Systems of Survival (2/2): How we feed the hand that bites us
If this is our working normal - get me some abnormal, stat.
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I am your Harbinger of Doom (it’s one of the Top Ten jobs for redheads).
No one is coming to save you.
Not even your nice boss, your work bestie, or your well funded & based-on-a-super-cool-idea company.
And I want you to figure this out quicker than me.
If you are waiting for someone to advocate for you in the day-to-day, micro moments of your business/work over the span of your career, someone who will zoom in and out to see the whole picture regularly - please go meet your hero.
They will be in your bathroom, staring back at you, right above the sink.
It’s not that you won’t run a successful business, have good bosses, great clients, gem colleagues, and great opportunities and victories.
HOWEVER (*thunder claps overhead*)
It’s up to you to protect yourself in such a way that you can both identify and enjoy those things as well as protect your self agency when insecurities and the pull of all our collective conditioning around performance tries to push you into sacrificing your own values, priorities & health.
The conversations, initiatives, acknowledgements and changes that your industry, company or colleagues do not instigate even though you think they ‘should’ are not getting you to where you want to go - but they are likely impacting your longevity, health, growth, and bank balance.
It’s our responsibility to stay conscious about that, and how…
4. Fawning prevents us from getting down to brass tacks
No one here is a dummy - we know that in many industries and especially for entrepreneurs, ‘not keeping up’ doesn’t get you applauded for choosing peace. Criticising abuses of power or unfairness doesn’t get you a fresh bouquet delivered to your desk - it can get you demoted, replaced, and quietly/not so quietly pushed out.
My head is not close enough to the clouds, and my wallet is not close enough to a Rockefeller’s to start preaching that ‘just say no’ is a true, immediately actionable solution in many work environments and industries. But I want all of us to think more deeply about resistance - beyond just swapping memes or speaking in deja vu loops about our discontent in break rooms. I want us to think deeply into what we have come to consider as normal. I want us to see where we fawn, and assist in maintaining dysfunction because we are uncomfortable with the unknown of what an alternative might look like. Where we wait for a hero who isn’t coming.
Resistance doesn’t mean you’re immediately on the hook for quitting your job and moving into a van, and your discontent doesn’t automatically mean your employer is evil or you need to dissolve your business to find balance.
But a type of resistance you can start immediately - is just refusing to gaslight yourself anymore about what ‘that’s just how it is”, “that’s just what people in my industry do” and “this is just what everyone has to do to survive” is doing to your life.
Things are unlikely to 180° overnight, but you can stop pretending. You can open yourself up to truths you may have protected yourself from before. You can start to shine that interrogation lamp on yourself and your specific situation.
It will improve your levels of self trust almost immediately to simply validate what you are seeing and specify what about it feels wrong to you.
And you can do some cool shit with higher levels of self trust. Something a little Avante-garde, perhaps?
5. Your work is just not that into you, and it never ever will be
One of the patterns I’ve had to break for myself is becoming major emotional support for the people I was working for, or becoming too attached to a business.
Owners, managers, leaders, even other colleagues will often consciously or unconsciously encourage this - even though it’s not healthy or balanced for you. It works so well for a business when you are highly emotionally invested, beyond pay checks or titles for your resume - and it’s obviously not a bad thing to feel passion and investment in your work.
But beware the trappings of unrequited love, even when you are being applauded and appreciated for your performance at different intervals.
This may sound like an obvious, or not so obvious concept, depending on how much you know about how you personally attach in relationships - and how that attachment pattern does show up in your ability to keep healthy boundaries at work (because there is no work/life separation, remember?!).
My pattern of over investment felt purposeful and fulfilling at times, but ultimately it distracted me from what my experience was in the workplace and whether it was a good thing for me. It’s nice to care about what you do and the people you work with, natural even. It should not mean that your own needs take a back seat. Even as an owner, this principle applies to you - you were a human with needs & desires, before you ever started your business.
Nobody will benefit from this type of unrequited love more than a system wired for extraction.
6. When you think you’re the exception to the rule, think again
Because we are experts at That’s Just How It Is (could this be the title for another Sex & the City spin off?), we must protect ourselves from ourselves by never thinking we are immune to becoming the star of a cautionary tale.
I’ve spent thousands of hours working shoulder to shoulder with people who shaped the cultures they were in — because they built them — and they embodied self-extraction. That energy infused everything. There is no “do as I say, not as I do” with leadership & culture, it permeates faster than gas station toilet paper.
I admired their passion, drive, and ingenuity. I learned a lot from them. They were generous guides and often deeply self-aware, even when fear or exhaustion got in the way of actioning that awareness.
But additional common threads were stomach ulcers, insomnia, & other untreated health issues. Companies that were once profitable, now struggling for years. Consistently lamenting missed time with kids, partners, friends, hobbies. The inability to tell clients or their own bosses “no” (it actually seemed physically painful to try). Micro-management as the default because their systems were poised for disaster (this will drive other smart, skilled people away from your team btw). The self care was lacking - like forgetting to look after themselves in basic ways like eating, as staying locked in at work was continuously prioritised (a no-brainer when appetite and digestion are regulated by how amped your nervous system is…).
And, there was always talk of timelines - “Once X happens, I’ll slow down.” “It’s only until…” “When this is finished…” but spoiler alert - those goalposts always seemed to shift, and life continued as it was. That’s the nature of a system that has forgotten there is any alternative.
The rule continued, without exception, despite best intentions.
“Outrageous, the way these people live!” I thought to myself, “can’t they see how terrible it is? Can’t they see what it’s doing to them?”
Then my dad died, and I went back to work three days later. Then I worked across time zones while I was in another country organizing his funeral — scanning old photos of him for a eulogy slideshow between calls. One day I screamed at and slapped my computer screen (luckily I did not thrown a drink in it’s face) … and then kept working.
It was not a healthy, conscious choice for me (this won Understatement of the Year in 2024).
I loved the company I was working for, its mission, the people — but then I felt sick, empty, simultaneously resentful and dissociated. I had overridden every boundary my body tried to set for weeks. The shock and emotional overwhelm merged with old fears about work and worth and I was desperate to prove something. That I was stoic and in control? Still important? Necessary? Not totally fucked up?
I thought about taking time off every day, but I didn’t trust myself to stop moving. These were special circumstances, yes, but I believe special circumstances can also reveal a lot about baselines - and that’s how I was given a sharp reminder that I am no exception.
I was reminded that you are teaching yourself and those around you every day, moment-to-moment. You are teaching your Self, right now. You are teaching your body, right now. You are teaching your employees, right now. You are teaching your kids, right now. You are teaching your clients, colleagues and your broader industry, right now.
There is no later, because you will have taught yourself again, and again, and again, how to stay hypervigilant, unwell, stressed, and ‘on’ at all times. This conditioning will be highly effective, and it will be deep-seated.
You will not be able to do the same things that got you into it, to reverse it.
Your resistance is community service, go forth & contribute!
AKA the antidote
AKA the big upside of being selfish, entitled and weak
When we’ve been overwhelmed a few to many times (or maybe you feel like you’ve always been overwhelmed) we fall into the rut of thinking our role is too small at work, at life, in the universe - to matter at all.
It triggers a defensive apathy that seems easier because it feels like not caring - but it’s really a repression of our feelings, and what I believe is our innate human inclination to innovate and contribute.
We do care, but we need bandwidth to stay present with that passion, which I explained in depth with my series on self-relationship - Routines of Peace.
When we have been taught to sit down, shut up and get on with it - we can also start to think that any disruption we cause to a system that is taking advantage of that apathy, of that compliance, of that unrequited love - as selfish, entitled, weak.
I’m telling you that when you use the leverage at your disposal to create abnormality in what you see as wrong - however small that leverage is - you use it for people around you who may not have that same leverage. You use it for people with even less autonomy and control. You use it for people with far less bandwidth. You use it for a past version of yourself that felt trapped and hopeless. You use it for future you, and you use it for any children in your life.
You use it to quit the ‘every man for himself’ mentality that directly feeds the fear & scarcity mentality.
You use it to start seeing your own values reflected in the mosaic of your life, of your business, of your work - instead of someone else’s.
Other people will still need to pick their moments. Their stances. See their accountability where it exists and grab hold of their opportunities for abnormality -
but you can co-create a meeting place with them.
Thanks for following along with this series!
If you connected with it, you may be interested in a live & in-person group for women I am starting in Squamish BC.
This will be part focus group, part social group for women who want to connect with other women, and participate in guided workshopping & discussion around work & career (and therefore life!).
Please follow along on my Instagram, where I’ll be sharing further details.
More soon!
- Jasmine
