You're Not a Vacuum....
You Don’t Need to Suck Everything up.
“Suck it up Buttercup”, words I’ve shouted across a gymnasium with a smile and gleam in my eye while torturing…I meaning teaching students during my bootcamp classes. There is a time and place for just gritting your teeth and getting through something, like:
The last 10 minutes of your workout…hell the FIRST two minutes of your workout
Foregoing a night out to stay in and study
Accepting the difficulty of learning a new skill
Accepting what is not in your control and focusing on what is in your control
These are all great examples of when embracing the suck is needed, but please remember not everything needs to be tolerated. You will not always reap benefits from putting up with circumstances that hurt you either physically, mentally or emotionally. Sometimes the return, the supposed future benefit you’ll reap, by suffering in the now – is JUST NOT WORTH IT.
The words have almost been glorified. A way to make others feel like they’re weak so they’ll shut up about it. That there are always worse things, and if you could just accept this, and suck it up then you’ll see it’s not so bad. This is particularly true when it comes to work. Work sucks for everyone right, so what makes you think it needs to be different for you…what are you special or something? When you start feeling that empty pit in stomach - do you get down on yourself? Do you think that you should be grateful, to even have a job, maybe one with benefits, and thank god you’re not down in a coal mine somewhere? So, you just tell yourself to SUCK IT UP, like everyone else.
When you’re telling yourself to suck it up for forty or more hours a week, that’s when you’ve got to understand this is not okay. This is not something worth enduring, because the amount of effort and energy you’re spending just trying to tolerate and get through the day could be spent in more enjoyable, creative and beneficial endeavors. Think about it, if you’re 25 years old and planning to work until at least 65 years old, with a generous four weeks’ vacation a year, that still over 76,000 hours of your life sucking it up.
There are no trophies in corporate America for the Greatest Sucker of the Year, and the glorification of enduring unneeded misery needs to STOP. The culture of hating your job because everyone does needs to end, because it’s a lie. You can make money and enjoy the process of doing so, heck I bet the more enjoyable you found work the more money you would make. I know that this is true for me.
The first step to moving from a sucky job to a satisfying and enjoyable career is to listen to yourself without judgement. To acknowledge that the inner voice in you, the one that you keep telling to shut up, is actually on your side. Let others win the vacuum award, while you start actually winning with happiness and personal fulfillment.