The title isn't click bait. I took my old job back this past week. Well, it's not ENTIRELY the same job, but I am now working again for the same company that I left back in June (for more on this, click here).
I'll admit, it sounds crazy and foolish to go right back to the place that lead me to a mental hole of depression and confusion. Admittedly, there's details that I won't go into regarding some of the influences I realized played into my depression because they involve other people whom I worked with. In taking time away, I found that one of my biggest downfalls is that I am a people pleaser. I do what people ask of me, rarely say no to things, and will shoulder the burden of a group if it benefits the others involved. This has been a good revelation, because it is helping me move towards a mentality of compassion and not selflessness. My sister is one who speaks immense wisdom into my life, and recently she told me something along the lines of
"Being selfless is a noble cause, but it would be better to be compassionate and giving than selfless. To be selfless is to deny that you have a self; to deny the individual characteristics that make up the person are. And the more you are selfless, the more you lose yourself, and what makes you who you are is slowly lost."
But how is going back to my old job a wise decision? Wasn't it the place where I felt like it was a toxic environment? Yes. But I also see how things change. In several months, the staff shifted, with coaches finally taking the leap to pursue their own things. Those staff included a superior of mine who I didn't realize had so much influence in my life until I was out from their management. And ultimately, it was their position I came in to fill.
When I left my job in June I cited that I was tired of doing more business than coaching, and while this is true, I realized it was the method of business that I was apart of that wore on me. Businesses have to make profits to stay operational, and the method of business that I was being led in was to "get rich or die trying." As one could tell from my resignation of my job, I was becoming a slave to it. I was being selfless for a business, for profit, and that is never a recipe for success.
But as the title notes, taking time away provided ample time to be introspective. As a natural introvert, there are more thoughts that run through my head than I think could ever be shared with the world. I am thinker, and while I don't know much, I think a lot about what I do know. In wandering through the maze of my own mind I found pieces of that fell into the bigger picture of life that I hadn't seen before.
Failure, just like success, leaves clues.
I didn't see those clues until I stepped away. Now, knowing what I do about why I was burning provided me with an insight that will only benefit me moving forward. This is why I've changed the Littauer Strength Training tagline to "The Future Is Stronger", because it is. And now, that future can be strengthened in the exact same place I left 3 months ago.
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