Choosing To Participate: We All Need To Make The Effort To Stay Afloat (And Ahead) "Take the time to find out what could potentially get you out of the rut you find yourselves in, and then, just follow through on it."
By Aby Sam Thomas Edited by Aby Sam Thomas
You're reading Entrepreneur Middle East, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Ever have those feelings of disillusionment, disinterest, or boredom with what you're doing at work, especially now as we try to make our way through the COVID-19 crisis? I must confess that I've been feeling that way for a while now, and it's been exasperating in that I've been struggling to get myself out of this mind space I often find myself in.
This is not entirely a new sentiment for me though- I was talking things over with my therapist the other day, and I realized that these are thoughts that have been lingering in my mind for a while now; it's just that working through the coronavirus pandemic, with all of its variabilities and vacillations, has sort of exacerbated these ideas, and essentially forced me to take pause and ponder on them a bit more than usual.
One of the things I realized by doing this exercise to just, well, think about how easy it was for me to blame someone else, or something outside of my supposed realm of influence, for these feelings of disenchantment that I was undergoing. Perhaps more importantly, I saw how remarkably convenient it was for me to use those external factors as a reason for not even making an attempt at changing or moving away from this current state of affairs.
Last month, I had written about how I believe we need to be taking stock of the things in which we are putting in our time and energy through the course of what has been a rather unsettling year, and it's this process that has helped me realize that while it's a lot more comfortable to be complacent, one cannot blame that sentiment to have been caused by anyone or anything else but oneself. Sure, extraneous incidents or people may have led us to the path we are on, but choosing to stay there is solely on us.
It's with this logic in mind that I've started to try to change my feelings of ennui and insouciance by, well, tackling them head-on. For instance, whenever I now find myself feeling bored with work, I make a concerted attempt to figure out those aspects of my job that bring me a sense of accomplishment and joy- sometimes, this has meant looking back and remembering those things that excited me about this career in the first place. After that, it's just a matter of finding out things I can do now that could get me to experience at least a version of those happy times once again.
The important thing to note here is that it's on me to put in the effort and follow through on these actions, and not anyone else- and this is the idea that I'd like to engrain in the minds of everyone who's reading this. As entrepreneurs (or even employees, really), I'm guessing that many of you have been grappling with inner demons like mine over the course of your day-today work, and while they can be destabilizing and demoralizing, I hope that you don't allow them to be the status quo for yourselves. Take the time to find out what could potentially get you out of the rut you find yourselves in, and then, just follow through on it.
Of course, all of this is easier said than done- but then again, when has anything worthwhile come with no effort anyway.
Good luck.
