Questions you might be asking yourself – should I go for a bigger role, take another step up on the career ladder? Or will I have to sacrifice too much of my family time?
If so you are not alone, I’d like to share Amy’s story with you. Amy is working with me to explore her career dilemma. She had a successful senior level role for a number of years and juggled working very long hours with managing the needs of her young family. However she got to a point where she felt burnt out and in fact took some time off sick to recover and then left her job. During this time she decided to take a step back from her career to take some time off work to reassess what she wanted.
After a few months away from work she was ready to get back to it. She started a new role at a lower level than she was used to working at, it was much less challenging and less demanding of her time. Now, a couple of years down the line she is feeling bored with her job but is scared to risk going back into a larger, more challenging job because she feels she might not be able to cope again.
This is a dilemma that many women face, she is certainly not the only client I’ve talked to about it. The big question – should I or shouldn’t I continue to grow my career now? What about my family? Am I short-changing them for selfish reasons? What if I can’t actually do a bigger role and I’ve made these family sacrifices for nothing? Do I have to make sacrifices? Why should I? All these questions swirl around in your head and often it feels too hard to try and work it out, so we keep going along the same track and generally feeling frustrated with life.
It’s not just ‘working too much’ that can lead to burn out, this sort of frustration combined with a demanding life can too. A couple of the symptoms of burn out that women particularly feel are emotional exhaustion and a decreased sense of accomplishment. At its extreme burn out stops you functioning, you can no longer cope.
Amy has recognised that she’s feeling frustrated and having had a difficult experience previously knows that she wants to deal with this frustration before it gets the better of her.
We are working together to review her options, it’s unlikely to be a quick process as there is a lot to consider. The important thing is that she is now starting that process of consideration rather than just sitting with that overwhelmed feeling.
Here are some of the topics that Amy and I are discussing –
- How to identify what’s important to her (and what she enjoys) in life to re-establish her sense of purpose – both from a work and a family perspective
- Exploring what happened when she burnt out to help her learn from her experience
- Understanding her feelings of guilt about her work and family
- What are the most effective ways of working for her to manage her time
- How to implement boundaries and say no to things
- Identifying what support she needs around her and how to ask for it
- Managing the domestic workload with her partner to give her more time
As you can see there is a lot to cover, they range from the fundamental questions of what we want from life to the very practical like sharing the domestic tasks out. The aim is to enable Amy to make decisions about what is best for her and take action from those decisions.
I am sharing this story with you because it is so common and I find that just knowing someone else feels like you do can be a real help. I also hope that you can take some ideas of how to focus your thoughts to help you move forward if you have this dilemma.
If you would like some help to explore this topic for yourself please do get in touch, I’d love to work with you.