Do I push through, or do I leave?
Many of us find it hard to distinguish between staying in a tough situation by “working through it” (i.e. healing ourselves or changing our perspective) or whether the situation is such that we should get the hell out of there.
One of the most common scenarios I hear from clients, and one that is also deeply familiar to me, is the question: Should I stay or should I leave? This might be about an intimate relationship, a friendship or a job. Generally, the decision has a quality of polarisation. On the one hand…… but on the other…….. I don’t want to offer a detailed analysis of what’s happening in this scenario, but instead lay out an option around how you might approach or explore it. If this is you, your confusion makes sense. Staying or leaving are both going to meet important needs (safety, predictability, contribution, connection etc). So how do you know when the challenge of the situation warrants an exit?
The pathway to clarity is simple but does not mean it’s easy. When you ask yourself ‘should I leave or stay’, I want you to think about, are you in a regulated state? Do you feel clear and confident in your body? Is your answer coming from a place of ‘it just is. It makes sense to me’. Or does it have a quality of someone else’s narrative: 'I should do this because….’.?
The aim? You want to be making a decision based on the needs that are alive to you right now. Not the needs from a version of yourself 10 years ago. Not the needs of your colleagues, your kids, your parents. Some examples of the shoulds that are often present in these moments include:
I should stick it out because it’s good for my spiritual growth/healing.
I should stick it out because it’s good for my family.
I should stick it out because I don’t know what I’ll do instead.
I should stick it out because it’s good for the world.
I should stick it out because I don’t want to let people down.
These ‘shoulds’ are not wrong per se. They’re just not a reflection of the truth of what is alive for you right now. As such, they don’t cut it.
For some of us, being in a regulated state is not our normal. We might not even know in our body what it is to be regulated in any particular area of our life. For most of my adult life, my job was like this. At work, I was confused about what I wanted, I felt fear of getting it wrong, and felt I wasn’t being myself. I was disconnected and disembodied.
So when you are like I was, IN the source of dysregulation but where it is still meeting needs, how can you get clarity? In my case, pushing through was not the answer. At the heart of it was a misalignment between myself and my former job. It didn’t mean that I didn’t have to address the patterns of what I was finding challenging. This work took time, patience and many tears and wasn’t something I could bypass just by leaving the job.
You might be confused by the military themes in the outfits, but British punk rock band The Clash who wrote the iconic song “should I stay or should I go” used symbols of military discipline in their outfits to make anti-establishment statements. On the surface, this is the least political song of their repertoire, given it’s about a romantic relationship. But decisions about how we live in the world and who we choose to be in relationship cut deep. At the heart of the tension is the possibility of upending the status quo.
Coaching, or whatever self-connection practice helps you, provides an opening for a felt sense of safety to ask - what are your needs right now? Once the voices of the “shoulds” fade into the background, and the aliveness of your needs are present, the confusion drops away.
Does the confusion drop away forever and it’s just all unicorns and fairies after that?
Unfortunately not. The voices of the “shoulds” follow you even out of the situation you were struggling with. They are designed to protect you and so will keep showing up when there are triggers that remind you of moments you were not able to be authentically yourself. But the difference is, you can find your way back, by connecting to the needs that have put you on this new path (job, relationship, etc). When you connect back to your compass, does the clarity return?
The needs at the core of your inner compass are the real deal. They cut through bullshit and make you feel a sense of staunchness. You feel, ‘yes, this is the hill I will die on’. THIS is what’s important to me.
Creating a safe place when you can deeply tune into what is alive to you is the key to clarity. For some people, this will be straightforward. For others, it will take time. For me, it has taken years to unwind the patterns of fear that kept me from being able to listen to my needs and I drew on coaching a lot to connect with my purpose and then to stay on a new path.
Are there some decisions that you have found easy and then others you have found more challenging? What characterizes the challenging decisions? What are the loud “shoulds” that come up for you?
Exercise: What is alive, now?
Note: If this is a really challenging decision, or you are new to this approach, this may be tricky to do. But play around with it and see if it provides a different perspective.
As you think about your decision to go or stay. Write down all the shoulds. This will look like a traditional pros and cons list.
As you look at them, can you identify the underlying needs to will likely cut across both. e.g. Need for safety, stability, joy, connection.
What are the most important needs to you, right now in this moment?
If you zoom out, far out. Like you are 100 years old and you are looking at this list of needs. What does your Wise Self think about what you should do next. Where would you go if you were really prioritising your most important needs?