The Whirlpool

Are you in the middle of making a decision and feel confused? Have you recently joined the wrong organization and feel hesitant about your career? Are you fed up with something, or someone and not sure which decision to make? .. Take care of the whirlpool, and this blog post is for you ..

The oceanic nature of life

Imagine life as a series of whirlpools, of different sizes and colors, each one is trying to pull you to it while you are swimming your way through .. The challenge is .. Can you cross them?

Life is very similar to this oceanic nature, full of whirlpools .. financial, emotional, cultural, mental and societal whirlpools are all trying to pull you during your swim from one shore to the other .. We all leave the shore one day .. we have to, once we leave parents and start our own journey, being independent and trying to survive and make a living .. Once we jump into the water, it is exciting, nice and calm, then we go deeper, water gets cooler, the sea gets higher, and whirlpools start hitting us from all sides.

Being trapped!

The majority of people get trapped in between the whirlpools, and try to swim across, exerting so much efforts in fighting back the whirlpool power, changing direction when possible in order to stay on the surface, swim and survive .. Isn’t that true?

Haven’t you tolerated a bad boss just to keep the salary? A bad culture just to keep the job title? Haven’t we all made trade-offs? Of course! But what’s wrong about this? Probably the only thing missing is that we rarely, or never, thought of whether we had to trade from the first instance.

Surviving the whirlpool

One of the most common advice a life guard would give swimmers if they face whirlpools is not trying to fight them back, but actually diving them deep below .. Take a deep breath, dive down and then the whirlpool gets smaller as you go deeper, and you will be able to get out of it much easier than fighting them on the surface.

Now reflect on this a bit .. every time we feel confused about something, how often do we dive deep into our own selves, asking ourselves of our own core principles, values and mission in life? Do we really need to make a trade off? Do we need to stay on the surface, fight every whirlpool?

A great deal of people who decide to fight back whirlpools will lose direction even if they survive, since they will turn around with it, and after few turns they will not know which way to go … How truthful is this today?

So what’s the recipe for surviving?

1. Write down your core values in life .. focus on the top 3 that you will never compromise. This will be your guide to which whirlpool you will decide to fight, and which one you will run away from.
2. Write down your biggest mission in life, what is one thing that you definitely want to achieve before you leave this life (and we will all do one day). This will be your direction .. Never lose it.
3. Remind yourself weekly, or even daily of the first points, to avoid the trap of being attracted to nice, yet distracting whirlpools .. Focus every effort on what you really need, rather than what is available.

With life being very demanding, people changing faces like crazy, and speed of living increasing every day, things do not turn as they seem, and it is very easy to be fooled, distracted, pulled into things that are totally away from your personal priorities. The art of surviving life whirlpools is key to every individual in order to reach the other side of the ocean and avoid being endlessly swimming in the deep blue life ocean.

Written by:

Engagement Expert, International Speaker & Pragmatic researcher