Walking and Burning Bridges

“The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.”
– David Russell

 

Get out your matches, ladies and gentlemen…. let’s burn some bridges!

[Okay, not so fast.]

How in the world can you tell which bridges are friends and which are foes? Which bridges are you using, on a daily basis, that are built on toxic relationships, bad jobs, self-deprecating thoughts? Which bridges feel evil, but are really character-building and once you survive, you’ll be glad you kept crossing?

I was thinking today about things that I quit… and things that I haven’t… and how each actually matters a BIG  hill of beans.

Here’s a few recent examples of things I did quit:

My last job.
The one I call “the Evil Job.” After taking unnecessary abuse from someone in a position of power and realizing that I hated the lies and the drudgery of civil litigation, I quit.

My job before the last job.
The one I call “the Nice Job.” After mistakenly thinking that the grass was greener and burning some bridges in a bad way, I found that I had quit the Nice Job –only to trade it in for the Evil Job.

Weighing myself.
When I realized that my scale was literally making me loco, I quit weighing myself and ruining my own day before it began.

Here’s a few recent example of things I didn’t quit:

Swimming.
When I first got in the pool in 2010, I strapped on my goggles and swimcap, feeling confident (I was on swim team… when I was seven! Here I come!!).  I made it halfway down a length of the pool before I came up sputtering and utterly defeated.

The Legal Profession.
Coincidentally, now that I am at a firm (which I call the New Job) doing something that doesn’t make me want to pummel myself  to death with Black’s Law Dictionary, I am glad I didn’t give up my day job… quite yet.

Weighing myself.
Oh? This one again??  Yep. When I got control of my scale/self-esteem obsession, I began weighing myself again.

Reconciling It All: Discomfort vs. Misery

Just as the quote says… the hardest part is to know which bridges to cross and which to burn. And I am here to tell you —- you may never know for certain. But I have learned a few things over the past few years. 

Discomfort

Burning a bridge because of discomfort is total garbage.  Does something feel scary? Uncomfortable? Tiring?  If yes, then you should cross that bridge and continue to cross it …until you are comfortable.

Swimming, at first, was terrible and uncomfortable and I wanted to burn that bridge to the pool.  But I kept at it, and now, it’s simply not a big deal.  And triathlon has theoretically saved my life, so… not quitting saved my life.

Another example, is the Nice Job before the Evil Job. I was uncomfortable with the workload and the commute at the Nice Job. However, instead of working out options with my more-than-kind boss at the time (who would have worked with me to make me more comfortable), I chose to burn a bridge in pursuit of “better.” 

Only it turns out that the “better” was way (way) worse.  Hence, the Evil Job. 

Misery

Freeing yourself from misery is precisely a reason to burn a bridge.

At the Evil Job, I was experiencing soul death. I am actually not being dramatic.  I mean, really, shouldn’t everyone cry 2-3 times a day in the bathroom at work? I mean, isn’t that, like, normal?  Shouldn’t you be berated constantly? Shouldn’t you break out in hives before walking into the office? Or sit in the parking lot for twenty or thirty minutes, just to make yourself get out of the car to go inside?

I think so. Isn’t that normal? Ha.

I put dynamite under that Evil bridge and blew that bridge to pieces. And I am so glad I did.  I should have burned it sooner. But interestingly, the Evil Job was only uncomfortable at first —- so I stuck it out —and by the time the Evil Job had morphed into misery, another bridge to the New Job had been built and I could blast the bridge to the Evil Job without burning myself.

So the distinction that I have drawn:

Burn the bridge when miserable.
Learn to walk the bridge when you are uncomfortable.
If the discomfort turns into misery, then reevaluate your supply of dynamite.

Be Brave

On a post last year, I mentioned an interview with Jillian Michaels in Redbook Magazine. The interviewer asked Jillian how someone knows when they are ready for a change.  I had clipped out the interview and had it in my desk at work for almost 9 months. I listened and I read it often.

Jillian said, “You feel it.  You wake up one morning and you’re miserable. Or you’re numb.  If you feel nothing, obviously you’re shutting down the parts of you that are unhappy. We’ve evolved to have emotions for a reason. They guide us.”

Jillian said that in order to makea  change, that you must trust yourself.

“The vast majority of people are ‘fear-based’ and have a ‘monkey-bar approach to life, like you can’t leave one spot until you’re holding on to the next monkey bar. By going straight to the next thing, you never get time to reflect or to create space for what’s right.’

She went on…

“We all have to work for happiness. And you cannot listen to the advice of other people. You’ve got to listen – to the universe, to life, to God… because it’s going to speak to you.”

Ask Yourself

Today, I encourage you to ask : 

Are you happy?
Are you uncomfortable?
Are you miserable?
Are you numb?

Because when we really listen to ourselves, we might actually begin to understand more about ourselves… and in turn, figure out which bridges to take and which bridges to blow to pieces.