- in Anxiety , Imposter Syndrome by Cari Wise
What If You Are Normal
I have a question for you this week….
What if you’re normal?
What if patients not getting better don’t mean you’re bad at your job?
What if angry clients don’t mean that you’re doing it all wrong?
What if all that student loan debt doesn’t mean you’ve chosen the wrong career?
What if your anxiety, and the nights you’ve spent worrying about your cases doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you?
What if you’re just normal?
Here’s the truth…
Most of us think we are the only broken ones… the ones doing it all wrong… the ones who never should have gone to vet school in the first place.
From there we can spiral downward very quickly….
We start believing we are total imposters, a waste of space, a burden to those around us, and then we make decisions we can’t take back.
But, what if we are all just normal?
What if feeling insecure, inadequate, anxious and afraid are all just part of how this works?
Then what?
Now don’t be tempted to conclude you’re screwed… many of us would go there.
Instead, just recognize it for what it really is… just part of a journey you are meant to take.
This is just the part where it’s time to grow again… where the discomfort of where you are is unbearable long-term, so you find yourself reconsidering everything.
I like to think about this time as what a caterpillar would feel like just before it breaks out of the cocoon. Tight, cramped, thinking this cocoon building thing was a terrible idea… something has gone terribly wrong… worst. decision. ever.
Right now as YOU reconsider all aspects of your life, you’re drawing the same conclusion: worst. decision. ever.
But what if you’re normal?
What if, like the caterpillar, this is all just part of the process, and the real magic starts when you grow out of where you are right now?
That caterpillar didn’t even know it would become a butterfly, let alone how to fly, when it was in the cocoon, it had no idea what was coming next… but it knew staying put wasn’t an option.
What if not knowing what is coming next is an intentional part of the journey?
When you allow yourself to consider this, you can let go of the belief that everything is going wrong. When you let go of that, it becomes a whole lot easer to believe you are normal.
Just start there.
What if you are normal? What becomes possible then?