Did you decide some years ago that you were willing to make sacrifices for the sake of success in your work? Do you remember those sacrifices you agreed to make? Or was it something you thought you “needed” to do to succeed?
Too often sacrifices don’t bring sustainable success. They bring burnout and exhaustion.
Sustainable Success allows a balance in your life, meeting your goals while keeping core values, long term well-being, and a satisfying personal life.
Let’s do a simple cost/benefit inventory:
Take a moment and look at your life now and see if those sacrifices are still a fit for you, your family, your life. If they still are, you can feel good and consciously re-commit to your path.
If there is some feeling of discontent, however, some way that your life or your work doesn’t “fit” like you’d like it to, this cost/benefit inventory of sacrifices could be a very good use of your time.
It could be pivotal.
Sometimes small pivots yield powerful results, relief, renewal.
Sometime larger pivots will give you the outcomes you want.
Either way, you can only have sustainable success by renewing your outlook from time to time.
Forbes said that 36% of managers report feeling burned out, and 24% are considering quitting their jobs. These are just the reported numbers. The number who are “quietly quitting” (still there physically, but mentally and emotionally checked out) is much higher. They can’t quit. They can’t leave, and they can’t keep going at their current level of stress.
This is not winning. This is certainly not sustainable success. They are becoming the sacrifice.
With this sobering information, I began interviewing some executives, and here are some elements of sustainable success from those who stayed happily in their jobs without burning out or sacrificing their own well-being:
- Their work suits them, their interests and their temperament
- Psychological Safety – It is safe to ask questions, offer suggestions, safe to make mistakes and take some risks
- There’s room for their creativity
- Uplifting environment – natural light, windows that open, nature
- A sense that the work (or product of the work) is of value (What they do matters)
- Colleagues and co-workers collaborate harmoniously
- Mutual respect with the boss (some said that the boss was the reason they quit previous jobs)
In my private work with clients, we do a customized cost/benefit inventory to explore real world options for their individual situation. For right now, here are some additional thoughts for your consideration.
Yes, there are times that a person is just plain grateful to have a job and put food on the table. Even at those times, keeping an open mind that something better could eventually be found goes a long way towards drawing that opportunity to you.
Sustainable success can look different at different stages of life. Remember the teen or college years when success was that your band actually got paid for a gig, and you were living in an apartment that had heat?
Or a few years later, you had worked at a job long enough to qualify for a mortgage loan?
And through the years up until now, what other levels of success were sustained long enough to get a result that mattered to you?
Big picture perspective: after you have lived a long life, and looking back, what will bring you a sense of peace and sustained success in your life?
What will bring the greatest satisfaction, and a sense of a life well lived?
How can the wisdom of that perspective guide you in your choices now?
When you feel truly stuck in your job or life situation, and it feels that there are no solutions, I usually find that there are usually many solutions that we could discover by working together.
I believe in you.