Sink or Swim

One Friday afternoon, my director called me into his office to tell me that he is moving me from my current position in Quality Assurance to a job I previously held in the organization ten years ago in Policy and Compliance.

I was unwilling to make the move but he insisted that he needed me to do this because Policy and Compliance desperately needed help.  So I'm their savior, I thought; that cannot be possible.  I stressed about this the entire weekend.  The following week, I met with the new supervisor, then returned to my director asking him to reconsider the decision.  He insisted that Policy and Compliance needed my help and was confident that I could make a difference.

After a few days of pondering the situation, I had an epiphany.  The words sink or swim popped into my mind.  Then I remembered a story my husband told me about how he nearly drown in a pool until he had the presence of mind to relax his body.  It was only then did he float to the top.  I applied this theory to my situation.

I told myself: as long as you're struggling, you will continue to go down.  Stop struggling and just relax and you will find yourself floating to the top.  I had to remind myself about all the courses at Trinity University that I stressed over and in the end earned an 'A' in the course.  I also reminded myself about how much I agonized over completing chapters for my book and submitting to my writing coach on time and succeeding each time.

The key thing for me to remember is to simply stop struggling.  Past events have shown me that there is no need to do so because in the end, I'm going to float to the top and succeed.

Hi, I'm Liz Hawkins and I'm an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.