Learning to Embrace the Unknown

Last week I resigned from my position of over 4 years. It was a job that almost made up half of my professional career and I cannot begin to explain how scary the decision was. Generally, I enjoy surprises and the unknown factor in day-to-day or normal things. But when it comes to major or long-term decisions it terrifies me. That’s when the “what if” starts flowing like crazy.

“What if I can’t find something?”

“What if I end up somewhere terrible?”

“What if I would have stayed?”

“What if I’m making a mistake?”

For those close to me, they know how vocal and anxious I get when these types of decisions are looming. I run every single possible scenario through my mind: starting from best case and progressing to the absolute worse case scenario. It took a couple of harsh come to Jesus conversations from family and friends for me to realize that even this decision is not the worst. It is a blessing to be able to feel secure enough to quit a job and being okay with the risk of the unknown. Not everyone is lucky enough to have that luxury. And if the next job doesn’t work out — guess what? There are several others out there waiting for me.

But coming to this conclusion isn’t something I am always able to do on my own. I need to go through the motions of panic, tears, talking and texting with those I trust, and finally getting a whack in the head (figuratively) to understand why I need to embrace it and that it’s not the end of the world. Because the worst case scenario is very unlikely (leaving my job, not finding another, leading to financial hardship, loss of home, blah blah blah). It’s interesting though how I have these fears, when I come from a long childhood of seeing both my parents work their butt off to get to where they are now. They mastered the art of how to pick back up from everything to almost nothing and back to everything.

So, learning to embrace the unknown is a process that, depending on your personality (if you’re moderately type A like me), can take time to learn or continue to learn. But I’m here for it and ready to take on the next big and scary decision that comes my way!