This week, I will be writing about the importance of planning your exit when you get stuck in unpleasant situations.
Sometimes, when we find ourselves in unpleasant situations for long enough, we get ‘uncomfortably’ comfortable and blame everything else but ourselves for our woes.
I believe scientists have a name for this: “learned helplessness.”And it happens even to the best of us.
Now, this is my message to you today— No matter how unpleasant a situation you find yourself in, know that you can always have an exit plan.
Sometimes, you can execute your plan by writing a resignation letter to your boss and returning to your side hustle. Other times, your plan might have a gestation period of several weeks, months, or even years, and that is okay too. But drawing up your exit plan and figuring out the next steps of action will give your spirit the occasional reprieve that will keep your hope alive.
Never give up.
Always know that you don’t have to be where you don’t want to be. You don’t have to feel what you don’t want to feel. Please don’t be that person who complains endlessly in a situation you should have long exited from.
I know someone would say, ‘It is not easy to up and leave any unpleasant situation’. And you are right, it is hard. But I will tell you something that is even harder, staying in a situation that breaks your soul each day. You are not much good to yourself or others when you have a broken heart. That is why you need an exit plan. A cushion, so to speak, to fall back on when you finally make your grand exit.
In some extreme cases, an exit from a bad situation may not be readily accessible and your only way out is to change your perspective about your situation. Let’s assume you are stuck in a very bad job at a time when there is an unemployment crisis. You know for a fact that leaving this job could result in more financial hardship for you.
A preliminary plan in your exit strategy could be for you to change your perspective about the work and call it for what it is: ‘a temporary means to pay your bills’.
When your focus is nailed down in this manner and you are achieving your goal of earning your pay, it becomes easier to ignore anything else happening on the side, no matter how unpleasant.
While you have implemented a mental exit plan to manage the situation, you are in a better position to plan your physical exit.
The ‘exit plan’ concept has been one rule I have held close to my heart for decades. It instills in me the ‘knowing’ that hope is alive, which is the bedrock for taking action against any unpleasant situation.
So my message to you today is:
You can leave a terrible relationship!
You can leave a toxic job!
You can drop bad habits!
The list goes on!
If it doesn’t feel right, know that you are not stuck!
Quote of the week
So many people are wasting the best years of their lives in places they don’t belong out of fear of starting over.
Know what you deserve.
When the shoe doesn’t fit, you must change the shoe, not the foot.
Don’t settle for a shoe that doesn’t fit. It is not worth the pain.
@TheOracleReadsU
Take this Action this week
- Take a pen and paper.
- Go to a quiet place where you can feel vulnerable and true to yourself without the fear of being walked in on.
- On your paper, write out every single aspect of your life where you feel stuck, helpless, and in need of desperate change.
- Beside each item, write out your best description of your desired future state.
Stating this on paper helps you deconstruct your feelings and gives you more clarity on what truly is and what you want to happen for you. Your desired change could be in your job, relationship, health, and so on.
Now think of one thing you can do today that gets you closer to your exit. For example, you may need to take a certification course in your area of specialization to leave your current job. Then your next step would be to research the requirements for the certification.
Sometimes you may not know what the next steps are to get to your desired destination and that is totally fine.
That is where talking to people and doing research online comes into play. Information is much more readily available today than at any other time in history.- youtube, podcasts, google.
Now with the launch of ChatGPT, you can literally find any information you want by typing a question in a few words into the app and you get, for the most part, every piece of information you need.
Dare to take a step today!!!
