“I’m sick of it.”
We’ve all said it.
And many of us end up allowing that to become our mantra at some point in our lives when we feel stuck and powerless to change. It becomes the battle cry during rough periods in our career. Or while we’re in a rocky relationship. Or when we hold ourselves back in our creative self-expressions.
We’re sick of it. But are we truly sick of something enough to make an effort to change our circumstances? That’s the real breakthrough we’re waiting for. And that’s what being “sick of something” is trying to birth out of us.
Of course our hearts are willing. But there’s this weird trap door in our psyche that gets triggered anytime we move in the direction of changing our circumstances. And that trap-door doesn’t want us to use the escape hatch.
I get it. Birth is messy. It’s bloody and painful and requires holding on while letting go. It’s full of doubts and fears and an utter disbelief that we can bring something so potentially large into the world through an opening that seems so small!
So we often just stay in the “sick” zone rather than shatter our limited beliefs that want to hold us there. We become so accustomed to what’s “normal” and known for us ”“ the safety and comfort of our own marginalized lives ”“ that we’re willing to stay in them even though we end up getting more sick. Sometimes that’s literally. Sometimes figuratively. And we all have a high tolerance for tolerating our own shit. One person’s hitting bottom is maybe merely another person’s comfort zone.
So we end up resenting. A lot. Ourselves mostly. And our lives. Oh and sometimes that’s projected outwards. On a partner or a condition or the business. A teacher or lover or friend. We get to blame our circumstance and the people in them, rather than taking the plunge into making our lives different.
Actress Thandie Newton talks about our ability to change things we’re “sick of” when we feel we can’t. “If you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, then express that, write about it, take whatever you can and make something beautiful.” (Watch the entire interview HERE.)
That’s what a creative life is calling you to do. Stop waiting for permission to finally use your life as the substance of something worth sharing and expressing. It’s truly the origin of (your) art anyway.
If we knew we were bigger than the tiny interpretations of our own life events and were as knowledgeable as the universe itself, wouldn’t we have absolutely zero time to be “sick” of anything? The universe is always trying to guide us and show us how to become that which we feel is just beyond our reach. But we get to practice free will (at our own peril!) and often ignore the messages that try to show us how to improve our lives. Or let go of the things that hold us back. But we clutch as tightly as we can, because the alternative (in just opening our hands and letting go) seems to be oblivion.
It’s literally traversing from a part of our brains that are ordered and structured and linear to taking a non-linear leap.
Saying, “I’m sick” of something anyway is just a plea from some part of us that knows it can be freed from the constraints that imprison us. But we’re scared to put it into any other term of specificity ”“ which would require us to take action ”“ so we stay general with it so as not to take action.
“What are you sick of?” is maybe a better way to phrase it. Ask yourself that and watch what happens. A wave of feelings ”“ perhaps anger or rage or sadness or real honesty comes issuing forth revealing what it is that you are really upset about and what you need to do to rid yourself of that which is keeping you sick stuck.
Wouldn’t it be more exciting, if, in a year from now you start a sentence by saying, “I was sick of _____, but I did something about it!”?
Actors in Video: Rachel Morgan (left) and Rachel Middleton (right)