‘Do it anyway: the need for resilience when pursuing your Ikigai’
Woke up and didn’t want to do it. Any of it. Didn’t want to get out of bed. Didn’t want to get back on the job hunt, that triple joy of networking, jobs boards and LinkedIn, and finding a head-hunter who would take on a white, near fifty-something man. Didn’t want to go for the walk that would clear my head and help me get on with my day. Didn’t want to apply for compensation for the epic delays and cancellations of last weekend’s trip to Anfield to see my beloved Liverpool FC. Didn’t even want to write. Wasn’t having any of it. Didn’t. Want. To. Do. It. And so? Did it anyway. Even the walk back up the hill, where normally I might just take the bus. The hill a great analogy for pushing on despite the steepness of the challenge.
In times gone by I may well, more often than not, have succumbed to that part of me that simply didn’t have the resilience — the ‘kishkes’ as said in Yiddish — the drive, the determination to do it. Today, I did it anyway. Leant into what I was feeling, acknowledging it, and hearing it patiently, understanding that it perhaps came from fear, from my inner child and those adult parts of me still healing. And, as you might with a young child who didn’t want to do something you know is good for them, took myself by the hand and simply did it anyway. An ever-stronger, more frequently repeated but still emerging…
