How To Know The Time Has Come To Quit Your Dreadful Job

Workplace depression is real. Depression is not simply a lack of motivation; it is also a lack of hope, joy, and excitement; A self-doubt that rises gradually from the buildup of some life events harming your balance in life. It keeps eating you from within, leaving you with no appetite for good/better thoughts about yourself. It makes you believe the feeling is permanent and it is not worth a chance.

It creates an illusion of nothing, even when you have everything. No matter what your persona is, it drives you into the grander feeling YOU ARE NOT ENOUGH.

A few months back, I felt I was drowning. Mostly, I was consciously drifting into something that made my heart beat faster. Something kept me awake in the nights. Sometimes, I saw dogs/dinosaurs and even coloured snakes in my dreams. I kept waking up in the middle of the night to validate myself. I knew I was missing something but was not sure what it was. I never felt like this in my entire life, not even when life sometimes threw lemon trees at me [instead of lemons].

I was undoubtedly anxious. And extremely helpless. There was no motivation to continue doing anything with joy or excitement. My mind was NOT in sync with my heart, no matter how hard I tried. I often asked myself, What is the point?!

If you had seen me, you could hardly guess what was going on inside me; I looked happy and usual on the outside.

What had changed in my life was my work environment; I took this challenging project with a very trying boss, whose punch line at the end of every 1:1 meeting was This is NOT enough. Because he believed stress motivates people to push their limits.

I have been working on this project for a little less than a year. I was trying to prove myself under so much pressure. My work meetings spread over all day and night. Every time I thought I had figured out a solution, he would introduce a new process and ask me to apply it. I was chasing a moving target.

There was no room for acknowledgment or recognition. My progress was sometimes ignored or bypassed. I had no trace of satisfaction at work at the end of every day. He put me in a spiral of productivity shame.

At one point, I stopped fighting him back for my rights. I allowed him to criticise by remaining quiet. I thought I was ignoring his immaturity. But I was also subconsciously accumulating self deteriorating thoughts about myself by believing his version of me.

I am not going to go deeper into my work life. While this might all appear as a not-a-big-deal work environment for some of you reading this, it did not help a person like me. I thrive when valued and trusted in a work environment, which was amiss in this particular project. And much more. The Manager in this specific project validated People only based on the numbers, not allowing them to play their strengths. It was like a Military workforce. And he even justified it further by calling people, task force!! What a joke!

The red lights were probably blinking right from the beginning. I cared less to notice. I felt guilty for becoming sick. I dreaded the idea of my husband or kids falling ill; The big red flag flew right over my head when I saw in the news that Someone Somewhere jumped from the seventh floor at work and killed himself. My immediate reaction was Good for Him.

The sad part was the thoughts that came to my mind watching people around me. It was always about work. I either wondered how their work-life is or if they were happy with it. I felt exhausted when I accepted how the entire world coped up but ME.

The advice I received from my friends was just to ignore it or make peace with it. They made me believe I was making a huge deal out of this and that this is all so normal. Maybe a phase where you work for a poor manager.

Sometimes I felt like an extraterrestrial species with no chance of survival. Yet, I was constantly adapting, compromising my happiness and health in the process. Maybe, I was operating with the fear of losing something most insignificant in the larger scheme of life: This freaking Job?!

And one fine day, as I was talking to my Dad, he despised how much the situation was getting out of control. He advised me to quit my job. Mind you! My Dad is probably the last one to make decisions on the go.

I instantly jumped on the opportunity and took some time off from work. I determined to NOT return to this project again. The thought itself felt like I opted to be relieved from all the curses.

I felt liberated after a long time. I understand what it means to open doors for the caged bird.

I promised myself to get recharged to 100%[remember my battery was at the blinking 5%].

I looked at the appreciation emails I had received in the past and read them one by one. There was this particular praise calling me a One Man Army that lifted my spilled spirits. I stood up from the warfare where I lay with no explicit wound or blood. But a part of me had been injured at a deeper level. And I was determined to fix it.

I took off from work. For the first two weeks, I remember sleeping for 11 to 12 hours in the night besides taking afternoon naps on some days. I consciously avoided thinking about my job and never once peeked into that part of memories because the very thought of it always left me feeling distasteful.

I started enjoying the present. Focussing on the NOW: The smell of my freshly made coffee, The changing colors of the sky, The vigor in my runs, and the best part was I was finally starting to laugh at myself. I started noticing people in my life more than ever. And many more.

I now feel like I am living a brand new life because I have re-established my control over who I am. I have well-defined boundaries, and no person or thing can affect my feelings unless I approve of it! I am falling in love with this new me, all over again!

It is not surprising to see my battery never going below 99%. I am NOW fully aware of all unconditional love from people around me. I am NOT taking the endless appreciation and motivation I receive[including strangers] for granted. I practice unreserved gratitude for everything I have in my life. I have access to the gold mine of positivity and good vibes in any given situation. I make a conscious choice to live my life the way I want by choosing my happiness over everything else, every day!

I am more than enough to myself and others!

I am NOW ready for a thousand wars!!

The golden rule is that You can choose to walk out of any place at any time if it is NOT the right one for you.

You are NOT answerable to anyone except you. You save YOU.

You don't drown by falling in the water; You drown by staying there - Edwin Louis Cole.