Your Career and ... Grief?
Congratulations for being curious enough to click on this post.
Grief is not a fun topic. And it’s probably not a topic you’d expect a career coach to bring up.
But it's so important for us to talk about, especially when it comes to your career.
Grief is an essential emotion.
And it shows up in people's careers a lot more than you might think.
So I want to normalize recognizing and talking about it, so you can process it...and release its energetic hold.
Letting go of things—even the things that aren’t good for us—is still a loss.
Grief Is Complex
If you’ve ever experienced death of a loved one or pet, you know that grief is complex.
Here are some examples of how grief shows up for my clients:
Fear
Anger
Loneliness
Panic
Pain
Yearning
Anxiety
Emptiness
Rumination
Any of these sound familiar?
Here are some examples of what people trying to make career and life changes might be grieving:
Who they used to be
The life they used to have
Unmet expectations
Unrealized dreams
Relationships that are shifting
Lost time
Moving on from someone who "got" you and supported you
Realizing that the relationship, career path, life you committed to isn't making you happy
Whether you’re leaving something you love or hate, these are changes worthy of grief.
I couldn’t WAIT to leave my corporate job, but I still had to grieve 20 years of following a career path that wasn't me.
Twenty years is a long time to spend not being myself and not doing the things I was meant to do.
I also had to grieve the life I’d worked so hard to create in NYC. Even though I was excited to move on, the city was such a part of my identity. Who was I if I wasn’t a New Yorker?!
I repeat: grief is not fun. But it’s necessary.
I had a pattern of over-intellectualizing feelings and clicking out of them as fast as possible. I was great at taking action and moving forward—but it came at a cost.
It was only once I started treating my emotions as the goldmine of information they are that I became open to truly experiencing and listening to them—even and especially when they feel bad.
Like, "Hello, Anxiety and Shame. What brings you in today on this fine morning?"
It was only once I allowed myself to fully grieve that I was able to move from coping and tolerating and incremental changes to truly building the life and career I wanted.
It is normal and healthy to acknowledge all of this.
And it's one of the hard parts of any big beautiful change that leads us to a truly better place.
How To Deal With Grief
There are 3 ways to deal with grief:
Stay there indefinitely
Push it down, compartmentalize
FEEL it, process it, and let it go
Most people come into coaching having chosen Option #2 for way too long.
In fact, they're extremely talented at achieving and excelling despite all those feelings I described above.
It's exhausting.
So, they, like all humans, reach a point where they can't move forward.
This is actually a great sign.
Pausing is a healthy response to grief. It's the first step in allowing yourself to heal.
To stop, to care for yourself SO THAT you can move forward from a truly whole place.
Rather than slapping a toxically positive, "I'm great!" "I'm fine!" on it and grinding it out.
See also: Why Positive Thinking Doesn’t Work
Until you process your grief, all those feelings are STILL there. You're just not dealing with them.
And the same mechanism that allows you to NUMB those feelings and move forward despite them ALSO cuts you off alllll the amazing things that await you.
Grief Isn’t Linear
One more thing that's often misunderstood about grief: it's not linear.
You don't move through 5 clean stages bing, bam, boom.
And it's very common for even the grief you've dealt with to rise up when you're about to step into something greater.
All of this is NORMAL and HEALTHY, and we need to talk about it.
I've had a number of people cry their way through coaching sessions. Because it's the first time in a long time they've been able to acknowledge and name their emotions.
Most of them say something like, "I have no idea where this is coming from! Why does this always happen with you?"
Then later, when they're crushing their goals left and right, they credit their success to the time they spent FEELING and HONORING their emotions.
We need more spaces to truly, freely grieve without judgment.
It's normal. It's human. It's often essential for true peace, happiness, and fulfillment.
What do you need to properly grieve so you can move forward?
Author Bio:
Before becoming a coach, Caroline had a successful career in management consulting and financial services. She's made it her mission to help people grow, contribute, and get wherever they want to go in their careers.
Caroline wants you to recognize how much power you have to define your career. Take the first step by downloading your free 4-step career roadmap.
