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Today I’m exploring what it looks like to experience re-entry. This topic is an interesting one, and when I started writing about it, I was considering space itself and the terminology of re-entry and the whole notion of actually getting into space. I love a good aviation analogy and when I consider what it takes for an astronaut on a space shuttle to get out of the gravitational orbit of earth, it takes 80% of the fuel.
That’s 80% of it’s energy to get out of the orbit and go on the adventure. Then to come back, there’s actually no fuel whatsoever, but the re-entry itself to get back into that field where it has always and ever been before, prior to that adventure, it actually burns up. It doesn’t have any fuel, but it burns up on re-entry. And then the space adventurers often have a real difficulty finding their feet.
I feel like this is very much the same for all the people who have experienced this in their lives, where they have taken so much of their effort and energy to get out there and do something different. I sure have in my lifetime, when I went on a working holiday for two and a half years in the UK and Europe.
It took so much energy and effort to save up, to do things differently and to change my mindset to be able to travel halfway across the globe. All this at the ripe old age of 20, was pretty impressive. I went adventuring by myself and found places to live and a job and things like that. It took a lot to get out of the orbit of my community, my family, my close people, and what I had always and ever been doing. But then re-entry, it was a whole other kettle of fish.
Once you start to get used to that ‘new normal’ out in space, out on your adventure, wherever it happens to be, coming back is hard, right? Because you’ve experienced all these things, you have changed – the self that identifies as someone who is now capable of getting a job, doing things, finding their way, going through challenges and coming through them on the other side and being resilient.
That person is coming back into a space where those people and that community are still seeing you as the person that you used to be. Yourselves have changed, especially if you’ve lived overseas or you’ve had a baby, if you’ve had multiple pregnancies, and you’re coming back into the world of the workforce.
I see it all the time with people at the moment, practitioners who have been out for the past three years because of the choices that they’re making around their health and their clinic spaces and who they were.
Seeing them coming back in and seeing what’s changed and how they have changed their views, what they’ll put up with, what they are willing to do for their business and what they’re not willing to do anymore. The re-entry part can be a bit of a burn up. I’ve seen many people trying to come back in and burn themselves out by doing so. I’ve seen and experienced myself, the trepidation, instead of going all in and just rocketing in and burning up on the re-entry, maybe dipping your toe in.
After my radical sabbatical last year, I had been doing some big events, and then I took this sabbatical (three month break) and it turned into a nine month break because I kept dipping my toe back in and checking the temperature as to whether or not I wanted to jump back in or not. And of course, you might be feeling the same.
- Do you want to go?
- Do you want to do something different?
- Is there a different way of actually coming back into the world that you had before, the world that you knew?
- Are there things that have changed in you that you aren’t going to put up with anymore?
Most recently, I put myself through an ice bath immersion, which is somewhat a re-entry into the ice bath. If you are of the naturopathic persuasion or even if you’re in the entrepreneurial world, there’s a lot of information out there about hydrotherapy and ice baths, in particular, the Wim Hof Method. This cold water resilience training allows you to beg the question of what you are willing to put up with, to jump all in and immerse yourself in this new way of being for you.
That’s my new tactic! I’d love to give you one, two, three steps to re-entry on a smooth sailing course or something, but the truth is, it’s different every time you do it. It was different for me coming back from the UK. It was different for me getting into the workforce after having a baby. It was different for me in radical sabbatical.
It’s different this week on a micro level after being out with the spicy cough last week. And there’s a multitude of ways of doing it and it’s what’s in alignment for you and the experiment that you would like to run in this season of your reentry.
My challenge for you this week is what does re-entry look like for you? It’s nice to be aware, even if you’re not in the re-entry space at the moment. We have micro re-entries after a health scare or a health condition. We have re-entries after changes in our lifestyle. We even have re-entries after choices we’ve made to change, re-entry after choosing to change your health, going for a run, setting a new goal.
There’s micro re-entries that we take all the time. And I want you to have a look in the past at the re-entries that you’ve had and how you dealt with them.
- Were they a dip the toe in and run away?
- Were they a consecutive dipping of the toe in and running little experiments to see how it went?
- Is it more a cold water immersion for you, jumping all in and seeing what will happen on the other side of it?
- Creating resilience for every other time that you are going to re-enter?
- Or are you in the burn up?
- Are you in the surrender and going and seeing what happens when you try and find your feet on the other side?
I speak every week to different people, practitioners, clinicians, creatives that find me on the inter-webs and reach out for a quick call. And more recently, I have had a lot of calls about the re-entry factor. “So, I went and found this job during COVID…”, is the general kind of start to a conversation. “I went back to my old career”, “I started a side hustle during COVID”, “I decided to stay home with my kids and my family”, “I’m having my 1st, 2nd or third baby and now is the time that I feel like I’d like to make a move on using my qualification again and I just don’t know how to do it”.
The thing is, when we get that little spark of inspiration to re-enter, to come back into community and be of service and help in a way that we feel inspired to do so, it is happening for a reason. It’s happening to remind you that you are the right person for the job right now and take notice of the thing that you always wanted to do, because there’s no better time than now to do it, especially if it’s coming to play with you as a muse does, and inspire you into action.
I guess that’s the takeaway…
Re-entry and even the feeling of wanting to re-enter into your community, into your life, into whatever it happens to be, or re-entry if it’s forced on you for different reasons, is being called on us in a way that is in alignment with the person who you are right now, not who you were. You have to do it in your own particular way because that is what is needed right now.
If you have found this interesting and you’d like to share it with somebody who also might find it interesting, please do so! This will allow you to have a little bit more of a conversation that might create some curiosity that then leads to inspired action. That’s how we create consistent change in the world.
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