When Your Career Needs a Recalculation: How to Pause, Realign, and Move With Purpose
“There is wisdom within you that can only be heard when you slow down.”
I love to use the Waze app, even when I know how to get where I’m going. Most times, I’m pressed for time and want to understand the most optimal route to get there. In Atlanta these days, there’s always traffic. What I love about the app is it gives multiple routes you can take, to still get to your destination. Life is like that. Sometimes, the route you take can take longer, some have less turns, some are more direct, but at the end of day even if you are in alignment with your purpose you will still get there.
During your route, the app recalculates and lets you know that it has determined a quicker route to get there. It asks your permission, if you want to take it or not. I call this a cross-roads. In your career, you will be faced with many cross-roads. It's a time where you are faced with making a decision to go one direction vs the other. Although you might still get to your destination either way, one route might lead to more difficulties or hardship than the other. I was faced with this situation a couple of months ago, and I decided to PAUSE. We don’t talk enough about pauses, or the importance of them. We always feel rushed to make a decision, to respond to a question, to get into action. However, a pause can be so powerful. It can be brief or long, the duration itself is relative to the need of the pause. In this pause, I re-affirmed the following things, I would love to share to my fellow career women:
Alignment - Alignment is the lens that you should view in any decision. However, before you do that you have to know your destination. You have to understand your WHY. The reason you do what you do. It’s with that intention you make the decisions for your career. To take one job, vs another. What role you want, and what career path you want to take. It’s also okay to have check-ins with yourself. To ask yourself if this thing is still in alignment. Just like your tires on your car, you have to get them re-aligned and adjusted. Your career is the same.
Pause - Please hear me ladies: It’s okay to pause. It’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to rest. Rest is a requirement. Please don’t let anyone or society tell you that a break, rest, a pause mean you are weak, not cut out for it, or have failed. It’s a necessary step in your journey, and skipping it can be detrimental to you, your health, and you living on purpose.
Success - Success is defined by you. I recently watched a podcast with Emma Grede. The way she talked about success was like it was a universal definition that everyone agreed to. It was grounded in reaching status in position and accumulation of materials, as well as money. To be honest, it does seem like that’s what society tells you success is. However, in my journey I’ve started to look at success differently. Sure I want financial freedom, but that’s to ensure that I am truly able to have the ability to do purposeful work, create generational wealth, and give back to my community. Ultimately, success for me is living life on purpose, in purpose, in alignment, and having joy and peace while doing it. I’ve been called to be a mother, a wife, a sibling, a daughter, a healer, a connector. Living in that is what success looks like for me. Take time to truly define what success looks like for you, and use that as your compass. It will be part of your Why!
If you find yourself at a crossroads in your career, sensing the need to recalibrate, or feeling the weight of burnout, give yourself permission to pause.
Not Quit, Not Give up. But pause long enough to hear yourself again. There is wisdom within you that can only be heard when you slow down. Trust that your future self will thank you.
#packlight
Candii