Today my decision to divorce my job went public. I love my team so that was sad. But it was also liberating. It was time. There was nothing left for me there apart feeling frustrated and banging my head against a concrete wall.
The emails I’ve received have been heart felt and moving. This has been my longest “marriage” – 12.5 years of putting my work first, The key lessons from today are:
- Stay true to yourself. Put yourself first. People will respect you for it.
- 98% of what we worry about never happens. Stop worrying and start living.
- People will focus on their own loss or gain before they can hear what you have to say. Let people deal with their emotions.
- We make too many assumptions and there are many people who only show their emotions when it’s too late. But again, stay true to what you want and need.
- Politics are alive and well in corporate America. Let go. The machine will continue to chug.
“There’s a trick to the ‘graceful exit.’ It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over — and let it go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out.”
― Ellen Goodman
