Member-only story
How career frustration is actually the key to career fulfillment
Earlier in my career I was embroiled in an inner conflict.
I felt that I was being underpaid and taken for granted at times. It was difficult to communicate with my boss and deep down I felt unfulfilled in my job.
I was unsure what to do about it all. And I was getting frustrated.
Sometimes I felt angry, impatient, jealous, negative, rebellious, stubborn, and exhausted. Sometimes even vindictive and hostile.
This constellation of emotions was completely of alignment with who I wanted to be. And yet I couldn’t help myself, it seemed, from feeling that way.
I thought a lot about what me quitting would look like. How I’d go about it and all the drama that might ensue.
I made my ultimatums, as well, and tried to communicate my point of view to people at work. But those conversations all seemed to fall short — they weren’t satisfying in the way I’d hoped they’d be. They left a bad taste in my mouth, too. I would walk away thinking I had made things worse without us understanding each other.
This wasn’t what I had envisioned my work feeling like, to say the least! And I started to see all this as evidence that I wasn’t meant to be there anymore.