Pulling Yourself Out of the Career Hole
If you’ve been there, you know how crappy it feels. It's that feeling of anxiety, frustration, and irritation that completely overwhelms your ability to see and think clearly. This is the day (week, month, year) in your career where you’re in the trenches and desperately trying to get through the day so you can go home to recover just so you can wake up and do it all over again. Sometimes the weekends don’t even bring you a reprieve. It comes in many different forms, but all versions are exhausting and draining. This is The Hole.
If you’ve never been in The Hole, you can skip this blog (better yet, I’d like to know your secret to life - please DM me lol). For the rest of you out there, I want you to know that I see you. I’ve been in The Hole. But the darkness of The Hole has inspired some of my most courageous moments. And I believe that it can be a catalyst for you too.
WHY DO I CALL IT “THE HOLE”?
I started calling this physically, emotionally and mentally depleting space The Hole after reading this poem by Portia Nelson. If you haven’t read “There’s a Hole in my Sidewalk” before, pause, read the poem and return to this blog.
Seriously….read the poem.
This simple poem is transformative. And it applies to so many areas of life. My current mission is career alignment, so I’m interpreting the poem through that lens.
HOW DO YOU FALL INTO THE CAREER HOLE?
Many of us started our careers based on ideals that were disconnected from our authentic desires. We chose a career based on the expectations of our parents, culture, society or out of a desire to live someone else’s version of a good life. We weren’t thinking about the lifestyle that our career would create (beyond the money we would earn).
We end up progressing through our careers on auto-pilot - just going through the motions that we’ve been told will lead to success in our career. We make career moves that externally look like progress, but internally it feels like stagnation with little growth. Overtime, the gap between our authentic needs/desires and the expectations of others widens to the point where the differential is unbearable. And this is the yellow brick road that leads to The Hole.
GETTING OUT OF THE HOLE:
The poem emphasizes the power & importance of honest self-reflection in your career. It is only through taking full responsibility and learning life lessons that you can make changes leading to a career that you’ll love. It is a commitment to becoming a better, bolder and more intentional version of yourself. .
So when you’ve found yourself in The Hole, how do you get out:
Recognize that you’re in The Hole.
Accept that you don’t want to be in The Hole.
Acknowledge that you have the power to pull yourself out of The Hole, and do it.
Raise your awareness so you can avoid falling into The Hole.
Make career changes to minimize or eliminate navigating The Hole
So many people get stuck in The Hole because of Steps 1 & 2. They don’t even realize that they are in a bad place. They’ve accepted the circumstances of their career and tell themselves that “its just part of the game”. Even if they know they are in a hole, they are afraid to admit that they don’t want to be in The Hole because they have no idea what they actually want. If they got out of The Hole, where would they go?
Many of us have been disconnected with our own strength - invoking our personal power feels unfamiliar or even dangerous. As a result, we externalize our own power and put too much blame on others for the career resistance that we experience. While you may legitimately be facing external barriers, you also have to believe that you have the strength, determination and capabilities to transform your career to find the courage to do so.
Once you have some distance from The Hole, you can backtrack your steps to understand how you got there. For example, a sure fire way for me to fall into The Hole is to allow squeaky-wheel clients to set my work priorities. You know who I’m talking about…that one client who constantly requests immediate responses or labels everything as an “emergency”. I am a service professional and my role is to support my clients needs. However, I cannot provide quality support if I’m allowing myself to be constantly distracted. Time and energy management tools have helped me to stay less frazzled, less overwhelmed and more able to effectively respond to the ever-changing demands of my clients.
Once I got clear on what I needed out of my career, it was easier to change the way I prioritize my work and communicate with my clients to minimize the possibility that I would fall back into The Hole. This is the power of alignment. When you have clarity on what it is that you REALLY want out of your career, you can summon the courage and the energy to climb out of The Hole and walk down a different path. But if you’re not clear on what you want, you’ll keep slipping back into non-helpful familiar patterns where the road leads to The Hole.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
If you’re in The Hole, don’t judge yourself too harshly. Most of us have been there. Consider it a learning opportunity - now that you know what you don’t want, you have more clarity around what you do want.
Remember that The Hole is a dark place, so you may not be able to see the exit clearly. This is where a coach can help you. A coach can illuminating the exit signs (there are always multiple ways to get out of The Hole) and help you get out and stay out of The Hole with more ease. This is exactly what I’ve done for my clients and I can do this for you too. If you’re in need of career support, visit my website www.missionmastered.com and request a 1:1 discovery call.
