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Guest Post by Jasmine Wyrick

People are creatures of habit and sometimes those habits manifest themselves as patterns. Those patterns affect all of us differently. Depending on various factors such as your personality, your experiences and even your anxieties, you can find yourself repeating the same negative patterns repeatedly without even realizing you’re in a cycle.

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What are negative patterns?

Patterns are cycles that can be seen in everything we do, from our eating habits to our daily routines. It can even be seen in the workplace and in our relationships. I think about myself and the patterns I make when it comes to my professional career. I’ve had many jobs in the past and there is only one place that I’ve ever worked where I stayed for longer than a year and that was my time at Nordstrom.

My negative pattern is restlessness, based on an anxiety or fear of not moving forward, during my time at Nordstrom I became restless when I approached a year because I felt stagnant. When I was promoted or switched to a different department, I would excel, but then I would eventually feel stale and the cycle would repeat.

I tend to be very impatient when I don’t feel like I’m growing or advancing in life and when this happens, it’s a mad dash to the exit and into something new. I would rush into a new department, only to find out that I didn’t like it.

I would experience the things that I now realize make me uncomfortable about retail, the hours, the gossip, the low morale, the mismanagement by burned out leaders that lost their way and come to work every day miserable because their joy turned into just a job to make ends meet. I would feel that boredom, the stillness of repetition and the toxicity creeping in and I’d become anxious to move again.

How did my negative patterns affect me?

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The negative pattern:

Towards the end of my Nordstrom career I was so desperate for something new and different that I would hastily apply to and accepted the first offer at another company that was just as toxic, and even worse than anything I had ever experienced at Nordstrom or any other job since, for that matter.

I then was poached by a client that I was working for and joined an awesome company with the most amazing benefits and the creativity to do my thing to get the best results! Within a few months of working there, my boyfriend was promoted and relocated to Seattle and of course I was going too; the only problem was that the position was designed to be telecommuted so I had to eventually find something new.

Luckily for me, I had made such an impression on the VP of Sales, and he allowed me to work remotely for a few months until I found something else so I wouldn’t have to stress about finding a new job in a new state; it was great for about a month but then I learned that working from home had its own challenges, I found out that it can be isolating especially since I was in a new state, where no one but my boyfriend knew my name.

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It’s effect on my quality of life:

I was mostly stuck at home with my dog and found that I was enjoying deep conversations with her and of course she couldn’t speak back so I was slowly going crazy. The restlessness started to set back in and I was quickly trying to find something new to do.

I had fallen back into a system that my mind created out of desperation to keep moving and I honestly didn’t care what job I ended up at because at that moment, I just needed human interaction.

I ended up going back to Nordstrom, which turned out to be a mistake because even though I was getting the socialization that I needed, I quickly remembered why I stopped working there in the first place.

I bet you can imagine what happened next.

The cycle repeated.

Related:

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Identifying my negative patterns:

Currently, I’m in a similar situation and I look back at my history with employment and I’ve recognized a few things about myself:

1. I’m incredibly impatient.

In my desperation to get out of a bad job situation, I rushed, headfirst into another job without doing the appropriate research and figuring out if the job I’m saying yes to is the job that I want and will be happy at, which eventually leads me to the same job environment, just a different title and company name.

2. I’m unemployable, voluntarily.

I do not mean that I cannot get a job and keep it. What I mean is that I do not have the interest or passion to work for someone else. I am no longer interested in being stressed out to near-death and undervalued trying to make sure that someone else, who doesn’t even know my name, lives their dream.

Instead, I have dreams and aspirations of my own and I need to make myself my priority. This, by the way, is the greatest act of self-love, which is, to put yourself first.

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What identifying my negative patterns taught me:

So, in learning how my negative patterns affect me, I see that my fear of not progressing leads me into a cycle of flight, recklessly falling into the same pitfalls and getting the same tired results.

As Rita Mae Brown wrote famously in her novel Sudden Death, “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” By not changing my behavior I am flirting with insanity and if you don’t recognize your negative pattern, then so are you!

I’ve been running around doing the same thing repeatedly for years and I’ve wasted so much time, energy and resources. I’m going to say that again. I have been repeating the same destructive cycle repeatedly for years and I have wasted time, energy, and resources! I’ve witnessed this negative pattern in myself and in others around me. That is a hard truth to chew on.

Related:

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What are some other negative patterns to watch out for?

• Dating the same person, with the same unhealthy characteristics repeatedly. This is a cycle bought on by a fear of being alone or remaining unloved. So instead of moving outside of their comfort zones, these people will continue to go after the same thing and hope that it will eventually work out.
• Constantly getting in trouble at work because they can’t separate their personal relationships from their professional ones. These people are often very social. They find fulfillment from having a very large circle of friends and may feel unhappy or unconfident if they don’t form fun and social connections. There is nothing wrong with this, but it becomes a problem when they can’t separate professional from personal. It doesn’t help if the workplace is also toxic and doesn’t have professional boundaries put in place.
• Having a group of toxic people in your circle. This can be very challenging to break free from because sometimes the toxic people in your life are people who you may have grown up with or who are family. You have to learn how to love from afar or cut these people out because misery likes company and you can miss out on personal growth or even opportunities by having negative influences in your life.

Do any of these resonate with you?

Breaking these negative patterns are often difficult because sometimes it’s not always easy to identify them. We re-assign blame to external forces, we make excuses that our coworkers are our friends, the toxic people in our lives are like family, or it’s their fault the relationship didn’t work out.

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Related:

How to be happy – Choosing happiness as your reality

How can we break free from negative patterns?

In order to get out of these destructive cycles so we can live our lives to our fullest potential, we must reflect honestly and without bias, step outside of ourselves and really go deep and ask the important questions.

• How is this situation different than the last? Is it the same?
• What is my thought process when entering this job, relationship, etc.?
• Is there something that I can do differently this time?

Answer these questions openly and honestly and make the necessary changes to break free. It all starts with your mindset. If you can positively change your mindset, your opportunities and your relationships will change for the better.

What negative patterns do you identify in yourself? How can you take the first steps to changing them? Let’s talk about it below!

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Jasmine is the creator of The Post-It Note which explores what it means to love yourself through your anxieties and depression. She is a lover of all things fashion, food & makeup, and also extremely passionate about helping people. Jasmine believes that every person can improve the lives of others through daily acts of kindness.

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