“Don’t expect a time in your life when you’ll be free from change, free from struggle, free from worry. Your objective is to use what hits you to change your trajectory in a positive direction.”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience
I used to believe that I only needed to get through the hardest part. Like once things settled down at work, once the team stopped shifting around, once the deadlines got more manageable — I’d finally feel on top of things. I kept waiting for that. It never came.
Got passed over for a project I’d been counting on last spring. I didn’t take it well and, honestly, spent a week somewhat checked out, honestly. But this quote had been sitting in my notes for a while and I kept coming back to it. Not because it made me feel better, but because it was just true. There was no quiet period coming. The question was just what I was going to do with where I actually was.
Started asking for more feedback, took on something smaller but more visible, stayed in it. Things started to shift, slowly but surely. I think about this quote a lot now when something doesn’t go my way at work. I don’t use it as motivation; it serves more as a reality check.