When You Change The Way You Look At Things...

For ten years I had a gruelling, job for which I gained no sympathy from my friends. They saw only the sparkly, shiny surface of my life; jetting off constantly to Paris, Madrid, Rome, Barcelona or Athens on a weekly basis.

That doesn’t earn you any pity points down the pub.

I worked in tourism. My job basically consisted of “pissing off as few people as possible”. That’s how it was described to me by my predecessor. Which to a chronic people pleaser still meant the excruciating task of thoroughly pissing off SOMEONE. My job title was that of “Supervisor” for the Spanish branch of the company. Which meant that I was the PR person, the trouble shooter, the one that basically dealt with any shit that came up and whose job was to make it smell of roses. Or at least a more perfumed, pleasing version of shit. Such was my oxymoronically thankless task.

The universe had been trying to gently assist me in getting out of my own way & to consider other options for some time. But I was stuck fast to my pony, holding on for dear life, round & round in an endless circle of people pleasing. I couldn’t get off the merry go round for long enough to consider if it was making me so dizzy as to be potentially damaging to my health and well being. When you’re clutching hold of the reigns for grim life as the horses careen around at top speed, it seems impossible to get off without slamming headfirst into a wall.

I think the universe finally lost patience and decided a swift and irrevocable kick up the arse was as subtle a message as I was capable of receiving.

After a night out on the town, wining and dining clients in a beautiful brasserie, I was finally ensconced back in the bijou little Parisian, company owned flat, - see I told you I would get no sympathy. At 4AM I logged on to my laptop to start the process of assessing the reports from the groups I had been PR-ing in Granada the previous day.

One was from a chap who I had found delightful company. He was a teacher travelling with a group of students. Through idle curiosity I had looked up his www.ratemyteacher.com score & thought they must have the wrong person, it bore no resemblance to the charming chap I had spent a lovely evening with: - “NEVER, EVER do anything to piss this guy off he will hunt you down and make sure you regret it for life, he will return from his grave and haunt you if necessary”.*

Other than a few hotel rooming issues which I thought I had resolved to his satisfaction, he seemed perfectly happy with everything and I had invited him and his group to an evening out in some of my favourite local secret spots. As far as I was aware all was fine and dandy.

According to his report however, this was far from the case, he let rip his apparent gross dissatisfaction with everything.

I in turn let rip my frustration and anger with him to the sales person who had forwarded the report to me. I have vague and nauseating memories of phrases such as; “Two faced, hypocrite” - “Sad & manipulative person”. Ugh I can’t actually bring myself to recall the rest. There was a lot of it in the same vein. But worse.

Yes you can see exactly where this is going. I of course had not replied to the sales person, but to the client. My stomach still goes into spasms in an involuntary automatic reflex as I recall the moment that I realised what I had done. My belated apologies go to the Parisians of the 17eme arrondissement for the 4AM howls of despair that ensued.

Of course my ranting at him had nothing really to do with him, but everything to do with my dissatisfaction and anger with myself for doing a job which I knew pushed all my buttons and was not in any way conducive to my happiness. I was in a constant state of exhaustion and angst.

Given the above*, I realised the futility of expressing such sentiments to said client.

Incredibly I was not fired. Well not really. I was given a two week stint on the naughty step. But since then I gradually, and somewhat inevitably, lost my standing in the company. I slowly started to be pushed out & when the bottom fell quite spectacularly out of the tourism industry, mine was not the first arse to be covered and have a guaranteed job waiting for it. In fact I could no longer have wreaked havoc via email had I tried, as I found that I quite simply no longer existed at my company email address. Which admittedly wasn’t the subtlest of ways of letting me know the gig was up.

Which has led to my spending a year without work for the first time in my life & no prospect of going back to that job. I read self help books and tried to “see the silver lining” hidden in the mistake I had made. I tried, as Dr Wayne Dyer exhorted me to, to change the way I looked at things. He promised me that when I did so, the things I looked at would change. That there are no mistakes.

At first I panicked, then when I had a little time and perspective under my belt I started to consider why I was doing such a gruelling and often deeply confrontational job. I was on call 24/7 at the beck and call of unhinged individuals who had stopped taking their medication, aggrieved hotel managers who had had to deal with people leaving behind filthy, trashed rooms, students falling out of 5th floor hotel windows, people not being allowed into the country due to expired visas, missed flights, stranded trains…. The list was, quite literally, endless.

I realised how my continuing to twist myself in knots in a frenzy of people pleasing reflected a deep sense of lack of self worth. Which in turn led not to useless naval gazing which I had at first feared, but months of highly useful introspection and exploration. I was no longer prepared not to live the life that reflected my highest joy, because I am, in the words of a famous beauty line, worth it. I understood why I had been so frightened to get off that one trick pony; I had a deep seated belief that I was not worthy of a life of abundance and joy. That I deserved to suffer.

So I certainly do have no regrets about sending that email, other than that of taking out my anger & vitriol on that poor chap. It is profoundly true that what might look like a disaster when first considered, if you change your perspective and refuse to judge it, there is always another way of looking at things.

Thanks Dr. Dyer, lesson learned. Now it’s time to get on with living that life of true joy & freedom.