Your Career and ... Grief?

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Grief is not a fun topic. And it’s probably not a topic you’d expect a career coach to bring up.

But grief is an essential emotion. And it’s important for us to talk about, especially when it comes to your career.

Letting go of things—even the things that aren’t good for us—is still a loss.

Your Career and Grief

Grief is complex.

Here’s how grief often shows up for my clients: sadness, fear, anger, loneliness, panic, pain, yearning, and anxiety.

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 people who "got" you and supported you
Realizing that the organization, career path, or life you committed to isn't making you happy

In short, grief is often about mourning what was and what could have been.

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.

That is a long time to not be myself or do the things I was meant to do.

I also had to grieve the life I’d worked so hard to create in NYC. The city was such a part of my identity. Who was I if I wasn’t a New Yorker?!

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 a goldmine of information that I became open to truly experiencing them—even and especially when they felt bad.

Like, "Hello, Anxiety and Shame. What brings you in today on this fine morning?"

When I allowed myself to grieve, I was able to move from making incremental changes to truly building the life and career I wanted.

How To Deal With Career 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.

And they ultimately reach a point where they can't move forward.

Pausing is actually a great 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.

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 from alllll the amazing things that await you.

Grief Isn’t Linear

One thing that's often misunderstood about grief: you don't sequentially move through 5 clean stages bing, bang, 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.

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?

Moving Forward In Your Career: The Sixth Stage of Grief

You’ve probably heard of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Did you know there are actually six stages?

The 6th stage of grief is often referred to as the stage of reconstruction or reorganization. I like to call it: Finding Purpose and Meaning.

The very circumstances that rock our world allow us to define, “Here’s how I want to live each day. Here’s what’s most important going forward.”

(When you’re ready, of course.)

That might be realigning our career and life with our most important values. It might be refocusing our precious time and energy on the things and people that matter most.

It doesn’t change the circumstances that brought us here, but the Purpose and Meaning stage can absolutely become a beacon of light that guides us forward.

However it looks for you, Grief is a giant reset button that can completely change your trajectory. What would you like to reset?

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.