When Serena Star-Leonard decided to leave her secure job in IT six years ago, she couldn’t have anticipated the journey that was to follow.

“I had a very well paying job and 
I was flown all over the world … it was 
an incredible position to be in and I was scared to leave. But what’s happened since 
I quit has been amazing.”

At some point in our lives, every one of us faces a situation (probably several over 
a lifetime) that can take us out of our comfort zone and into the unknown.

While for Star-Leonard it was 
a conscious jump off the cliff, for many 
others it can feel as though they’ve been pushed unwillingly.

A relationship breakdown, a job loss, death, disability and illness are among 
the most obvious life events that can uproot us – essentially “anything that 
calls into question or contradicts the 
way we see life”, sums up Sydney-based psychotherapist Marie-Pierre Cleret.

“Any life event that leads to major, major change,” adds Dr Russ Harris, psychotherapist and author of the international bestseller The Happiness Trap. “Even something very positive, like having children, can trigger a lot of confusion, anxiety and existential angst.”

DROP AN ANCHOR

The challenge, of course, is not how to avoid these events – they are inevitable in some way or form for all of us – but how to respond to them in a healthy way rather than distract ourselves with, for example, alcohol, drugs or food.

“Everyone is going to be different
[in how they move towards achieving
clarity],” says Cleret. “But it’s important 
to recognise the confusion. Not only 
what it is that’s thrown you into such 
a state, but a willingness to avoid the impulse to want to shut it down or come to any premature conclusions … to be tolerant and sit with the ambiguity.”

Dr Harris says it’s helpful to “drop an anchor”, which “holds you steady until the storm passes”. To do so, however, involves mindfulness, that is “learning how to ground yourself in the present moment … learning how to let those painful thoughts and feelings flow through you rather than letting them carry you away”.

HIDDEN TREASURE

The mindfulness approach Dr Harris 
refers to is part of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

“There is a process you go through, which is usually fear and disbelief … it’s hard,” admits Star-Leonard. “However, what you get out of it changes your life.”

Both Dr Harris and Cleret agree that some benefit can come from every difficult life event – if you’re willing to actively look for it. Dr Harris refers to it as “finding the treasure – even in the midst of great pain, there are aspects of life we can appreciate and treasure” (though he also suggests it’s not always easy to see the treasure), while Cleret refers to her experience with clients with AIDS or cancer who say they are grateful for the experience as it has made them take a look at their lives, when they otherwise never would have.

While “finding the treasure” is 
a great suggestion to help us in the 
midst of change or confusion, there 
are other important considerations to 
be mindful of, as well.

For example, it’s important to adopt 
a “compassionate perspective” during these times, says Cleret. “Don’t pay out on yourself for what’s happened. Ask yourself what you would do now knowing what you now know.”

Dr Harris agrees: “If beating yourself up was a good way to change behaviour, you’d be perfect by now. It’s a very ineffective way to change behaviour. What you need to do is be compassionate to yourself, reflect on what you did that worked and what you did that didn’t, and what you could do differently 
next time around.”

“Try not to get dragged into the undertow of your inner critic, or let that critic indulge in being wrong,” says Cleret.

“I haven’t met anyone who didn’t have self-judgemental or self-critical thoughts – even Zen masters have them,” says Dr Harris. “What we need to learn to do is let those thoughts come and go without getting carried away by them, which is a mindfulness skill called defusion.”

For Star-Leonard, persistence was also key when it came to ensuring her decision to quit her job was successful: “You just have to keep persisting. And be quite Zen about it … I don’t let myself get too frustrated [when something doesn’t work]; I just get on with it … you just have to persist, persist, persist; have fun with it; and take action.”

CONSIDER YOUR VALUES

Dr Harris suggests it’s important to get clear on our values before we take action. “Very often people make decisions without stopping to consider their values … and if you’re doing that mindlessly, from a state of high-anxiety, you’ll often make decisions that you regret.”

Star-Leonard understands the importance 
of values in determining a direction in life: 
“I’d started a few businesses and I thought, 
‘If I want to start a new business, I need to 
have a lifestyle goal,’ so I thought, ‘Alright, 
what do I really want?’”

For Star-Leonard, that goal was to retire in 12 months.

Cleret suggests asking, is this still right for me? “When we can’t live with ourselves, we’ve usually departed from some core values, and 
a review of our values can help bring us back to who we are. It’s a willingness to say something may no longer be open to you. It’s questioning who you were when you first got involved … and asking if you still have the same dreams, beliefs … it may be possible that you’ve moved on and haven’t realised it.”

Dr Harris quotes Viktor Frankl, 
a Holocaust survivor who wrote about his experiences in a concentration camp. Based on his observations of camp life, he wrote in his book Man’s Search for Meaning: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

“One of the things that really lets you choose your attitude is knowing your values, knowing what really matters to you,” says Dr Harris.

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES

Cleret suggests that one of the hardest obstacles to overcome when a person wants to gain perspective on something is “assuming we know what kind of person we are and believing that anything that contradicts that is wrong. We are way more than we think … and it’s important to have a developmental view on our lives, recognising that what matters [when we’re] five won’t be the same when we’re 13 or 18.”

“I ran a music festival to promote racial harmony and on the day over 8000 people came – I was hoping for 1500,” says Star-Leonard. 
“It blew me away and I quit my job the next day.

I call it a good-life crisis. It’s the moment in which you go, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. It’s what I choose rather than what my life has been directing me towards.”

For Star-Leonard, the choice to go for 
it was clear, but the choice not to go for it 
is equally as valid for other people.

Cleret cites an example she witnessed in her own practice, where one client, a mother, decided to postpone her dream to live in New York until her child had left home, while another client, after the break-up of her relationship, decided to leave her children with her ex-partner, their father, and move overseas.

The idea is not to label choices ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, but to make them thoughtfully and consciously, and to recognise they are appropriate at the time they were made, but may change later on.

“All human beings are highly avoidant of fear and anxiety,” says Dr Harris. “[Yet] if you are going to step up into an uncomfortable situation, or [if you] have one thrust onto you, there’s going to be a lot of fear and anxiety … The greatest obstacle is the inability to make room for those painful thoughts and feelings, and let them flow through you without a struggle.”

Every choice is made as part of “an ecology”, says Cleret, “and there are ripple effects to the choices we make”.

“The word heretic originally meant he 
or she who chooses �� I’m in the business 
of supporting heresy,” she laughs. “There 
are big consequences when you decide to choose … what are the reactions you are 
going to have around you, and what do you 
do to deal with that?”

In Cleret’s experience, dissatisfaction and discontentment arise when you don’t choose, “when you don’t own the ‘yes’ and you don’t own the ‘no’. You want to change but don’t 
want to change”.

For example, she explains, you want the benefits of a job you’re dissatisfied with, the security and pay, but are unwilling to deliver on what that job requires, nor pay the price of uncertainty of not working for a period of time. You’re stuck and unable to make the choice.

“People say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to retire, I’ll be bored,’” says Star-Leonard, “but for me it’s just the ultimate freedom to do anything you want. 
I think it’s important to keep the perspective that you can change your life at any time.”