Avoid career heartbreak
We all know what it feels like to experience a broken heart, but what does it mean to be heartbroken over your career?
Career heartbreak is more than disappointment with your current job. Satisfaction in a career is deeply rooted in the sense of self and how you identify with your role or with your industry. When people become disillusioned with the careers they have chosen and developed, they may feel that their career heart is broken.
While it might sound like an exaggerated term, this disillusionment is a visceral experience, something you feel in a physically or somatically. Emotions play a big role in this connection of body and mind, and they are entangled throughout the lifespan of our careers.
An Emotional Career Can End In Heartbreak
A recent study out of the Copenhagen Business School uncovered four distinct emotional stages in the career lifecycle of lawyers on the partner track.
The first stage is one of anticipation and excitement, where early career lawyers have optimism, positive emotions, and high aspirations as they embark on their careers.
Next comes fear and anxiety as they are being considered for promotion to partnership, accompanied by uncertainty and anticipation of potential failure.
For those who are successfully promoted, positive emotions resurface such as pride and joy. In the third stage, they develop an emotional bond with the partnership and prioritize firm interests.
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And finally, after increased pressures to perform, long hours, and continuous evaluations, late-career lawyers move from euphoria to disillusionment, when reaching partner doesn’t live up to their high expectations.
The fourth stage reflects a career heartbreak.
While the findings above were based on lawyers, many professionals will go through the same emotional stages as they strive for and attain success and growth in their careers.
Walking Away With A Career Broken Heart
Imagine a person who dedicated themself to a career in fossil fuels. They spent years attaining degrees, building their connections, and advancing in the industry. But over time, they become disillusioned with the industry’s contributions to the climate crisis, and they lose hope that any sustainable improvements will come. This, too, is a broken career heart.
New evidence points to a trend for ‘climate quitting’, where employees in the fossil fuel industry are walking away from long careers in the name of sustainability. Findings from this research point to heartbreak, following organizational greenwashing and hypocrisy, or false promises to uphold environmental values with no follow through.
Many will be able to identify with the climate quitting example, even outside of the fossil fuels industry. Whether through their own personal growth, substantial changes within an industry, or both, people can fall out of love with the career they have chosen.
Before Career Heartbreak Sets In
To protect yourself against a future career heartbreak, you may choose to introduce some diversity into your career. This will ensure that you have options and that your career satisfaction is not tied to one industry or one organization.
Upskill in your early- to mid-career. Take up promising opportunities that are offered for your own career development. If your employer is selecting people to put through an AI skills course, express your interest – even if your current role does not specifically require it. Gaining a new skill may come in handy and open new possibilities within or beyond your current work. Of course, you will still need to be selective, as no one has time to embrace all opportunities that come our way.
Bring your hobbies to work. If you love writing, designing, photography, or anything else that brings you joy, find ways to incorporate them into the work you already do. For example, designate yourself as the event photographer and turn boring social media posts into something creative and beautiful. This will allow you to find more satisfaction at work and to showcase your amazing and previously unrecognized talents that may turn into future assignments.
Make use of your transferable skills. Bring your expertise as an accountant, a consultant, or your knowledge of an industry to the board room. Find a not-for-profit organization or community that you’d like to contribute to and look for openings and calls to join their board of directors. Many not-for-profits will consider board members with no previous experience, as long as they can communicate their value in terms of the transferable skills they can bring.
Protecting Your Career Heart
Cultivating another outlet for career satisfaction will buffer against the pain of career heartbreak, if you happen to find yourself disconnecting throughout the emotional stages of your career lifecycle. And if disillusion has already set in, you may have a career mid-life crisis on your hands. So, what to do next? If you are unable to recover from career heartbreak, then like the climate quitters, it’s time for a change.
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