Career Center, Career Files, Lawyers

What’s Your Breaking Point?

The time you spend at your job - with your boss, your colleagues, your work friends, etc - is not insignificant, and it’s probably the most time-consuming relationship in your life

By  
on

We all have a breaking point in our romantic relationships: “I’ll leave this partner if he/she does [x]. I’ll accept a lot of stuff that may or may not be ‘perfect,’ but if he/she crosses this line, I’m out.”

Do you have a similar breaking point in your job? After all, the time you spend at your job–with your boss, your colleagues, your work friends, etc.–is not insignificant, and it’s probably the most time-consuming relationship in your life. Think about it for a moment, and finish this sentence: “I’ll leave this job if ___________.”

During my Big Law days, I remember one of my fellow first-year associates leaving her blackberry on her desk in protest and walking out of the firm. I was both in awe of and completely terrified by what she’d done. She’d reached her breaking point in the middle of a stressful deal, with partners yelling at her on a weekend, and something in her said, “Enough.” She walked out, and as far as I know, she never looked back.

For me, the breaking point in my law career wasn’t anything external. It wasn’t a partner treating me badly, or too much work on my plate that I felt horribly unqualified to do, or no work-life balance, although each of those factors was present during most of my 5-year stint as a lawyer.

Rather, it was an internal breaking point. I was lying in savasana (rest pose) after a yoga practice, when I had the realization that going to law school was a completely fear-based decision. I was afraid of living an uncertain life (one where I didn’t know the answers), so I painted the picture of a life that society says is good and true: success defined by status; security defined by money; beauty defined by appearance. As I lay on my mat, with tears streaming down my face, I also saw that the main reason I went to law school was to please my parents, and that, below the surface, I really had no idea who I was or what I wanted to do with my life.

Seeing those things was both haunting and oddly liberating, and I couldn’t unsee them. There was a freedom in knowing that my “chosen” profession wasn’t one that “I” had really chosen. Once I saw how flimsily my house of cards was built, it made it easier to say “Enough” when law firm partners kept piling on the work and asking more of me, when no part of me was truly interested in this career anymore.

Sponsored

Enough about me…what is your breaking point? Sometimes we don’t know it until it hits us in the face. We keep taking more and more until that voice inside us–the one that has been speaking quietly, the one we’ve been muffling with distractions, the one we’ve been numbing with alcohol or drugs–starts screaming, and we have no choice but to listen.

What if, instead of waiting to reach your breaking point, you start asking yourself, in this moment, “what do I really want?” If you are in the right job, working with the right people, you’ll know it (and congratulations!). If something feels “off” about where you are or how you’re spending the majority of your time, what can you do, right now, to fix it?

It’s ok if you wait for your own breaking point. Sometimes we don’t know until we know. But if you have the insight to know what needs to change right now–even something small–to make your life incrementally better, why wait until your spirit breaks?

Why not change it now?

Megan Grandinetti is a wellness & life coach, yoga teacher, and recovering attorney. Learn more about Megan, and receive a free 10-minute guided meditation, by visiting www.megangrandinettiyoga.com and signing up for her email list.

Sponsored

Topics

, , , , , , , ,