Jessica Soroky continues her series Leadership is a Choice.

Today I hurt. Today I am struggling.

I don’t even know how to put into words the way I feel without allowing evaluation and fear to take over. I have become aware that all this means I have more learning to do.

I am perfect, no matter what. In perfection there are still trips and falls and days where the anxiety that I struggle with is so intense, so suffocating and so overwhelming that I don’t want to get out of bed.

I could list justifications of how stressed I am, how much is on my plate, and so on. But none of that really matters; in this I am not special.

What is true is I currently struggle with anxiety. This morning, about 15 hours ago, my alarm went off and I wanted nothing more than to disappear. I lay in bed desperate for a break, for a day alone.

I began to think of an excuse to tell my boss as to why I wouldn’t be at work, but then I remembered all the people I work with, all the work to be done, and all the meetings on my calendar.

The hard truth is, obligation was the only reason I got out of bed.

Here is the wonderful thing about responsibility. I recognized it instantly as obligation. I became aware of the pain I was choosing to be in, even more aware of the anxiety that I was allowing to slowly crush me.

Very slowly I took a deep breath and stretched. I went to the mirror and silently claimed all of my recent wins. There have been so many. With each win I felt more willing to get ready for the day, to start the week, and to be at peace.

My grandmother would call this burning the candle at both ends. She would then promptly advise me to shake a few things off my back and focus on me.

Lying in bed, writing this blog I have stopped numerous times to look at what in my life I could shake off.

The thing is, I chose all of this stuff. I want it all, tomorrow I intend to choose it all again.

So why do I have this intense anxiety, why do I feel like I’ve fought back tears all day?

Ahhhhhhh!!! I feel like I could scream. There are moments when I practice or even just consider practicing responsibility and it feels as if my brain is simply going to explode. The intensity only increases as I begin to think about how asking and looking at ‘why’ was only self-evaluation and feeding into the cycle I was so desperate to break.

My anxiety rose again, I could only take another deep breath and stare into the mirror as I cleared and released. As I have expressed numerous times, this responsibility stuff is hard. It only gets harder the deeper you get into it.

The really mind-blowing part is: the deeper you go, the more amazing it feels when you choose responsibility.

Yes today was hard, but today was growth. For that I am grateful. Growth is addicting, fulfilling, and endlessly rewarding. This is the mind-blowing, amazing feeling I am talking about.

Before I learned and committed myself to practicing 100% responsibility, a day like today would’ve gone very differently. I would have run away from it, as far as my body could take me, to try to clear my head. In reality all I was doing was trying to wear myself out so that when I finally got home my body and brain would just turn off. There was no such thing as confront. I did the best with what I knew at the time.

Today was the first day in my entire adult life that I realized I control the anxiety; the anxiety does not and will not ever control me. I chose to recognize what was going on in me and not evaluate it, not dwell on it. Instead I accepted that there is still something I have to learn. When I have learned what I need to learn, this will be done.

I never would have dreamed of publicly talking about how bad it can get, let alone writing a blog post about it.

This post is an intention met, to be as open and raw as I possibly could be to really let you into my journey on leadership and choice. I am positive that we all have our own pains and struggles. I am even more positive that we don’t have to choose them. I fought today and I won. I got out of bed, I got ready for work. I did not allow my anxiety to take over as it did in the past.

Today I hurt and I grew. Today I chose to win.

I am powerful, strong, beautiful, free, and at choice.

So are you.

Jessica Soroky, CSM

Jessica is a Certified Scrum Master with over three years of practice in agile delivery and seven years of team leadership. She is also the youngest participant in The Leadership Gift™ Program and its growing worldwide community of leaders and coaches. After five years of non-profit development through Nellie’s Catwalk for Kids, Jessica continues her leadership journey in state government, not-for-profit, and private sector leadership studies.

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