Right Where I'm Meant To Be

On finding my groove as a small business owner with ongoing anxiety

Years ago, I accepted a job that at the time felt to me like an absolute dream come true. From the moment I read the job description, I felt a clarity that I was exactly the right person for this role - which is a feeling I hadn’t had too often in the process of looking for work. But this job description was like a checklist of everything I had either already done at a previous job or primed myself to take on in my next role. The cover letter essentially wrote itself. The interview felt like a given, and then it went as well as it could have. I knew that every question that was asked of me, I had answered well. The only thing I wasn’t sure about at the end of the interview was whether or not my would-be boss liked me.

All my life, I’ve thought of myself as quite perceptive. I’m also an empath (no, really - I’m not just saying that) and I’ve always had a tendency to take on the feelings of other people. I’m constantly analyzing the people around me, reading their tones, their expressions, their body language, and I feel like in general, I’m pretty good at picking up on what another person is feeling, and usually able to ascertain where I stand with others.

But I’m also anxious. And the great tragedy of being anxious is that it causes us to think everything is about us, all the time, and usually in a negative way. So, even though I’m good at reading people and picking up on the way they’re feeling, if my anxiety kicks in, it can mess up my whole perception and cause me to place a lot of unnecessary blame on myself if I perceive that there’s displeasure in the room.

So, on the day of that all-important interview for The Best Job (On Paper) I Ever Interviewed For, everything felt just right, like the stars had aligned/were aligning - except I wasn’t sure if the boss liked me. For the following five or six days, however long it took before hearing back about the job, I obsessed about everything I’d said during the interview. I compared the vibes I’d gotten from The Possible Future Boss to the way it seemed like I’d been received by Potential Future Coworkers. I lost sleep, ate less, and generally felt like shit for a week leading up to the verdict. I felt sure that I was going to lose out on this job I was perfect for, because I couldn’t be positive that I had wowed the manager.

And yet, the boss must have liked me enough, because I got the job. But my anxiety didn’t really let up, even though my new boss called to make me the offer, instead of letting HR handle it. Even though the new team included me on a social hour a week before my first day on the job, just so they could show me off to other coworkers and spend some time getting to know me. None of those hints that hey, this team AND its manager were excited to have me, could completely lift my anxiety. From the moment I had struggled to read the body language of my new boss, I had never stopped believing that I wasn’t good enough. And now I had taken a job I didn’t fully believe I was going to succeed in. That’s no way to start a new thing.

So it’s not a surprise that I didn’t succeed. And I mean that by my own standards - I didn’t feel confident going to work every day. I didn’t find joy in my work. It wasn’t a great fit, like I’d thought it would be. I had thought off and on for years that maybe I might like to work for myself, but I never believed I could really pull it off. I was afraid, so I didn’t try. I just talked about it, thought about it, wrote about it, planned it out from top to bottom several times over. But I never did it. I didn’t pull the trigger on starting my own business until I had stopped working entirely, and given in to a long-ignored need to pause and regroup. I wasn’t brave enough to just go for it. That’s the truth.

I’m not saying this to garner pity, but rather to tell you what happened, so we can all reflect honestly on what it means. It means that sometimes, we cannot do the thing that scares us until we don’t have anything to lose. It means that no matter how many self help books we read, how many years we spend in therapy, no matter how many miles we run or yoga classes we take, sometimes things just have to happen in their own damn time. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and strive and all that, but it’s just to say, sometimes things really do have to come to a halt before you can see your next move.

There were a lot of reasons I needed to come to a halt, but one of the bigger reasons was to spend some time rethinking what I thought I knew about my ability to read people, and to perceive what was really going on around me. I know I’m smart. I know I’m perceptive. But the truth is that my anxiety had gotten so big at times that I was completely incapable of assessing anything at all that was going on in my life. I had such a skewed perception of reality, and all the while I was still picking up on every single emotion felt by every single living being around me. I thought I was a perceptive and aware empath. It turns out I was not. I was an empath, sure, but whatever I was perceiving was making me freak the fuck out. Anytime I found myself in any sort of situation with a stressful vibe, I would go into panic mode, assuming I was the to blame for whatever was wrong about (if anything was wrong at all, but that possibility never even crossed my mind). Everything was my fault, period. I didn’t have to know or understand the circumstances to know that I was the one everyone hated.

After working a series of jobs for other people, from the time I was 18 to just before I turned 40, I started my own business, and quickly realized that it’s harder to shed the trappings of capitalism than I’d assumed. It turns out, I needed to learn how to be a nicer boss to myself, because I’d actually never seen the type of leadership that I aspired to modeled for me, at any job I ever held. And it also turns out that, even when I didn’t have to answer to anyone, I had trouble shedding the negative assumptions and anxiety that I’d experienced as an employee of someone else. Any time a yoga teacher I knew scored a class at a studio I couldn’t get hired by, or led a class similar to one of mine but got a larger turnout, I’d question my skills and my ability to succeed in small business. I constantly stressed that I wouldn’t be anyone’s favorite teacher, and forgot that no one is everyone’s favorite teacher. I stressed out about saying no to any offers that came my way, even if they didn’t feel good to me, and even though there was no one to scold me or tell me I was making the wrong choice. It took a long time to stop piling on more work than felt good to do in a given week or month. I’m still working on that piece.

What I’ve learned so far on this self-employment journey, and what I’m still learning, is that there’s no way to please everyone, including myself. I’ll never be the most popular teacher in the whole world, or able to expertly guide every single type of yoga or meditation practice that interests me. I’ll never be able to find time in my calendar for every single retreat and training and workshop I want to offer, or take for myself. There will be things on my to-do list that get pushed down the list year after year, just like in my old jobs, and people who don’t like me, just like in my old jobs. There will be times when everything feels like a slog, and times when it all feels so perfect and easy and aligned and I know I’m right where I’m meant to be. There will also be times when it’s all so boring I could scream. Because it’s work.

And the reason I came to work for myself is so I could feel in charge of my life, and not like someone else was pulling all the strings. For better or worse, now I know that every decision I make is my decision, period. I may always be a person with anxiety, but hopefully I can rest a little easier in the knowledge that the only person I really have to answer to now is myself.

I don’t know if there will ever come a day when I stop assuming that everyone hates me / is mad at me, or if my anxiety will ever fully go away. But I can tell when I’m having a good day, and on the good days, I’m feeling better than I’ve ever felt at any job, ever. And it’s all worth it, just for that.

xo,