Mar
Coasting
Many years ago, I was working in a rehab. I had been counseling substance abusers. The time had come for me to decide if I wanted to get full certification. However, the perception that my co workers were sicker than the patients had changed things. I figured that if the other counselors became miserable, it might happen to me. I was also dissatisfied with several things. The idea of going back to my old line of work was a reasonable decision.
I knew I was going to leave the substance abuse field, but had not made any definite move. The job had been pretty cushy. That made me complacent.
A few weeks after I made my decision, the owners of the rehab brought in a new administrator. Many of the staff came to dislike him. He was manipulative and deceitful. I caught him in more than a few lies, and he knew it. That was the kick I needed to make me do the necessary thing. I gave three weeks notice of leaving.
The next day, they fired me.
Had the new administrator not come along, I might have lingered too long. He turned out to be the push I needed to get moving.
There are times in life when we are coasting rather than progressing. It is as if we are in a neutral zone between places. We know we will have to move forward, but it is so easy to linger.
If we are lucky, there may come an incident to urge us out of our complacency. It could be an adverse situation, a conflict with someone else or some other irritant. However it arrives, it is the thing that gets us to move forward after we have lingered longer than we ought.
There is a time to go. If we linger past that time, Life may send us just the thing we need to get us moving. Be it a person, thing or incident, it forces the change that we are reluctant make on our own.
