Is this a dip, or is it a shift?

Is this a dip, or is it a shift?

You are tired, and you have been for a while.

You have probably explained it to yourself several times already. It’s the current restructure. It’s the time of year. It’s your age most likely, and everyone says much the same thing, so you carry on, because carrying on is what you are good at.

I did exactly that for longer than I care to admit.

I had been in the same organisation a long time, and over those years I had doubted the path more than once. Every time, it passed. A new project would land, and I would find my way back to caring about it. So, when it came round again, I waited, because waiting had always worked before.

Waiting was not weakness, and if you are doing it now, you are not being passive. You are following good evidence. The trouble is that the evidence was about a different situation, and I could not tell the difference at the time.

This is what I have learned since about telling the difference.

A dip is about the job

A dip has a cause you could name if somebody asked you. A particular project, a particular person, a reorganisation, a quarter that went badly.

There is a simple test for it. Can you picture the version of this that would fix it?

If you can, if you can see the different manager or the other role or the project you would actually enjoy, and something in you leans towards it, then you are most likely in a dip. Dips lift, and the right change will lift them.

A shift is about you

A shift has no cause you can point to, and that is exactly what makes it so easy to dismiss. Nothing has gone wrong. Nobody has done anything to you. By any reasonable measure your life is a good one, and you know that, which is part of why you have not said anything to anyone.

When you run the same test, nothing comes back. You think about the promotion and feel very little. You think about the sideways move, and it is the same days played out on a different floor. It is not that you are being negative, it is that these are answers to a question you stopped asking some time ago.

You may notice other things alongside it. Holidays help, but the benefit has gone within about a week of getting back. Your sleep is not what it was, or your energy, or your concentration. You are doing more than you have ever done and getting less back from it.

Underneath it, sits the question most women do not say out loud. Is this it now?

If you are not sure whether you are in a dip or a shift, there is a simple question you can ask:

“How long have I been waiting for it to lift?”

A dip has a shape to it. Weeks, sometimes a few months. If you have been waiting more than a year, if you cannot quite remember when it started, and if you have been telling yourself it will be better after the restructure or after the holiday or after this term, then it is not a dip.

Dips do not last years. Something else is going on, and it will not resolve by waiting, however patient you are willing to be.

It is not your discipline

When I finally accepted something was wrong, I decided the problem was me. I should sleep better, move more, drink less, try harder. I bought the supplements and the tracker, and I booked a retreat, which was genuinely lovely and had made no difference at all by the following Wednesday.

None of it worked, because I was solving the wrong problem, and I was doing it with real commitment.

Two things were happening at once. Some of it was physical, because perimenopause changes energy, sleep and concentration, often years before anybody gives it a name. Some of it was not physical at all. The measures I had used my whole career to know whether I was doing well, the next promotion, the recognition, being the one who held things together, had stopped paying. I had nothing to put in their place, and I had not noticed that either.

If you are the woman who delivers for everybody else without fail and yet cannot reliably manage taking basic care of yourself even when you know it’s what you need, please do not read that as a lack of willpower. You have not run out of discipline - your discipline is all spoken for.

If this is a shift

Nothing dramatic is required, and you do not have to decide anything today.

Notice how long you have been waiting. Be honest about what another year of the same would cost, and in my experience that is usually the energy that is not there for the people you would most like to give it to.

You also do not need a crisis before you are allowed to change something. That is the thing I got wrong for longest. I thought I had to be worse before I qualified for help. Nothing was broken, which is precisely why nobody offered me any, including me.

If you have read this far and something in it resonated, that’s worth paying attention to. You do not need to arrive with answers, and you do not need to have worked out what you want. Noticing is enough to begin with.

I work with women who have been waiting a while. If you would like to talk it through, there is a free enquiry call here when you are ready for it.