The day before 9/11, it felt like I’d finally arrived.
Boutiques and galleries across the city were rolling out the red carpet with parties and events for Fashion Week. My posse - broke but stylish - knew all the best ones, and we patched together a dinner off the free wine and hors d'oeuvres.
Times had sure changed since moving to NYC as a naive young thing with a hope and a dream but no job and no place to live . . .
Now I was an actual New Yorker! I OWNED this city. And hell ... if I could make it here, I could make it anywhere! I was drunk with my limitless potential (and champagne).
The first plane struck the next morning on my walk to work.
Have you ever noticed the weather when you look back at the footage? It was perfect. Not even a little puff cloud! I grabbed a cardigan because the air felt so crisp and light. That sticky summer heat had broken, and everyone was buzzing with the fall energy.
It would be a long time until I felt that good again.
It began as a murmur … those voices from shopkeepers … and then morphed into a roar: a plane had hit the World Trade Center. (Obviously a tourist plane had malfunctioned, right?! I mean, what else could it be?).
I rushed up to my office and came face to face with the view of that raw, smoldering black hole. And then the second plane hit.
I won’t describe what else I saw that day, but by the time I got home to the surreal scene of tanks and barricades on my East Village street (Manhattan was closed off at 14th Street to anyone but residents; I lived on 11th) I couldn’t fathom how I’d ever be able to recreate the joviality and sense of rightness that I’d felt the night before.
And for a long time, those feelings and images stayed with me . . . until they started to dim. It was as if the smoke that filled our downtown streets for weeks was slowly erasing them.
But there was something else that stayed behind much, much longer.
It was a pattern I put in place to protect myself from being caught off guard in the future. And it made itself known via a feeling that popped up whenever things got "too good."
It said: "Watch out. Times like these are when the rug gets yanked out from under you."
And so I’d pull back. Because living "real life" with its typical mild-to-medium disappointments and frustrations was infinitely better than accomplishing your greatest dreams and "having it all" one day and then being engulfed in heartbreak and tragedy the next.
And what I find, as I work with more and more women, is that most of us fear success in some way.
Do you, ? Do you ever feel a nagging anxiety about the good times?
If you’re not sure, tell me if any of these are true:
-- I tend to yo-yo between success and stagnation
-- I know I haven’t even scratched the surface of my potential
-- I tell myself, "Careful! Don’t jinx it!"
The beliefs and stories that hold us back don’t have to come from 9/11-scale tragedy.
A client of mine remembers skipping home from school with an A- on her report card, only to feel her inner balloon pop when her father criticized, "Why isn’t it an A?"
The underlying mechanism is the same, and deceptively simple:
Event happens →
We decide what it "means" about us or the world →
We live our life according to it.
What isn’t always so simple is figuring out what that story actually is. That’s because our brains know us better than anyone. And they’re really, really good at keeping us in the dark so we don’t alter the status quo.
Getting clear on YOUR story and what’s driving your decisions and behavior isn’t just the first step to making a change … it’s the ONLY way to make change.
And here’s a really simple 2-question process that will help you illuminate and then start rewriting your story.
Ask yourself:
1) What annoying pattern keeps repeating in my life? OR What’s the status quo that I’d like to change?
2) When in my past do I remember feeling that same underlying feeling? (Can be your earliest or most impactful memory.)
And if you aren’t sure, or already know the answers but just haven’t been able to untangle yourself from their web . . . that’s what coaches are for, ahem ahem.
Here’s to getting out of autopilot and creating an uncommonly intentional life,
Jenna