Why the title?

I have been asked where the title “bye-bye hamsterwheel” comes from. So I thought I might use this pre-holiday post to explain. A wise person once told me

“The nasty thing about the hamsterwheel is that from the inside it looks like a career ladder.”

Right, eh? Sometimes, we get ourselves stuck in a wheel. It’s not like we are forced and don’t have another choice. We just hop in and there is momentum and hey, this feels great. You get that sense of advancement, of getting ahead, of achieving. And that might be the case. You are achieving and you feel awesome. Very busy, giving it your all, in top shape, so ahead of the game.

And at other times you find yourself thinking “Hang on, I’ve been here before, I still have the same issues I head years ago. I cannot outpace my struggles, however fast I run. However high I climb. However hard I work. I am still not happy, not at peace with the world.” Many people are trying to run away from a sense of not being good enough. They want to achieve – but to what avail?

Once you come to that realization, you have a choice: Either you say good-bye to that hamsterwheel that you’ve built for yourself or you stay inside and choose not to look at the underlying issues. I once heard an aphorism that goes something like this:

A lesson gets taught for as often as it takes to understand it

This can take a while, obviously, and everybody learns at their own pace. I think I have recognized the wheel that I was in – it was a self-built and self-chosen one. And now I made the conscious choice to kindly say goodbye to it because I feel it is no longer serving me.

Plus, as a friend and former co-worker said the other day I seem to have this weird thing with hamsters 😉 they sneak into my passwords and swear words alike. And just to prove her wrong and go against the initial idea, the article’s picture today is one of a reindeer breaking free – not a hamster, ha!

Happy Christmas to all of you!