The Life Waiting for You: How Yoga Can Help You Leave Your Unsatisfying Job

04/25/2016 08:42 am ET

Sujantra McKeeverFounder of Pilgrimage of the Heart Yoga and PilgrimageYogaOnline.com

JORDAN SIEMENS VIA GETTY IMAGES

If you... follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living... Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.
— Joseph Campbell

I woke up and knew I could not stand another day of doing the same thing I had hated doing yesterday. After bouts of insomnia at night, I struggled to wake up in the morning, finally dragging myself out of bed at the last possible minute. I had chronic headaches from grinding my teeth. Frustration was building, and the actions that flowed from this frustration were often hurtful to myself and others: yelling at a dear friend for no reason, putting myself down, and sabotaging anyone’s efforts to help.

I lay in bed, awareness of what my day would hold filling me with a growing sense of dread. That’s when I did what I had always done: I shut down my emotions and went to work.

Chances are you recognize this scenario. A recent Gallup report shows that 70% of Americans feel disengaged or unhappy work. For many of us, this goes beyond a vague sense of dissatisfaction with the day-to-day vagaries of everybody’s job. It is the burden of feeling, day in and day out, that we have made a terrible mistake. We live with the constant misery of the belief that we are not where we are supposed to be and we are unable to escape.

But are we really trapped? When disenchantment with our work begins to affect our health and quality of life to this extent, is there anything we can do?

As I struggled with these questions, I started to admit my unhappiness to my friends. One of my best friends had used a daily yoga practice to get through an ugly divorce, and she suggested I intensify my own dabblings in yoga. Having nothing to lose, I decided to give it a try.

One of the greatest gifts I have received from my daily yoga practice is the ability to accept the importance of my deepest feelings. Our frustration from not following our heart’s knowing arises for good reason. There is a place deep within each of us into which the conscious mind can rarely go. The frustration we feel when our actions are misaligned with our calling is a clear signal that it’s time to examine these deeper feelings. Often times we are afraid of these signals because they demand of us the courage to make radical change.

My teacher wrote that the essence of yoga philosophy is “the acceptance of life for the transformation of life.” That simple statement embodies the key to creating change.

The first step is the “acceptance of life” - and with it, the acceptance of our truest intuition about our purpose. Yoga and meditation give me the ability to find a place of calmness and balance within. When I sit in meditation and begin to cultivate a sense of stillness, I am then able to examine my deepest feelings honestly and without fear.

It can be challenging to face the emotions within. Under the feelings of boredom, frustration, or dissatisfaction, there can be a sense of inadequacy or unworthiness, fear of failure, or shame about ending up in this situation to begin with. There can be the realization that your love for someone or something has changed. The emotions on the surface let you know that your life is not in alignment with your highest purpose and potential, and it is this underlying feeling that can be so damaging to your wellbeing in the long term.

When I was 31 years old, I was miserable. I was bored with my management job at a restaurant and felt frustrated and restless. One night I decided to take ownership of those emotions. I stopped blaming others, in particular the owner of the restaurant, and faced the fact that I was bored with my life. For the first time, I was able to admit to myself that there was another path that had been calling me.

As I sat there with full awareness of my frustration, an amazing thing occurred. The frustration was transformed into the enthusiasm I needed to make change. I got up from that meditation and made two phone calls that forever changed my life. One was to give notice at my job; the other was to hire an editor to help me write a book that I had bottled up inside me.

You see, the feeling of being trapped is often a bellwether of powerful transformation. It is an external sign of our unfulfilled potential for greatness. The practice of yoga and meditation gives us the tools to be present with our underlying intuition, in all its terrifying and exhilarating glory. And when we are truly able to sit quietly with all of our hopes and fears, we just might discover what it takes to heal and move forward.

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