likely to go through a similar experience at one time or another.

One of the earliest versions of this experience comes from the Bible, in the book of Exodus, where the Israelites left Egypt as slaves to travel to the Promised Land. Where they came from was bad (they were slaves) and their destination was good (the land of milk and honey), BUT they found themselves in the desert somewhere in between. I’ve never been lost in a literal desert, but I can imagine that it would be rather scary. Everything around you looks the same, you have no idea which way to go and there is nothing to sustain you. Before very long we all will be pining to go back to where we came from (like the Israelites did), even if we just fled a very bad situation. The devil you know is apparently better than the one you don’t…

Let’s apply this experience to our everyday lives:

• You move to a new town or city – you don’t know your way around, don’t know many people, you feel lonely and lost and start missing where you came from like crazy.
• You start work at a new company – you don’t know the acronyms, the inside jokes, the people or the systems. And everybody is always working from home, so it’s very difficult to meet anybody or learn anything.
• Your friendship group gets up to things that do not work for you anymore. You feel that it’s time to change your lifestyle or get your act together. This leaves you criticized, isolated and doubting your decision to move on from these people.
• You apply for and land a new position – this leaves you feeling a little (or a lot) out of your depth, doubting whether you will ever be able to perform at the new level required of you. Like an imposter essentially.
• You start your own business and quickly realize that it is not as glamorous as all those Instagram and YouTube posts made it look. Within days you start to wonder if your old business would take you back.
• You finally end that bad relationship – you objectively know it’s for the best, but within a couple of weeks you start wondering if it would not have been better to stay (although you rationally know that it would not be better).

You know the feeling: You are in a new situation, without any frame of reference to fall back on. You feel low in confidence, full of doubts, isolated and like a fraud. Your default response is to step back, desperately looking for something familiar to cling to. This is the desert. And I have some good news: This is exactly what growth feels like!

If you currently find yourself in this situation, we want to encourage you to stick with it. Don’t back away or turn around. Keep going. You probably won’t arrive at your promised land at a specific moment, but bit by bit you will become accustomed to your new environment, your new lifestyle or relationship status and it will all start to make more sense. And then one day in the not-so-distant future you will look back and say “Oh man am I glad I didn’t run back to where I came from!”

If you are having a difficult time trying to stay in your own lane and set healthy habits to avoid the downside of comparison, get in touch. You can reach us at info@purposeworks.co.za.

At PurposeWorks we are all about Making You and Your Work Rock. Our focus is on Organisational Health and Design, Employee Centered Culture, Leadership Development and Performance Coaching. For more information on how we can help you create a work environment that rocks, develop a great team, become an inspiring leader or unlock your personal excellence talk to us at info@purposeworks.co.za.