It’s all about momentum baby, and that’s the truth!

As those words rolled off the experienced tongue of an entrepreneur friend, I momentarily stopped to ponder the implications of that sentence. For better or worse, I am a thinker which means there are awkward pauses when I have to situate a new thought during a conversation. Very often it also means that my reflections come AFTER said conversation.

After mulling over his declaration, I concluded that there hadn't been much momentum in my life for a period of about 3 years. Oh I did “things” and tried my hand at a variety of “new” things. I bought my own place, traveled, met new people. But, what it comes down to, is that there was no real forward motion. In last week’s post I hinted that 2014 marked the beginning of doing things differently. In order to do that, some amount of time was spent looking back on those 3 years to determine what I could learn from them.

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Showing emotion, being emotionally vulnerable and available is not something that is either prized or practiced much in my family. Growing up, I was tagged as the “emotional one” and even teased when my natural tendency to emote came to the surface. It was only in my mid to late twenties that I began to learn about emotions. Credit goes to my ex-husband for that. Fast forward ten years and a number of life changing events came my way in a very short period of time. One of them was a serious car accident.

Hellooooo car accident!

The accident itself was extremely frightening. I genuinely thought I was going to die. It happened late on a Friday night, on my way home after an evening gathering. My father is my emergency contact and after receiving a call from the hospital, he was on the first flight out. He arrived early Saturday afternoon.

With his arrival came the perceived obligation on my part to “keep it all together”; to avoid being even the slightest bit “emotional”; to “prove” that I was “strong”; that I could navigate this situation “on my own”; that I didn’t need anyone’s “help” because I wasn’t a “victim.” 

Call it “Suck it up buttercup” on steroids of Olympic proportions.

And yes, I would regret going down that rabbit hole.

Once the lid had been sealed on the emotions of the accident, turns out I sealed up all the emotions associated to what was happening in parallel. For 3 years, I operated in this kind of emotional no man's land. I stopped listening to my instincts and trusting myself. I avoided taking logical and beneficial risks in favour of high risk activities that I hoped would make me feel again, like REALLY feel. In hindsight, it was like the ability to feel and to process emotions had abandoned me and I was trying to defibrillate them back to life.

It was January 20, 2014 when I snapped out of it. That was when I began to chart a new course by scratching the surface and delving into what really makes me tick. It's an ongoing process with its own ups and down. Self-awareness is both a blessing and a curse for a reason! In the last six months though, I’ve been moving forward. Finally. Every action, no matter the size, has been building momentum in my life, taking me in the direction I want to go.

While there is still plenty to learn, I am grateful for the momentum that is taking root because it’s all about momentum baby, and that’s the truth!