Giving Up the Rescue Fantasy

When I am feeling strung out and overemotional, the temptation to entertain and otherwise distract myself can be almost too much to stand. I find myself spending more time watching TV, reading blogs, and going on Twitter and Facebook, as if in those environments I can find my value. I indulge in rich food and melodramatic conversations. I feel lonely and sad, like I’m grieving something I can’t quite name.

I saw an old friend this weekend, and we talked a bit about how these kinds of moments in life often lend themselves to pursuing a “rescue fantasy”. The concept of someone outside of me coming to my rescue and saving me from my circumstances is so seductive, it’s easy to see why it has lasting appeal in everything from movies to religion to literature to politics. It’s such a simple solution, really, with such HUGE ramifications. Swoop in, relieve someone from experiencing the consequences of their choices, go home and crack open a cold one. All in a day’s work.

And yet, the truth is that in order to truly start leading my life, I have to begin by accepting the fact that no one is coming to save me from it.

Help is certainly on the way, always, yet it never takes the place of personal responsibility.

A lot of my perspective on this comes from Dave Navarro (no, not that Dave Navarro), the mind behind Rock Your Day. In fact, he says this stuff much better than I do here and here. So go read that stuff and then come back here when you’re ready.

Here’s a quote from Dave:

If you want your life to be different, you’re the one that is going to have to get up off the couch and make it happen.

No one is coming to your rescue. And that’s good news.

The good news is that when you accept that no one is coming to your rescue, you can finally work on rescuing yourself.

One major change I made was to stop wishing that my circumstances were different right now and to start focusing on the question how can I grow as a person through the process? Maybe the reason I’ve been so damn unhappy isn’t because I’m not at the finish line right now, but that the waiting is revealing weaknesses in my attitudes, my self-discipline, and my willingness to push myself harder in the areas that matter.

We all want “things to change and be better” when perhaps we should be focusing on becoming better in the process of moving towards that change.

Otherwise, when things do get better, we’ll still be carrying all our current baggage into the next job, the next relationship, the next whatever … and we’ll be just as unhappy.

You need to rescue yourself from your frustration, right where you are, right now.

Once, I didn’t get a promotion I wanted. I wanted it like I wanted food, if that gives you any idea. I can’t remember the last time I wanted something as much as I wanted that job.

And then, I didn’t get it. And I thought I was going to die, of course, only I didn’t say “of course” back then, because back then I thought I only had days left to live and my sense of humor was already in a flatline.

Anyway. People were throwing platitudes at me faster than you can say “cliche alert”, and I was still drowning in despair and self-condemnation. Until one friend said to me; “You know, you are the same person today that you were before you found out you didn’t get the job. You are no less important, cared for, and loved now than you were before. You are also no less qualified, competent, or gifted than you were before. This news does not change who you are.”

Thankfully, she said that before the tattoo artist had started inking the humungous L on my forehead.

What she said helped me realize that while I so wanted to be rescued from my walking nightmare, there was something I wanted more.

I wanted more to rescue myself.

I don’t say that in the sense of doing it all myself, which we have established I am not a fan of. Known and not alone, people.

And I don’t say that in the sense of picking up my toys and going home because I felt sorry for myself, either. I say it in the sense of truly understanding where I had been passive and allowed others to define me and my skills.

Where I had avoided having the hard yet clarifying conversations about where I could best contribute to the team, based on my own understanding of my gifts and desires.

Where I had chosen the path of indirect communication, rather than the strong and courageous and redemptive and gracious and narrow road of speaking both truth and grace into the organization.

Where I had allowed myself to act childish and petulant and excused my cowardly ambivalence about what the job would actually entail.

Where I had failed to clarify expectations, and so allowed others to feel justifiably disappointed when I didn’t follow through on something I never had any intention of doing.

And, most importantly, where I could now make a different choice, and begin to rescue myself from a situation I had helped to create.

Let me be clear: Rescuing yourself is painful. Especially if you haven’t done it much before. It takes different muscles than those used to rescue others. I can guarantee you that there will be many, many days when you will not want to rescue yourself or anyone else. At some point, you will probably even consider paying someone else large amounts of money to let you take a break from rescuing yourself.

That is the price of resistance.

But, my friends, trust me when I say that it is worth it. The freedom and the power that comes from doing your own dirty work is like no reward you have ever received.

Give up your rescue fantasy. Reality can be so much better.