One of my mentors once told me that you know you’re maturing into a deeper level of your mission when you start resenting it.
It took me a while to understand what he meant.
I remember responding, “I don’t think I’ll ever resent the work I do.”
He laughed. And I immediately felt like it was the kind of laugh that said “just wait and see.”
Then, around the time I started writing my book, my relationship with my work began to feel a little like a bad marriage.
You know, the kind where there is still passion, love and chemistry, but mixed with moments of resentment. The kind that appears when you deeply love someone, yet some part of you also feels chronically unmet.
That was how I felt about my work during that season.
Have you ever gone through a season of resenting what you do? Your purpose? Maybe even your own authentic self-expression because of how demanding it has become?
We often interpret that resentment as evidence that we chose the wrong lane. So you may think…
Maybe I need to pivot.
Maybe this isn’t my calling anymore.
Maybe I should do something completely different.
And sometimes, leaving really is the answer. But resentment is not always a sign to leave.
Sometimes it is a sign that too much of you has been left out of the way you’ve been carrying your calling.
You may actually not resent your mission. You may resent how you’ve had to abandon aspects of yourself in order to serve it.
And if that is true, resentment may not be the end of your relationship with your calling. It may be the beginning of a much more authentic and liberating one. The kind that feeds your aliveness instead of taking from it.
I recorded a new teaching about this because I’ve watched this pattern quietly exhaust coaches, healers, creators and people whose work genuinely matters to them.
In it, I unpack what resentment may actually be revealing, the self-abandonment underneath it, and four shifts that can change your relationship with service and create unprecedented growth and even prosperity.
**PS: If you watch this and realize, “I already know I do this, but I still can’t seem to stop,” that is precisely why I created The Alchemy of Self-Abandonment.
Awareness can reveal the pattern. But there is another layer where we meet the fears that keep recreating it.
In gratitude,
- Xavier
How can you know this is relevant right now? 😄