5 steps took Corey Jahnke from misery and blame to a life of joy and gratitude.
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I couldn’t believe how hard my hands were shaking.
I felt like my blood pressure was 500 over 500, and my heart was pounding so hard that I expected it to leap out of my chest and land on the floor.
I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in more than a week.
I felt awful.
I had just had yet another argument with my supervisor about cutting staffing. I was a Pharmacy Manager/Pharmacist at a super busy chain store and several months earlier, I had drawn a boss who wasn’t a pharmacist, he was an administrator, and all he cared about was short-term profits.
My wait times at the pharmacy counter had already gone from 20 minutes to well over an hour and my customers had gone from “singing my praises” to lining up to yell at me.
I felt defeated.
I placed my keys on the counter in front of him and I took three steps towards the door, when an image of my wife Tonya, and my son Christopher, popped into my head.
“If I quit or got fired for insubordination, how would they eat? How would we maintain the life we’ve built?”
I turned around, put the keys in my pocket, and somehow made it through the rest of my shift.
I felt humiliated.
When I got home, Tonya asked me to watch the movie Marley And Me with her, and since I had no idea what else to do, I sat there like a zombie until I started bawling uncontrollably.
I felt like an idiot.
There is a scene in the movie where Owen Wilson is sitting in his driveway and he doesn’t want to go into his house because he hates his life.
I felt like that guy.
Tonya, who in 18 years together, had never seen me cry, panicked and said: “You know I love you don’t you?”
I responded coldly, with the unthinkable.
“Don’t ever say that to me again! It’s because of you that I have to keep doing this!”
I’ll NEVER forget the look on her face.
I felt embarrassed and ashamed. I wanted the Earth to open up and swallow me whole.
I don’t know how well Tonya slept that night, but I didn’t. I milled around my own house like a stranger in a strange land, and at some point, out of pure exhaustion, I plopped into a chair by the fireplace and sat there for hours with millions of random thoughts firing through my head.
I felt lonely and confused.
Fortunately, one of those random thoughts saved my life; “Do you really want your beautiful 7 year old son to grow up without a father over some stupid job?”
IT FELT LIKE A SUPER NOVA HAD GONE OFF IN MY HEAD!
It was as if I was Indiana Jones in The Temple Of Doom, and Short Round had just intentionally burned me so that I would awaken from “The Black Sleep Of Delhi”.
I noticed a coffee cup on the kitchen counter, and I realized that it was just a cup. My couch was just a couch. In fact, my house was just a house.
I had been killing myself, over a job that was killing me, just so that I could maintain “all of this stuff”.
I remembered hearing George Carlin say that a house is nothing more than a pile of stuff with a lid on it.
I realized that over time, my fear of losing “all I had gained” had become my goal.
That goal sucked.
I made a decision that nothing I owned was worth the price of worrying how to keep it.
I resolved, that if I had to, I would live in a one-bedroom apartment and sleep on the floor.
I felt free.
I promised myself that I would create a new goal; a goal I could be proud of. I realized that if I wanted my life to get better, I had to get better.
I felt optimistic.
Here is what I did:
1.) I apologized to my wife and promised her that I was a changed man.
2.) I took a spiral notebook to a restaurant 90 minutes from my house. At the top of page one, I wrote the sentence: “If my life were perfect in every way it would look like this…” and I kept writing until the notebook was full. In a sense, I created my “dream life” in advance.
3.) I practiced imagining my dream life until it became so real that I could taste it.
4.) I hired a coach to help me turn my “dream” into a 10-year action plan.
5.) I did at least one thing every day to move me in the direction of making that plan a reality.
I am now five years into my plan, and although I still work at the same place, my boss has moved on and I have learned to focus on the things I love about my job; my customers, and my coworkers.
My family is doing well, and my writing, speaking, and coaching business is beginning to take off.
I feel great!
Looking back on it now, if there is one thing I have learned, it’s this
Your current conditions and circumstance do not define your life. They are only the sum total of the decisions that you have made and the actions that you have taken.
If you want to change your life, you have to start by changing the way you think about it.
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Photo: Flickr/Sam Catanzaro
Thank you for sharing your transformation. Our present moment is a wonderful place to be when we get free of the constraints of the past. I would imagine the last 5 years had many twists and turns for you and your family. Congratulations for staying the course.
The main thing I noticed in your article is that you hired a coach. Would you share a little bit about why having a coach was so important over the last 5 years? Has your 10 year plan changed as you’ve grown?
Thanks for the kind comments Trish. The reason a coach or at least an extremely honest mentor is so important is because as Les Brown said: “You cannot see the picture when you are in the frame”. I had some faulty paradigms or programs running through my head that said that I couldn’t work full time as a pharmacist and achieve my dreams of helping thousands of people get unstuck. Too little time… Not enough capital… Blah blah blah. My coach helped me to see that these were all just little lies I would tell myself to keep me stuck.… Read more »
Two things come to mind for me from your inspiring story, Corey. The first is that you had to catch yourself in the massive lie you were living and it smacked you across the face when you hurt the one you loved most. It occurs to me that many men double down and can go “dumb stubborn” and continue blaming others around them, which is a recipe for catastrophe, of course. You allowed yourself to be vulnerable to the fact that your options had run out. I’m guessing your wife is a woman who wasn’t going to take that shit… Read more »
Craig thanks for the comments. You raise a good point. It is important that I constantly reevaluate my plan to make sure it is still relevant and challenging enough to stretch me well outside of my comfort zone. I appreciate the insights and encouragement! 🙂
I enjoyed your article. I am going to follow your advice. My question is, since you are so far into your transformation…how did you change your heart and perspective with past hurts? How did you move on so they faded and are memories instead of recurring present pains?
Thank you Jennifer!! “Letting go” can be difficult, but ask yourself “What is holding on to bad memories and bad feeling costing me”? The key is to realize that stress is found mostly in the resistance to letting go of the things we cannot change. What I do is I close my eyes and imagine my bad feelings as an extremely heavy caboose. Then, I visually “unhook it” in my mind and my train runs much faster. I hope that helps!
Hi Corey
You inspired me with your five points, steps .
A ten year plan and at least one step forward every day.
Great advice Corey.
Thank you Silke! I believe that many people give up too quickly because they don’t see an immediate “way out” of their difficulties. However, the more we can stay persistent, and work a little each day, the closer we get to the life of our dreams! Have a PHENOMENAL day! CJ