It’s hard to ignore the trend for people leaving their jobs. Most surveys point to a continued trend. Many people are walking a fine line between staying and going. This means that many of you reading this post are considering a new job or have recently moved into a new job.
As you think about your job and other possibilities, it is worth considering a maxim about personal change. It’s better to run to and not from. It is a maxim that applies to much of life. When you find yourself in a situation that you don’t like, placing emphasis on where you are going, as opposed to what you are leaving, is advisable.
When considering your next job, you probably focus on aspects such as the role, your new boss, employer, compensation, benefits, the job’s location and work-life balance including remote versus in person. These are all important factors that drive job changes and will be in the future as well. It is likely that you can make at least incremental improvements in all or most of these areas. And, to the extent that you see potential improvement in these areas you are running to your new job and not from your current job.
Even so, as you consider change, it is helpful to have a more substantive basis for knowing if you are running to instead of from. We typically navigate our lives decision-by-decision. For major decisions we work to bring forward our understanding of ourselves, our lives and the broader world as we make them. Yet, the complexity of life and the demands on our time don’t typically allow us to gain the clarity we seek when making such decisions.
Clarity that is helpful in these times typically isn’t achieved without prior focus and effort. One way to attain it is through working to define what is essential to you, what you know to be fundamentally true about life and what you aspire for your life and the broader world to be. Bringing this together along with what you place value in and what you find meaningful can create clarity for the significant decisions in your life. Investing the time and effort in yourself and your life to know this will help you know if you are running to something that will better lead to your fulfillment. Instead of just running from one job to another.
