Still Be Doing This
I Quit
Have you ever tried to quit this profession? Maybe it’s when you realized that sales reps make more in a quarter than you do in a year, or when you were told your first couple years how you needed to “prove your worth,” or around year eight when burnout hit so bad you could barely shower before work.
If you haven’t considered quitting it’s because you’re one of two people: brand new, or HR isn’t your calling.
Neither of those are bad people groups to belong to, let me be clear. We need the fresh blood to remind us how our smiles used to look when we were excited about new adventures; and we need those not called into HR to remind us that we would fight every administrative professional that thinks HR is simply a function instead of a heartbeat…because we are a heartbeat, friends.
I tried to quit two months ago.
I sat at the bottom of my staircase, placed my very heavy head in my very tired hands, and told my own soul that I could no longer be in HR.
My current job is a dream job, with a DREAM leader and a dream salary. My team is one for the history books and I get to do work no other company would let me do. The workload is heavy, like everyone’s, but the job itself did not land me at the bottom of the staircase.
I centered my conversations with my therapist around the actual job. I talked to my trusted people about the actual job, and still I couldn’t come up with how another job would solve the immense exhaustion and discontent I felt.
It took rest, PTO, sick days, and an honesty in myself I haven’t experienced before to get to my own heart on the matter. Viola Davis once said, “You’re going to see the side of you that you didn’t want to meet,” and my bottom of the staircase moment led me on that journey.
Burnout is a Buzzword
The use of the term “burnout” had become such a buzzword for me that I’d come to fully reject it by the time my staircase moment happened. Burnout is clinical, and real, and I felt disconnected from it. Perhaps it was the way brands were using it as clickbait or marketing manipulation, but it never resonated with my soul enough to explain why I was ready to quit the profession that saved my life for over a decade.
And then one night I dragged myself into bed after another grueling day of hating everything, including the amazing work I was doing, the person I was, the life I was leading, and I managed to open Dr. Brene Brown’s most recent book - Atlas of the Heart.
I started skimming, because I wasn’t really there. I hadn’t fully been in my own body for a few months which happens to many people that pick a life of service. And my skimming would find the terminology I needed to change and identify my current state.
Use Your Words
Dr. Brown writes, “…newer research shows that when our access to emotional language is blocked, our ability to interpret incoming emotional information is significantly diminished,” (Atlas of the Heart).
This stopped me for a moment because for the entirety of my adult life I’ve never struggled with language. In fact, I’ve said countless times that I would be homeless if I wasn’t a good talker. The idea that perhaps I could not determine what information about myself and my career was coming to me because I lacked the language was downright bullshit to me.
So I read on to prove Dr. Brown wrong.
And I discovered that I have been using words like “stressed” and “overwhelmed” incorrectly my entire life, and my bottom-of-the-staircase moment was due largely in part to my inability to name my actual emotions. Frankly, I didn’t have the right language or understanding of the language needed, and neither did those around me.
It can be deeply isolating to be in HR, communicate for a living, and feeling like no one understands what the hell you’re saying, which was my daily life for years.
Stressed vs. Overwhelmed
It’s when I read Dr. Brown’s definitions of stressed and overwhelmed that my soul said “yeah kid, sit here for a little, you’ve made it home.” Those definitions are as follows:
Stress: “We feel stressed when we evaluate environmental demand as beyond our ability to cope successfully. This includes elements of unpredictability, uncontrollability, and feeling overloaded.”
Okay, got it. My email inbox, the relationship between finance and payroll, that sales leader that continues to disrespect any deadline and puts my team in a pinch regularly, my laundry pile…that equals stress.
Overwhelmed: “It’s all unfolding faster than my nervous system and psyche can manage it. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’m feeling my emotions at about a 10, I’m paying attention to them at about a 5, and I understand them at about a 2.”
Okay, got it. My whole life and career. My entire 24 hours a day right now.
Nothingness
This book and the language it taught me unlocked a roadmap to making decisions about my career and life that I didn’t think I could ever make. Hard decisions that I knew would impact my future, my family, my forever.
I sat at the bottom of the stairs about a hundred more times. I took sick days to sort out my brain.
Dr. Brown talks about the cure for being overwhelmed is nothingness; zero responsibilities, no decisions, nothing.
I’ve been asked, “How can I help, what do you need, what can I take off your plate, will this help” for so many months and could not figure out why those were so hard to answer until I realized that I wasn’t in the place to even be making those decisions. I needed the nothingness to calm the overwhelmed.
It stung when I realized how many times I’ve asked my direct reports and colleagues those same questions when they’ve clearly been overwhelmed instead of telling them to log off.
It is amazing how the workplace can change when HR professionals get the emotional language educations we’ve always needed.
I knew quitting wasn’t the right decision because making a decision was the exact wrong place to be. This HR professional needed to sit still, take time off, show up when she could, and survive. So I did. I didn’t give 100%, and I still kicked ass. The world didn’t fall down, the company still moved forward, and my team still felt loved. I learned that my worst was still pretty damn good and God I needed to learn that.
I started this humble career at 18 and fought so hard to show everyone, including myself, that I was smart and worth it and valuable and yes you should ask me about my ideas and please include me in the meeting and yes I can do that and sure I’ll stay up late and yep I can run payroll even though it’s not my job and sure I can do benefits and yes I can listen to you cry about your job when I’m doing five other people’s jobs and CHRIST I “just” needed to be nothing for many years before 2022.
Still Be Doing This
After a few months of gently probing my soul about what I wanted, I was driving to the gym when the song “Doing This” by Luke Combs came on. I pulled over on the highway to listen because it felt important (I’m learning to do that, pull over when I should be listening). The summary of the lyrics are this:
If Luke wasn’t a famous singer, he’d still be a damn good singer. Whether he’s singing at the Grand Ole Opry or a show at some no name town, he’d still be doing this if he weren’t doing this.
And that was my answer, too. It’s really been my only answer.
You could put me on a sales floor or a classroom or back in a bar and I’d still be doing this human thing; that thing where my brain is wired to make improvements so human beings are treated better, fairly, kindly.
I could be at the top floor of the World Trade Center or a cubicle in the middle of nowhere cold calling people and my answer would always be people over profit.
I’d still be doing this if I weren’t doing this.
May your heart say the same when you get your bottom of the staircase moment too, friends. I love you, you are damn good at this, take your PTO.