I promised you guys this post at the end of May and here it finally is – and with an exciting plot twist! Its been a wild month, preceded by a very busy month, which forced me to place the blog a little lower on my list of priorities. I’m back though and can’t wait to share the content I have planned for the summer with you!
Life update
June began with an exciting opportunity for my family and I – a retail management internship with one of my favorite retailers! The internship was meant to show me what it takes to become a department manager; a stepping stone to my goal, which was to become a regional manager – the job I went back to school to get a degree for. I thought that was where I wanted to spend the rest of my career.
The internship taught me a lot during the time I was there with the most valuable information coming from coworkers and seeing how differently the role I would be eligible for upon completing the internship was from how I had previously known it working for a different retailer. I realized quickly that I was heading down a track that was increasingly departed from my goals and that I was selling myself short by sticking around. After all, I didn’t maintain a 4.0 GPA for four years to do a job that wasn’t in line with my goals and expectations.
After receiving my paycheck and seeing in ink the difference between what I was bringing home and how much more daycare was going to cost, I panicked and turned to my family for help. What I got was a lot of confirmations and a wake-up call. I had to leave the internship.
It was a physically and mentally difficult decision that I wish I didn’t have to make but it now feels like a weight has been lifted. I have a better understanding of my needs for a career, as well as my family’s needs and what will and won’t work with our lifestyle. Though I had to “quit” something (quitting isn’t always a bad thing) I have better focus and can tackle my job search with more certainty and confidence.
Knowing when to walk away
I had a long commute – nearly 4 hours total – so I had ample time to myself to think about my situation and pray over it before realizing what needed to be done, and going to my family for advice. Below are some of the factors I weighed that can be applied to your situation – job, living arrangements, relationship, etc. – as well. The general rule is to trust your instinct; if your gut is telling you something isn’t right, don’t ignore it! Do your best to objectively think about, or write out a list of reasons to stay versus reasons to leave and do your best to visualize what your situation would be like for you and your family in either situation and call in more experienced perspectives for advice. If you have any of these doubts or feelings, it’s probably time to leave:
- Your justifications for staying are increasingly weak.
- You can’t see yourself staying and being happy there for the long-haul.
- It’s taking a toll (financial, emotional, physical) on you and your family to stay.
- You can see a disparity between your goals you had set and where the current path is taking you.
- You are forcing it to work(for us, we were going to have to alternate leaving work early/going in late in order to make sure our kids weren’t in daycare too many hours, and hope that our parents could fly down and watch the girls when he goes out of town).
- Your work-life balance is off and not fitting with your lifestyle (despite what society says, you should not be working to live – work is not everything and you need to find balance here).
- It’s hard to get out of bed in the morning and you dread showing up each day.
Basically, if you have more negatives than positives; more reasons to leave than to stay, it’s time to go. I know that there are more jobs out there and every story I’ve ever heard of someone taking a gamble and leaving a job, they end up at a job they love making more money than they could have at the old job. I don’t know what my future holds but my faith and trust is in the Most High God, from whom all perfect blessings flow, so I have faith and confidence that, despite turning down the opportunity I thought was my dream, something so much better is already in the works!
Have you ever taken a gamble on leaving a job and ended up in a much better place? Share your experience in the comments below!
xo, Mia
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