“You’re a good-for-nothing if you walk away”

There. If you were waiting for someone to tell you, here it is.

The ironic thing is, no one will actually say this to you.

As much as I’d like to think otherwise, I spend more than a fair share of time considering what my colleagues would think of me depending on the outcome of my decision.

Sure, people are probably gonna talk but thing is, you’re always less important to other people than you think. This is meant to be reassuring.

An opportunity was delivered to me on a silver platter pretty much. The role I should take after my last bout of education, check. An area adjacent to what I was interested in, check. No interviews, no presentation, just say yes and it’s mine, check.

It all sounded great, except it didn’t feel that way. All I could think of was, oh fuck why, why now, why make me decide now? I’ll spare you nitty-gritty details but no that I lost a week of sleep, had an emergency session with my career counsellor and then two more sessions all in the span of a week.

At the end of all that awful angst, I steeled myself and did one of the hardest things to date in my career.

I said no. I turned it down.

It 100% felt like shooting myself in the foot and then some. I thought everyone was gonna tell me I’m a failure.

Except none of it happened. (It did help that I kept the whole thing on the D-L.) I felt like I was voluntarily giving myself a demotion but the eye-opening thing in the aftermath was that I felt relieved.

When we debriefed it my counsellor made a comment — “demotion to get a promotion”. Which is actually rather useful if you can get past the corny part. Promotion may not be the job title or next rung on the corporate ladder.

It could simply be something positive in YOUR life and YOUR mindset. For me, it was the mental space, to step back from all the professional pretence and the effort to maintain it, so I could focus on sorting out this ongoing unrest in head.

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-S

Image credit: Pixabay - user suju-foto