Rock Bottom!

6-8 minutes to read

When changing careers, we get so caught up by internal voices and external opinions, we lose sight of how to best showcase our range of skills. And that’s totally understandable. After all, trying to find a new job in a completely new field is a life altering and hugely stressful event. Our inner saboteur can prevent us from relying on any genuine discernment when attempting to navigate our next steps. For me, this resulted first in inertia, and was proceeded quickly by desperation.

When I was in the midst of inertia, I felt my body close down as a consequence of overwhelming feelings. The desperation would follow in a frantic effort to avoid wasting time, all in the vain hope of making a quick buck. And whilst a desperate mind may assist you in the short term goal of making money, it could nonetheless take you right back to square one.

Both inertia and desperation continued to plague me. That was UNTIL I examined my evolving relationship with the values of greatest significance to me. In finding your values, it is possible to truly move forward; because values help build a framework for discernment, which puts to bed the enemies of both reason and hope.

Article Sections …

1. Putting aside irrational viewpoints in order to prioritise values.
2. Addressing your shifting values and recognising overwhelming feelings.
3. Getting to the heart of the values you have now.

Cautionary note: do not read on if you despise critical self reflection and attempting to find hope!

1. Putting aside irrational viewpoints in order to prioritise values.

So I used to be a teacher; a profession despised by the those who hate being institutionalised as well as those who firmly believe its the path of the down trodden! “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach”. It’s been said so many times that I began to believe it myself. Teaching wasn’t actually my first career, and it sure won’t be my last, but don’t let anyone fool you into believing that’s it a frivolous and easy job. Far from it in fact, it’s a vocation and a challenging one at that.

Maybe you, like me, are in the process of changing career and find yourself stuck in a sequence of “re-assessing my options” loops. Maybe you, like me, find yourself listening to unhealthy voices and opinions and are struggling to push past them. Well if these feel familiar, my recommendation would be to start by reflecting on what your values once were and to put irrational thoughts and opinions to the back burner.

So what were your values whilst in the profession you have now left or are in the process of leaving? Do you think those values have changed? And what are the main indicators that clearly show that your values have changed?

For me, it was hitting rock bottom and losing my sense of joy. But if you’ve read my previous article you might be asking, “hey, aren’t you supposed to be a bit of a grump in any case?” The answer is a resounding yes, however, when I’m in a state of flow, I am a truly joyful grump – the best kind in fact. Take the joy away and I am nothing but a shell; a hollow lifeless ogre.

I joined teaching because whilst being single and carefree I actually craved responsibility. I needed to work in teams and have a sense of synergy and synchronicity after years working in solitude at a lab bench. And being to some extent a people pleaser, I wanted to improve the lives of others.

Sorry for starting every sentence with “I”, but in all honesty I became a teacher because I genuinely wanted to become a lot less self-absorbed. Oh the irony.

And finally, joining a vocation was a way of staving off self-isolation whilst also increasing my confidence. There’s also the factor of having a relatively decent salary together with the promise of a good pension; both fading day-by-day as the cost of living crisis takes hold. 

2. Addressing your shifting values and recognise overwhelming feelings.

My values would have been: forming personal and professional relationships; becoming less self-centred; having responsibility; limiting social isolation; increasing my confidence; and having a reasonable salary and pension in order to live well.

So have all these values now changed? No, not necessarily all of them, but with the joy gone, my relationship with and prioritisation of every one of those values had most certainly shifted.

For me, placing these values before everything else meant that I started to despise them, especially when difficulty arose; starting with my father’s ill health and having to then care for him, followed by losing the respect of one of my year 12 classes when I really started to drop the ball. These difficult scenarios slowly started to eat into my values, and as the joy slipped away, I was now feeling increasing levels of resentfulness.

Teaching was a service; and a self-sacrificial one at that. I hated letting people down (colleagues and students) and I hated not giving time to marking, planning and organising – especially when the difficulties started to mount. Motivation was also quickly slipping away! Now I appreciate that you yourself may not be a teacher, but surely some of what I’m saying resonates?

Recognising this emerging resentfulness forced me to make changes BUT I truly regret not thinking about where my values were shifting towards. Teaching had conditioned my body and mind to push through, so I just threw myself into the next thing without any real planning or foresight. Gradually my inner saboteur was given the loudest voice, telling me that I left because I was lazy and stupid and because I couldn’t “do anything but teach and I wasn’t even good at that”.

And I listened which was a huge mistake! I listened to many negative voices, ones that were fabricated and others from casual conversation, both chipping away at my low self-worth and ever diminishing motivation. I encourage you not to go down that rabbit hole but to really sit down and understand what values are important to you now as well as what you must put to the fringes or even discard.

3. Getting to the heart of the values you have now.

In my previous article, I talked about Python being at the centre of my hard skills road map. In terms of my values, I chose to place JOY at the heart of it. Without joy, I cannot find purpose and without purpose I cannot regain motivation. The values I currently place importance on will be really relevant in what I do next with my life! Everything is impacted by my values, but for me, joy needs to be at the centre of that! I wonder what you would place at the centre of all your values? What is that something that all your other values really impinge on?

If you’re struggling with this, please know that you are not alone. Just set some time aside to not necessarily wrestle with, but perhaps meditate on what is a very difficult topic. Maybe just think about what your personal and career values are and list them down. And then find where your personal and career values meet; perhaps using a Venn diagram.

When I did this exercise, I found joy to be at the centre of my values. My personal values were: strength; play; humour; wonder (and magic); confidence; meaning; faith; and family. My career values were: self-expression; autonomy; balance; self-sufficiency; freedom; location; respect; flow; and creativity. And where my personal and career values converged were in: purpose; wonder; curiosity; adventure; and of course JOY.

Some of the values I identified were on the fringes but important nonetheless, whilst others were non-negotiable(s); in that very place where personal and career values met.

After doing this, I gave myself a score of how well I was aligned with each of the values I identified. This was a real eye opener for me. I gave myself a score out of 10 for my most significant values and was shocked at how unaligned I was with these. Was this the reason I was feeling such little joy? Perhaps! Did I feel that I needed to act on this? Absolutely! Does it impact on the employment opportunities I seek? Of course!

I now know my non-negotiable(s) and can look at job specifications and discern whether or not they are right for me in terms of where I am at in life and the values I give importance to. Finally, does any of this impact my future employment plans? 100% it does! As I discover more about my values, the conventional route may become less desirable and setting up my own business may align more with what is fundamentally important to me! There’s a lot more I could discuss here, like career anchors for example, but that will be for another occasion.

Please know that changing careers can be stressful and at times scary. I plead that you take the time to plan ahead and really think about where you are at before embarking on your next adventure. I don’t know what the ‘core non-negotiable values’ will be for you but I’m genuinely happy to have discovered mine.

That happiness potentially awaits you too. After all, even the nastiest ogre needs some joy and I sincerely hope you find yours. Not saying you are an ogre by the way. And if you are, welcome to the Job Hunt Club for Ogres … ONLY!

Thanks for taking the time to read this piece.