“December 7th, a date, which will live… in infamy.”
Famous words from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt referring to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941.
How do we remember things. How do we look back and learn from the past without out our past sinking it’s hooks in us and keeping us from moving forward in our lives?
How do we look back at history, learn from it, grow from it and not repeat the same mistakes over and over?
God reminds us to remember His ways and deeds and words all throughout the bible.
“Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, so that you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen and they do not depart from your heart all the days of your life; but make them known to your sons and your grandsons.
~ https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Learning-From-The-Past
December 7th, 2018 marks the 9th week since I left my job of 21 1/2 years at Rawhide Inc., New London WI. A state licensed home for boys aged fourteen to eighteen.
Today’s article is a touchstone/remembrance.
A collection of my thoughts up to this point and the recent experience I’ve had changing jobs.
I’ve stated before I liked my previous job. I really felt like I grew up while working at Rawhide over the years but recently having some life issues come up regarding my wife being out of work and my daughter needing her medicine, I had to try and find a job that would allow me to take care of my family.
I was able to do that with a local factory, very close to my house that provided both the pay and the medical benefits that my family needed.
The rub… 12 hour days and very physical work throughout the whole shift.
The silver lining… you only work half of the year. Good thing too because you need recovery time.
Some friends thought I was too old to go back to factory work. I would say, “It’s just work, yeah I’ll be sore for three weeks and won’t really know what I’m doing until about week six, but it’s just work.”
I didn’t realize how hard physically and how hard mentally the job change was going to be on me.
My old supervisor had asked me to come back to Rawhide in a different capacity and I think having that safety net dangling under me actually made it worse mentally.
I have to admit after injuring my forearm and the pain that it caused, I seriously considered quitting the factory and going back to Rawhide.
The problem with that was… going back would not take care of my family and I would have had to get a part time job just to cover my daughters monthly medicine needs.
So even though my mind was raging against me I kept telling myself, “going back is not moving forward.”
In the first three weeks I went from… not being able to lift my arms to turn a light off, to a forearm injury that caused me more physical pain than I have ever had in my life, to discovering CBD Hemp oil, to the end of the three weeks where the muscle soreness was gone, which I knew would go away after spending the last two years getting in shape and learning my body, to discovering the lack of mental fortitude I had as my quirky OCD habits were very much blown up into focus and showed me the cracks in my mental armor.
You or maybe a friend have commented in a funny way about your OCD acting up when you touch something more than once or you get down the street and have to turn around, come home, get out of the car and have to check to make sure you locked the front door… again!
I started having minor anxiety issues on my work days the closer it got to the time I had to go to work. I found myself using a simple meditation technique of deep breathing as my shift started. It would help, but as my body calmed down my brain would speed up and I just couldn’t calm it down.
It was a roadblock to learning my new job.
It wasn’t going well with my co-worker for multiple reasons but my anxiety for the next three weeks was a pointed issue I had with myself.
So I did what I do. I researched it and like always I found some real good information, some personal stories and a few different medical diagnoses that fit what I was going through along with some Bible verses that provided me with the strength to keep moving forward.
Now armed with my new information I made myself aware of what was happening at work, looking for the triggers, looking for where I was apt to try and fit in a compulsive movement, like counting labels more than once, and started telling myself a few things.
At first I said a verse from the story of Gideon, “go in the strength you have” ~Judges 6:14, this one was the basic step of telling myself, “it’s just work, you’ll get it, you can do it, you’ve done it before.”
Along with that I would tell myself when feeling anxious, “You don’t have time for that!”
Then my mind began to really panic at times and that isn’t me at all. I’m calm.
This really bothered me. My insides were all roiled up, anxious, and in turmoil.
Then a favorite picture of the Bible came to mind and that is of Jesus, standing in front of Pilate… CALMLY, awaiting his fate. In that instance Pilate, the Governor is the one who is anxious and doesn’t know what to do, while Jesus, even in written word, exudes this quiet, calm, confidence in the face of the worst awaiting fate known at the time. His own death, being hung on a cross.
I started telling myself while picturing Jesus standing with Pilate, “calm your mind and have calm, confident hands” and this really helped get me through the next couple of weeks as I gained more time at the new job.
At six weeks my co-worker and I had to work some stuff out. Our supervisor was involved and he let me know I was on track and a little ahead of where he thought I would be.
Side note: If you are working with someone, young or old, and you are responsible to teach or train that person, remember a couple things… they’ll only be as good as you taught or trained them and when they do progress make sure you point out what they are doing right. You don’t have to go overboard with it just let them know, “Hey, nice job today, keep it up.”
I am writing this down today as a remembrance for my theemergingman.com project, as I hope to provide information to those who need it in order to help them move forward in life.
It’s nice knowing we are not the only one dealing with stuff and that there are real people who are going through self improvements that show others if you want to change it is very doable.
There will be some sort of pain, but you find out that there has to be pain in order to get to where you want to be.
Yep, it sucks while it’s happening, but as you grow and learn and can apply what you learn to the next task…
you find that at week nine… you have the energy to get back to your writing projects.
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