How to anchor when everything feels up in the air
I’ll be honest. Taking the summer off didn’t quite go how I imagined.
When I was planning my year ahead back in Jan, one of the things I decided to experiment with, was not working through July and August. How French of me, I know.
Because I live most of the year pretty far away from my family and closest friends, I always try and make the most of the couple of months when I’m closer to them while spending the summer in London.
But spending time with them was still something I always had to fit around work.
Like most people, ever since I started working at 15, (as a waitress in a gastropub) I’ve organised my social or leisure time around my job. How many days leave I have, when my projects are the busiest, when other people in my team are on leave, or just generally trying not to take the piss with it.
Now that I work for myself, it’s completely up to me how I organise my time.
There’s no more script, no HR guidelines, no expectations, no template.
It’s all improv.
Sure you might be thinking, ‘must be nice’.
But not having a script takes a lot of work. Without a script, you have to decide for yourself - what do I need, what do I like, what are my boundaries? It takes more self reflection, self awareness, trying things out and seeing what works for you. It takes time, energy, intellectual capacity, emotional and sometimes even financial resources.
So if you’re similarly finding yourself in a position where you’re having to let go of an old script and it’s making you feel overwhelmed…
…me too babe.
Every day of working for myself brings with it a new confrontation of having to make up my own script as I go along.
If you think about it, the point of a script is to tell us what to say and do, and when and how to say and do it. You read the script enough times, it becomes ingrained in your brain and eventually you can perform the script without having to read it anymore.
It’s the same in real life. Our brains develop programmed responses to cues in our daily lives. Cues can be anything from our environments, particular events, social interactions, sensory experiences or particular times.
Like how you automatically know to turn the lights on when it starts getting dark.
In the same way when we walk away from a job without knowing exactly what’s coming next, or maybe your side hustle has just become your main hustle and now you’re a business owner, we’re stepping into a season where our old scripts are no longer relevant. We’ve lost a bunch of cues that our brain was accustomed to responding to in a particular way.
The longer this persists without us being intentional about giving ourselves new cues, the more uncomfortable it can start to feel.
Which is why taking two months off out of my usual routines ended up feeling significantly more disorientating than I expected.
The upside though, is that it’s given me more insight into how I can better support myself as I ease into the back to school vibes of ramping things back up at work which almost feels like an opportunity to start again from scratch on my daily routine.
Creating anchors
What I’ve found really soothing in these kinds of moments of high uncertainty, is committing to a bare minimum of some anchoring behaviours and routines that can give me a sense of certainty.
This helps reassure my brain and nervous system, and also creates cues to nudge me into the actions that I need to take and build some momentum, instead of passively spiralling in anxiety.
For me some examples of what that’s looked like tangibly is:
Behaviour - while I was travelling to a different place every few weeks over the summer I found it really challenging being out of my usual workout routine.
The bare minimum I committed to was at least getting my 10k steps a day no matter what, which really helped me stay active, even if it was different from my usual routine.
Routine - I’ve been procrastinating on getting back into writing even after my summer break officially ended.
A friend suggested we do a co-writing session on Monday mornings which felt like a bare minimum I could commit to.
We started this week and it immediately helped create the momentum for me to keep going the rest of the week, and is the reason I’m able to get this newsletter out today.
Both these things give me a sense of structure and certainty, and an answer to the “what should I do?” question when I found myself without my usual cues to go off.
So if you’re finding yourself staring at a blank canvas at the moment and aren’t sure where to start - what behaviours or routines could anchor you by lovingly forcing you into getting (and keeping) you going? What’s the minimum or easiest level that you could start?
P.S. If you’re curious about how a coach could be a supportive anchor in guiding you towards deeper alignment with the kind of work you’re best at, my 1:1 coaching is back open! Let’s chat!
Journal prompts
What is one small thing within your control that’s easy to do as part of your daily routine that you could commit to every day as a certainty snack? Like my 10k steps example.
Are there classes, meetings, courses, or commitments with a friend that you could participate in regularly that help prompt you into taking the action you need?
Do you notice any resistance or objections come up in response to either of the first two questions? Use what comes up to write out your argument as to why not to do them, and then write out an argument for doing it. What do you notice?