All this sitting at home puts a lot of things in perspective
After having to give up most of life’s daily activities because of the quarantine, I realize how many of those daily activities were just time and energy being spent on auto-pilot.
Some context- (if you’re in a hurry jump to The Guide)
My wife and I are both 30 and we have a 7-year-old daughter and a 7-month-old son. We usually live in a 2 bedroom apartment in a pretty nice condominium close to Bucharest’s northern business area, where my office is located.
I grew up in a middle-class family in Bucharest and had a rather uneventful upbringing. After marrying Ramona and having Sissi, 7 years ago, I had my first real shock. My father who had been the pillar of the family and what seemed to me at that time an invincible figure had a heart attack and suddenly died -leaving my sister and me with a business -12 million euros in debt. We knew the business was struggling, but we didn’t know the extent of the financial burden.
The business we inherited is an automotive dealership and unfortunately, I’m not in any way passionate about the automotive business butI am really passionate about people development so I said I could try using my skills inside the company until it’s back on its feet and .then follow my own path..
Luckily, being at the beginning of an economic upturn, with the help of some inspired decisions on our part and valuable support from other stakeholders we managed to turn the business around.
After my father’s death, but before engaging in turning our inherited business around, I experienced what at that time my therapist called an acute anxious-depressive episode but what I later realized was a reality-facing “episode” where my fantasy of being special and having it all figured out got pushed out by the reality of having to manage my father’s failing business or risk losing all the comfort it had been fragilely providing.
Letting go brings relief
I will always remember a conversation I had with my wife on our terrace when we just found out our apartment was being repossessed by the bank(because the debt the business was in). She asked me: Is the house your family has in the countryside mortgaged in any way? -No -Then worst-case scenario, we move there with Sissi, we plant our food, buy a cow and some chickens and we don’t need much more, right?
She was overemphasizing a point, but I still distinctly remember feeling a huge relief, like a weight was being slowly but surely lifted off my chest. My wife was there for me. She supported me through these tough times, and as long as that was the case, I had absolutely nothing to fear. We didn’t need the status a fancy apartment, car, or CEO position was providing. All we needed was each other’s support, health, and a clear mind.
Armed with that perspective, I asked my sister to take over the business for a couple of months, enrolled in Alain Cardon’s coaching school and came out of it 3 months later a new man: PRESENT, authentic, self-assured and focused on the essentials in life: like the time I spend with my family, the non-judgmental presence I offer people and organizations, connecting to nature, having adventures, writing about my experiences and sharing them with other people, listening to people’s stories, and helping out my community in the real hands-on way… It was bliss…
You need a certain kind of consciousness to keep letting go
Coming back to work, I had the clarity I needed to continue the turnaround my sister and I started, and make our company successful. This was mid-2014… Since 2015 our profit has been growing steadily and before this Corona thing happened, my wife Ramona and I were already engaged in buying a bigger apartment, more expensive stuff, having dinner in hip places in town, buying each other designer clothes, expensive jewelry, and what-not- so the usual stuff people are doing when business is going well.
Nothing wrong so far, but while we were spending like there’s no tomorrow, I was also taking classes at Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, researching different methods of managing compost in the apartment, trying different methods to repair instead of just buying new stuff, focusing my company’s culture towards sustainability and so on…
At some point, towards the end of 2018 things started feeling a bit off… I started having less and less of that bliss feeling and more and more a feeling that I didn’t have time to do anything… Everything I did was in a rush: from brushing my teeth to the meetings I was having with my team…
Life tends to give us what we need
Even when this quarantine started, I was jumping from one task to another, juggling personal and professional tasks at the same time, having half my mind focused on what I am missing and the other half jumping from trying to be present to judging myself for not being present.
I realized then that this is my deeper self letting me know that it’s been 7 years already since my last reality check and that it’s time to refresh it. I knew that it’s only up to me if this reality check (aka depression) period would last a week, a month or a year so I started thinking hard about what I needed to accept as my new reality.
While this was all happening inside me, we were forced to reduce capacity in our business and only focus on essential services in order to keep our people safe and adapt to the new market conditions set by the quarantine. I noticed two things during this period:
- we were making less money but also spending less money so the bottom line was more or less the same;
- and people didn’t need me. They were all doing their jobs just fine, while I was feeling I was getting in their way rather than being supportive.
It struck me: that’s what was off… We had already turned the company around We were making a profit, we automated what needed automation and people were doing their jobs, but instead of keeping it focused on its core business, delegating the executive role and pursuing my interests, I was trying to push my interests (coaching, deep-sustainability, holistic education) while also managing day to day operations. I was holding the company back from doing what it was doing best, just because I was clinging to my CEO role (and salary) and my passions at the same time.
I see nothing wrong in clinging to my passions so the natural step would be to let go of my role as a CEO. And #lettinggo is one of the most liberating actions that I could have ever made.
The Guide
We’re all insecure. And almost none of us like uncertainty. That’s mainly why we hide our insecurities behind different kinds of masks and it’s mainly why we are attracted by people and life choices that give us a sense of security.
We need to get comfortable with uncertainty and the only way to get comfortable with something is accepting it as a reality instead of inventing tools to make us feel safe and secure. Living it, instead of running away from it… It’s like the cold weather: if you fight it and tighten-up it feels you are doing something but you are making it worse, but if you accept it and breathe into it your body adapts and cold is more bearable. Provided that you are not exposed to a temperature that is beneath your physical ability to bear in which case…
We need to act! And this is where it gets tricky. Action just for the sake of action is bound to put us on a hamster wheel that can easily turn into a rat race… But not acting because we are uncertain about the best course of action is equally dangerous because it puts us in a frozen state that is why…
We need to stay conscious. This means we should make being present in our body a priority, meditating more, thinking less compulsively and more strategically.
Think of what is truly important to you. Maybe put them on paper -you can find my list here
Now think of all the things you have bought and/or invested in. What percentage really brought you what is important for you? I’m willing to bet that if the above lists were made with sincerity the answer is not many.
We need to let go of what we think we want and focus on what we feel we need!
And yes, coaching can help with this.