🕷What are you (really) afraid of?
↩️UNFOLLOW University — February 24, 2023
Happy Friday
In 2019, two years before I left my job, I realized I had a problem.
I loved leading the business: growing sales, creating campaigns, mentoring teams, launching new products and learning about consumers. The world of building brands has been my constant classroom for 20 years.
I loved my work. But I hated my job.
My new role required me to do the one thing I had never done before - aim for average. The work I loved was replaced by job duties designed to minimize creativity and maximize conformity:
…agreement and consensus became a compass for decision-making.
…presentations became the currency of performance, regardless of actual results.
…spending weeks away from our families became the expectation, not the exception.
The reward for doing an extraordinary job was the opportunity to do it again on someone else’s terms.
Work no longer worked. To make matters worse, there was no one to blame because I had agreed to it all.
It was time to disagree with one version of my future so I could agree with a new one. I didn’t have a faith problem. I had a trust crisis.
🤯 Radical Truth
Only one Who is big enough to handle the How.
I believed in God but trusting him meant acting on what I said I believed. I believed in his power but trusting him meant depending on a plan I couldn’t see (yet).
Courage in a foreign land is better than misery in a familiar place. It was time to move.
So what was I really afraid of? The pain of change. My self-confidence was tethered to my performance and other’s perception of it. Tying important things to temporary ones is a bad idea.
Letting go of the illusion of certainty is a very painful lesson but also an irreversible one. Once you really know the “Who”, your role is no longer controlling the “How.”
I’m thankful for a God who isn’t limited by weakness, but rather, is attracted to trust, dependency and even frailty.
Today is a good day to move on.
⚡️Courageous Question
What are you really afraid of?
🗣 Wonderful Words
“A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well.”
— Frederick Douglass
🙏🏽 Prayer Package
Lord, l love the work you’ve inspired and equipped me to do. But there are so many things about my job that cause anxiety. I desire a truer destination so help me trust in your compass, not mine. I don’t know how to do this on my own. As I move towards you, allow my ambition to become a weapon for your will. Open my eyes to all the ways you’ve been here all along. Amen.
🎵 God Provides - Tamela Mann
🛠 Practical Tool
Stay? Leave? Launch? Try? Quit? Big decisions often come with big fears. A great decision-making tool I discovered last year was creating a simple Decision Filter. It’s a written set of clarifying statements that allow you to distill big decisions into smaller, gradual phases. The goal is to decrease anxiety and increase clarity by qualifying what’s important before you choose.
Here’s an example of what this might look like for potential job seekers:
It doesn’t need to be fancy. I have a Google doc where I store a few of these scenarios for speaking, advisory and job inquiries. You can click here to see a shareable version of that. Your future self will thank you for planning ahead. 😬
Thanks for reading, sharing and sending feedback! It’s a privilege. You can see previous posts here.
See you next UNFOLLOW Friday!
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Every Friday I’ll send you 5 courageous ideas to help you redesign your work life by making better career decisions:
🤯 Radical Truth - A story from me
⚡️ Courageous Question - A challenge for you
🗣 Wonderful Words - A quote worth remembering
🙏🏽 Prayer Package - A moment of meditation
🛠 Practical Tool - An actionable resource
