3 Questions You Need To Ask Yourself Before Quitting Your Job

“You have to help me quit my job!”

Even though the video was off, I could tell from Bria’s voice that she was in tears. This strong woman couldn’t keep herself together anymore.

“You’re experiencing strong emotions now. That’s very natural,” I said, wanting to help her feel safe and accepted. People often feel embarrassed when they cry in front of strangers.

After all, Bria and I had only met once in an event. Knowing that I was a coach, she reached out the next day to see if I could help.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from my years of coaching, it’s that when the person is emotional, you need to give them the space to feel it.

The second thing is what helps them calm down is never you saying “calm down,” but your calm presence itself.

So as Bria sobbed, I stayed silent, feeling my belly rise and fall with each breath. After a short while, I could sense that her wave of emotion had passed.

“Shall we take one long easy breath together?” I asked.

I heard her breathing with me. I paused, allowing Bria the time to settle, then I asked her to tell me what’s so difficult to her about her job.

After listening to her sharing, I said: “I can definitely help you, Bria.” I heard a sigh of relief on the other end. “But only if you promise me you won’t quit your job yet.”

3 months after that conversation, Bria waltzed in my office one evening holding a bottle of red wine: “Let’s celebrate!”

She had a giddy grin on her face, the very special grin with a dimple that I’d come to love after many hours supporting her. “Oh! Is it okay for us to drink a glass of wine in our coaching session?” She asked.

I laughed: “Of course. What are we celebrating?”

Bria said, her face brightened even more: “I just realized today that I have the perfect job!”

The most fascinating thing about this story is that the “perfect job” she referred to was the exact same job she had practically begged me to help her quit.

Bria’s circumstances hadn’t changed. But her experiences of the circumstances had changed 180 degrees. Why? Because she did.

Bria’s story teaches me once again that life is truly created from the inside out.

As a coach, meeting people who want to change their life is my daily work.

I call this “moving from Point A to Point B.”

Point A is where you are, with your current frustrations, problems, and challenges.

Point B is where you want to be, the life you love, the future your heart desires.

In a perfect universe, everyone would be sailing effortlessness from Point A to Point B. But this is not the universe we live in.

In our magnificent, messy universe, sometimes we don’t know what our Point B is. Other times, we are stuck in point A, held back by different forces, unable to budge an inch. And very often, we’re not moving as powerfully as we know we could.

I often said to a potential client that: “As your coach, I’m not going to say: ‘Hop on my back, Susan! I’ll carry you from Point A to Point B on hyper-speed!”

That always gets a good laugh. But they know there’s truth in it.

They know that change is hard work and that work must come from them.

But what they may not know, like Bria when she first met me, was that real change starts from within.

When I meet someone who says: “I’ve jumped from jobs to jobs for 10 years and still don’t know what I want. What’s wrong with me?” I wished someone had told them that changing their job won’t solve their problems.

Because most problems in our life are created by ourselves, not our job, our boss, or our mother-in-law.

“But Milena, my boss is an unreasonable a-hole who makes me work overtime,” You say.

Every person who ever came to me with this problem has issues with being unable to set boundaries and speak up for themselves, fear of rejection, fear of conflict, people-pleasing tendencies, taking things too personally, or low self-esteem.

You may have grown up in an emotionally turbulent household, and therefore learned from early on a limiting belief that: “Conflict is bad and must be avoided at all cost.”

Or you may have experienced the fear and hurt of being abandoned in early childhood. In a desperate attempt to never experience it again, you twist yourself into Pretzel to please others.

In both cases, because your reactions are subconscious, you may not be aware of them at all.

When you don’t see it, you often think it’s not there. So you run away from what you can see: the job, the boss, the boyfriend.

But no matter where you go, you bring yourself with you. And you create the same problems all over again.

*“You are the creator of your life. You can create your problems, as well as your blessings.”*

We are the creator of our life, including all of our problems.

This can be a depressing statement, but it can also be empowering.

If we can create our problems, we can also make our blessing. We just need to know where to focus our creative power.

By now, you’ve probably understood that the focus needs to be inward.

Here are 3 simple steps to discover where you can focus your creative power to truly change your life:

Step 1: Name a problem in your career (or relationship, or any other aspects of your life)

Don’t just say: “It sucks.”

Dig deeper, be specific:

“I’m not feeling excited and fulfilled in my job. It doesn’t feel meaningful to me. But I also don’t know what I want to do in the long run and what will make me fundamentally happy.”

Step 2: Look at the problem you just described. What inner limitation does it reveal to you?

This isn’t the time to judge yourself but to be honest. It’s freeing to be honest to yourself, even when the truth isn’t comfortable.

“I’m not clear about my true interests and strengths. I also don’t know what is meaningful to me.”

Step 3: Who do you need to become to positively shift the problem in your career?

“I need to become clear about my passion, strengths, and what’s meaningful to me. Once I’m clear, I can proactively use them to contribute to my current work. Or find another job that better suits me. Or even create one myself if nothing like that exists yet.”

Bingo! Now you know you need to change from confusion to clarity on your interests, strengths, and purpose.

Don't move the way fear makes you move — *“Don’t move the way fear makes you move.*
*Move the way love makes you move.*
*Move the way joy makes you move.”*
*Osho*

Once you’re clear on what inner change needs to be made. What’s next?

No, it’s not to buckle down and try to do everything by yourself. Change is hard work, remember? You’re never meant to do it alone.

The smart next step is to find the right resources and support to make that happen. Build a Success Team!

Back to Bria’s story. I helped her dissolve her fear of conflict, learn how to set healthy boundaries, and release the emotional wounds from childhood.

Slowly, she stopped getting triggered easily, and her oversensitivity is replaced by emotional resilience.

That’s when Bria started seeing that she had always loved her work with children. As she no longer wasted precious energy taking things personally, that energy was naturally channeled into meaningful and creative work.

Bria tried on innovative ideas to improve her classroom. She even started offering personal BBQ chef service on the side, just for the love of cooking.

One day, you may be like Bria, realizing that what you have is what you’ve been waiting for all along. Only now, you’ve gotten the eyes to see it.

Or if after you’ve changed yourself, you truly choose to change your job, your decision would come from a place of clarity, not frustration. Like Osho wisely said, It would be motivated by love, not by wanting to run away.

Remember: You are the creator of your life. Create your blessings.

With all my love,

P.S: You’re never meant to do it alone.

While you’re here, check out my article on why and how to build a Success Team. (Because the problem isn't your discipline.)

P.P.S: Create the work you belong, starting from within

Too many of us feel we don’t belong to our “perfect job”, even if it gives us a salary and a fancy title. The key to create the work you belong to is to center it on your unique purpose.

That’s why I’ve created the beautiful “Purpose-Finder Workbook” to help you start defining your purpose.

Download below!