The onion layers of life

It's funny how the same patterns have a tendency to come up again and again, no matter how much you've worked on them.

For context, I've spent many, many years separating my worthiness from what I do and how much I earn.

And I've come a long way. Fifteen years ago, I was working 80-100 hour work weeks without anyone expecting me to because I was terrified that if I didn't, someone would figure out I was worthless and I would be jobless. I worked nights and weekends. I worked while I was sick. One time, a coworker tried to literally pull me away from my desk on a Friday night to come hang out with everyone else and I begged him to just let me work because I felt like the world would fall apart if I took even a quick break. Eventually my boss had to tell me to take a 2 week vacation because everyone on the team was worried about my stress levels.

In comparison, at my most recent job I stopped at 5pm 98% of the time, I refused to so much as look at my Slack in my off hours, and I took my damn sick time because I knew I would recover faster and do work better if I did. Even when I was a contractor, I spoke up for myself often and didn't allow fear that they wouldn't renew my contract to change my behavior.

When I look at that difference, it feels like I'm cured.

Wouldn't you know it, though, there's always another level of unworthiness just waiting to sneak up on me. Which is what happened last week.

A few weeks ago I applied to a job that seemed perfect. I knew I was highly qualified. The company seemed great. An actual human confirmed they had received the resume and would get back to me in a few weeks. It felt like a match made in heaven.

And then last week I heard back that they were going to pass. I didn't even get an interview.

Reading LinkedIn posts, I know this is incredibly common now. People who are well-qualified are getting passed over a lot right now because it's so competitive. I even had the feeling that they were going to pass because it'd been a little too long since I'd heard from them and I knew deep down that was probably okay because I've been realizing I want more flexibility than a 9 to 5 can offer.

Still, it triggered a lot of questioning about my worthiness.

All sorts of stories about how if I had been better, I would have gotten it. When the mind measures worthiness by whether you achieved the thing you set out to do, it doesn't matter if you know the job probably wasn't a good fit in the end or you learned some good lessons from the experience. The mind is still going to have a meltdown.

So I took my own advice from my last post. Instead of distracting myself so I wouldn't have to feel the uncomfortable feelings or proving my worth by doing something productive, I sat down and I did nothing.

My mind was not happy, let me tell you.

But I didn't give in. I sat, I noticed all the feelings that came up, and I breathed into them to see what happened. When I had a concrete thought to work with, I wrote it down and I started to ask questions. Here's a lightly edited excerpt of the place where I realized what I was feeling was a worthiness issue:

I don't want to commit, or at least part of me doesn't.

Why not?

Because I don't believe I deserve a life I'm excited to live and a business that brings me fulfilling work. And if I had my life together I would have them already.

Why do you think you don't have your life together?

Because I'm sitting here jobless without a clue of what I want to do next.

... I'm tying my worth to what I produce and how much I get paid.

For each line where I'm answering a question or having a realization, I sat for probably 5-10 minutes before my mind would let an answer come through (because my mind gets really fearful when I'm digging into some truth). But eventually, one always did.

These deeply engrained patterns and stories are like an onion. You clear one layer, and the next one is a little smaller and less intrusive in your life. You have a slightly better sense of how to work with it than the last one. But it's still going to make you cry when it's finally time to peel it back.

And it's completely normal to have so many layers, despite what our completionist, perfectionistic society would like us to believe. Many of the stories and patterns that influence our actions and behaviors are deeply embedded in us, especially if they got hammered into us in our most formative years. You can't just work through it once and expect it to be gone forever.

But when we are willing to confront the things that aren't ours, even when we have to do it over and over again, something inside us realizes more and more that we're worthy of love even without all the things that the world tells us we need to be lovable. Worthiness happens even when we're just ourselves.

If you are someone who has the same pattern come up over and over again, give yourself a little grace and patience. You aren't broken. You're doing the work. One layer at a time.