When Changing Your Job May Not Solve Your Problem….

If you do not have internal peace then you have nothing….

Desperate for a vacation as it had been a challenging year, a colleague of mine was deeply looking forward to flying off into the sunshine for a couple of weeks break. 
In the preceding 6 months work had thrown up challenges. The health of each and every single member had been compromised. There had been past issues that had come up to bite her again….she felt she had truly earned a restorative pause.
This however was not what was instore for her….. Time away from the usual ties of business, and it’s client base, the school run, and all of a sudden she was floating free, untethered by normal life, in the hurt that had been generated.
Where she had envisaged being freed of thoughts of work she found herself concerned about the details, albeit redundantly at 2,500 miles distance. Where she had envisaged hours of peace with her kindle on a sun-drenched beach, she encountered anxiety and emotions. Where she had predicted the building of sandcastle she found herself snappy and terse with her son. Where she had hoped for nights restful, nourishing sleep, she discovered hot and angsty thoughts and dreams….
As a coach I have seen this over and over, that changing job, or ‘doing a geographical’, does not change the feelings of the person before me. Wherever they go they take themselves with them. This includes the feelings they have. If you feel good about yourself and your life when you leave for your holiday you will most likely enjoy your vacation. If you are in a good place within yourself, then a new job will enable any professional move you make to be a positive one. This vacation dd improve. Lessons were learned and emotions calmed.
So the trick seems to be to sit with the feelings generated by life rather than run from them. If we can make the time and space regularly to assimilate our emotions and integrate the learning, then we can capitalise on our experiences. If you try to bypass doing this work, then when there is space set aside for enjoyment or new beginnings, these stored up feelings will spring out unbidden, demanding to be dealt with, when you could be having fun. 

Changing your job may not actually solve your problem.
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