Have you ever had one of those moments when it feels like everything up until now has been faked or forced? Has a time come when you just can’t keep the same routine going? Have you ever felt like everything you’ve been doing isn’t really what you want to be doing? Or maybe you begin to wonder the why of past decisions you’ve made, even those thoughtful big life decisions, and can’t figure out if it was really what you wanted or whether you were just trying to please everyone around you.

These are defining moments and when they come they usually shake us to our core. Suddenly a feeling or idea out of left field overtakes us and we just can’t shake it. These moments stop us in our tracks and ask for a reevaluation or readjustment in some of the most unpleasant ways. What these moments really want from us is to take a closer look at what it is we’ve been up to and why.

Defining moments are meant to unnerve us. They are just the opposite of the status quo, and make no mistake, women are expected to maintain the equilibrium. We’re taught to smooth rough edges and balance everything and everyone out. However this balance usually comes at our expense, especially when we are on auto-pilot, not even realizing that’s what we’re doing. The truth is we’re often taught to sacrifice what we want or feel in order to keep the peace. This kind of thinking is insidious and travels long distances to reach us. Growing up we watch our mothers, aunts, and grandmothers, we see what they do, infer what is expected of us and so the cycle begins again. And down just a little bit deeper others are taught to expect nothing less than everything from us.

Then there comes a moment for each of us when we can’t go any further down that road. But defining moments don’t always look like liberation, or freedom, or even relief. It often looks like fear or apathy, followed up with guilt and a feeling of, what’s wrong with me. It’s more likely for defining moments to feel like being lost or cast adrift. We feel paralyzed. The truth is there is nothing left for us to do, rather it is the beginning of undoing.

For me it started as stopping. I just stopped running in circles, I stopped rearranging my life around everyone else’s. I stopped attending to the millions of details that had to get done but that everyone else was just “too busy” to attend to themselves. But the stopping, or apathy, or feeling paralyzed is a reset. It creates some space for us to think about things differently. This hiccup in our habitual routines gives us the time to ponder and sort through what we really think and what we really want.

Having been trained and ingrained or used to doing it all, doing less or doing it differently will feel a tad uncomfortable. It will feel as if we are falling down on the job, but in all reality that job was never ours to do. All that endless fixing, soothing, overdoing for others has never really been what our lives are supposed to be about. Before anything else we are ourselves and we need to make time and be true to who we are and what we feel. Dismantling everything that seems normal in order to discover what our true normal is, well, really freaking hard to do. If you’re waiting for a bolt out of the blue, perfect timing, or an epiphany to magically right it all you’ve got the wrong idea. It’s going to be messy and most likely you will not know which end is up for a stretch of time that will seem far too long.

So if you’re out there and find yourself in a defining moment that feels quite similar to the falling apart of everything you thought you ever knew to be true, take a deep breath and give yourself another minute. What’s dropping away may not really be yours at all. Now would be the time to let it go and be open to a different possibility. Those wide open spaces you’re creating by stopping all the doing that’s not really yours to do will begin to dissolve the rules you didn’t even know you were playing by. And in their place what’s really yours will rise up.

Be patient. Wade through what’s got you second guessing everything. Be ready to see what is yours and what isn’t. It’ll make the defining moments and the upside-down gifts they bring well worth it.

kb