Disrupting the Stigma of Starting Over
[Music]
[Applause]
i remember pulling back the curtain to
look outside
and seeing all the flashing lights it
was
blinding
our apartment building was surrounded by
police
in that moment the best way i could
describe
how i felt is that it was like an
out of body experience
things had spiraled so quickly and our
fight had escalated
into a six o’clock news kind of breakup
one that marked not only the ending
of a relationship but the beginning
of the messi process of starting over
it led to letting go of the sporty car
and the perfect shade of blue that we
had shared
and in its place borrowing a an old
yellow vw bug
with a two by four piece of wood
attached to the place where the bumper
used to be
it meant driving
a car that was super tricky to shift
and the gas gauge didn’t work
but it ran
most of the time
having a less than reliable car led to
losing my job at the bank and along with
that
came trading in the pride
of earning a paycheck for the
embarrassment
of receiving food stamps and a welfare
check
and it didn’t end there i also was
evicted from my apartment
thankfully friends took me in
and i moved into the unfinished basement
of their home along with my two-year-old
little boy
he thought it was pretty cool to sleep
on a fold-out chair
in his ninja turtle sleeping bag
me well i was
happy he was still little enough to
think it was fun
that was 1988 and i was
- and honestly i’ve lost track of how
many times i’ve started over again
since then but what i can tell you
is the most recent time which was the
january of this year
at age 51. you see in 2016
i left a 20-year career in human
resources
to start my own business and it was a
dream
come true not only did it give me the
opportunity to be doing work that lit me
up
i was really excited to be leaving
behind the workplace
drama and looking forward to a type of
freedom that i’d never
experienced before
and it did all those things
but as it turns out that was a bit of a
problem
now don’t get me wrong it’s not that i
miss the drama
but what i hadn’t considered is
how much i’d miss the do you have a
minute
kind of interruptions that sparked
conversations
around what was going on in people’s
lives with their
kids with their pets maybe even just a
recipe they had tried the night before
i missed the spontaneous laughter
and i really missed the meetings after
the meetings the ones that didn’t have a
thing to do
with policies and procedures
i missed the connection that came
with being part of an office environment
the everyday ordinary things
and as a result i began to feel
isolated and depressed
and i got to tell you i was shocked
because
i considered myself an introvert so i
never even considered
the possibility that i would miss the
energy of being around people every day
tried to focus on things to fill the
void
and was successful in
small pockets of time but i couldn’t
sustain it i wrestled with this feeling
for three years
so in november of 2019 when i saw
an ad in the paper about a part-time
human resources job that had flexible
hours
i found myself wondering if i should
apply
now if you had been listening to the
conversation going on in my head in that
moment
it would have sounded a little something
like this
are you nuts you have a business
supporting other business owners
no less what will your clients think
what will your entrepreneurial friends
think it’ll kill your credibility and
what about your schedule
what makes you think that you could
actually pull something like this off
without it
hurting your business and lynette really
really do you want to go to work for
someone else again
well when i had courage to
ask these questions out loud to give
them voice my husband
lovingly looked me in the eye and said
what is it that i hear you tell other
people all the time
just because you apply for a job doesn’t
mean you have to accept it
why don’t you follow that advice and see
where it leads
right i do say that don’t i
well played husband of mine well played
following that bit of good advice i went
online
applied for the job and ultimately
accepted the position
i didn’t need this job in the way that
i’d needed jobs in the past
but it was a much needed strategy
to improving my mental health in the 30
years since my first starting over
experience
a lot has changed with the world
and with me
but there’s one thing that hasn’t
changed
and that’s the stigma we attach to
starting over
and it’s kind of weird right because
starting over is a
shared human experience it’s
something that touches all of us at some
point in our life
think about it in your lifetime you’ve
probably done things like
change college majors or made a shift in
your career field
maybe you’ve packed up and moved across
the country
and maybe you’ve started over because of
circumstances
you didn’t count on
things like divorce illness
company restructures and
unexpected things that happen along with
things like
a global pandemic
so if this is a shared experience then
where does the stigma
originate it’s been role modeled for us
generationally
we’ve seen it present in our homes and
our houses of worship
in our workplaces and at school
it’s become an ingrained pattern in our
thinking a habitual
thought one that influences the way we
think about
others but more importantly
it influences the way we think about
ourselves
now here’s the good news in that
just like any habit we can disrupt
these negative thought patterns to put
us
on a forward path
and so i wanted to think for a minute
about choosing new thoughts i want you
to imagine for a moment
that your brain is like a record album
now i know some of you probably have
never seen a record album before that’s
why i brought along this visual
i want you to notice the flat round
piece of vinyl
that is the album notice
the grooves in the vinyl
that is where the soundtrack lives
when you put this special needle on
the record it will follow the grooves
all the way
to the end unless you
pick up the needle and move it to a new
track
choosing a new thought is like picking
up
the needle it’s creating a new
track in your mind it’s creating it’s
the catalyst
for a new neural pathway
in your brain it’s one that takes you
from that well-worn
path of negative messaging to positive
thoughts now to help you
in choosing new thoughts i want to
introduce to you scan scan is an acronym
that i created to help me remember
a simple four-step process that’s really
quick
to help move the needle and choose that
new thought
so let’s take a look scan
is stop consider
align and nurture
so first we’re going to talk about stop
stop is just
exactly what it sounds like we want to
disrupt the negative thoughts in our
minds so we are going to stop by saying
something out loud like stop or
cancel but you may be in a room of
people where
it doesn’t feel really comfortable to be
talking to yourself
so you can do other things like having a
band that you wear on your wrist
that you can snap or creating some other
physical
cue like gently tapping your head
next we’ll stop to consider consider
what are other possibilities how is it
that this choice in front of us
could help us to meet a current need
to provide unexpected opportunity
to create a positive impact so we’re
going to consider
what will that be next
is a line the third step is to align and
when i talk about a line
what i want you to do is to think about
the things you just
considered all of those possibilities
and then start to align your thoughts
and actions with those that’s where we
pick up the needle and move it
lastly but i really want to emphasize
this is one of the most
important steps it’s nurture
and this is important because this is
the place where we meet ourselves
with kindness and compassion
it’s where we take the time to remind
ourselves of
some powerful truths things like
i am worthy i am resilient
i am wildly capable i may be a beginner
at this thing i’m getting ready to do
but i am not
a beginner at life
these four steps of scan help us to
create a new
soundtrack in our mind the reason that’s
important is because until we turn down
the volume
on these negative messages we continue
to stand in our own way
and it dims our light the light
that could be transforming
our families our communities
our schools our world
i want to invite you to think about the
places in your life
where you may be putting yourself on
hold
standing back not giving yourself
permission to take that next starting
over
step i want you to shine a light
on the places where those old defeating
messages of fear and shame
live
then scan
disrupting the stigma of starting over
is important it’s necessary
and it can all start in this very moment
with you
[Music]
you