The Mid Career Meltdown – Part 1

There comes a time in everyone’s career when you can stand on top of the mountain that you have climbed, look down at the beginning and feel a sense of pride for how much you have accomplished. Through years of education, training, mentorship, hard work, and dedication you can now eat off of the fruits of your labor and although there is still higher to go, you are now beyond the days of proving yourself, struggling to make ends meet, and thirsty for an opportunity that will get your foot in the door to give you  a chance to show what you can do. You are reaping the benefits from years of sewing. You finally have the office you always dreamed of having. Maybe it is not the corner one but it is just as good somewhere in between. You can come and go as you please up to a point because one of the perks of earning a respected reputation is freedom. Your peers and superiors know that you work hard, and will do whatever it takes to get the job done so they trust you and with that trust comes freedom and flexibility. You are finally financially stable. Maybe not wealthy, but stable is much better than broke. You have health insurance and can pay for braces and piano lessons. There is money every month to pay the bills and if you save and cut some corners, maybe even a little to splurge on a vacation or some new toys for yourself. You have crossed over the threshold from bad to good and you have just enough to stay there. So with life being as good as it is why do you still feel empty? Why is there a feeling that you need more in order to be happy?

You sit at your desk every day and stare out of the window. The job that you once prayed for does not make you feel the way you thought that it would. The work that you do now bores you. There are aspects of it that you truly love but you now spend more time doing the things that you hate to do.  The organization that you work for doesn’t share the values and mission that you hoped they did. Changes in company goals, initiatives, and processes in the interest of politics and the bottom line have allowed the pride that you once had for the company to deteriorate. But from the outside everything looks great. You find yourself counting down the hours until it’s time to go home for the day. Once you get home you find yourself counting down the hours until it’s time to go back. You lie in bed just a little longer after the alarm clock goes off in the morning because the motivation and excitement that you once had to spring out of bed at the crack of dawn and race to the office to start your day has now disappeared. You are officially stuck. It feels selfish to want more in the interest of feeling “happy”. Isn’t happy having a roof over your head, clothes on your back, and food on the table? Or is that just surviving? Although the little things that bother you at work are adding up, you rationalize that this is work and it isn’t possible to like everything. You take the good with the bad and that’s what work is. Everyone deals with it. You saw your parents deal with it. This is what being an adult is about. The bottom line now becomes, you need your paycheck and that is all that matters. You and your family depend on your salary and benefits and there is no way that they can do without it in its entirety. Besides, even if that wasn’t the case you are too old to start over at this point. You have worked too hard and payed too many dues to start a new career of any kind. You just don’t have the energy or the time anymore. You have come too far and established to much to turn back and change paths. You are too old and too prideful to test a new path and start from the bottom as an intern or an assistant anything. You are officially stuck!

But wait, you have a solution. If you can’t be fulfilled at work, (and your inner voice is still asking who do you think you are that you believe you deserve to be?) then you can focus all of your energy on finding happiness outside of work. Now you can live for the weekends, vacations, and holidays to truly be happy! Now you can go into unnecessary debt trying to fill this void with boats, vacations, and new cars. Now you can dress better and shop all the time if that distracts you enough, maybe start some love affairs that will offer excitement in your life. You can binge on fatty food to make you happy and gain weight. Alcohol and drugs are classic choices to fill monster voids. And after you have now destroyed your finances, family, and health, you still feel empty.

So how do you get off the dreadful hamster wheel of everyday monotony that you now call life?

6 Things You Can Do Today to Prepare for Your Dream Job!

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Divine Esteem and Dress for Success

This week I had the pleasure of participating in the Dress for Success Makeover Day for the women in the program. It was an amazing day of transformation as the women received free hair, makeup, and career wardrobes. I saw the transformation of women who saw  themselves as they really were for the first time and as always it filled me heart.

Often times we believe who the world tells us we are and should be but in most cases it is the exact opposite of who God created us to be and that is why we are not fulfilled. God’s word tells us that we were chosen before the creation of the world. It doesn’t get more special than that! If we would only take the risk of rejecting the world titles that we have come to except and allow God to show us who he made each of us to be, it is then that we will reach our greatest potential and have the Divine Esteem to serve the world.