And so the tip of 2024 approaches. I hit just a few bars (in each senses of the phrase) – did I point out I turned a best-selling printed writer? I additionally did fairly a little bit of teaching, each 121 and group. I hadn’t held out a lot hope for the group stuff but it surely labored properly – and fairly in a different way from the 121s. I stored my shoppers however alas didn’t win any new ones. I additionally turned fifty and, unusually for me, even loved the celebrations.
2024 is the yr I acquired secure; secure sufficient to need to shake issues up in 2025.
However getting secure in itself is proof that my escape from a company profession, if not from company revenue, is working.
Studying the primary weblog 4 years in the past nearly to the day I don’t sound that a lot totally different from how I really feel at the moment – perhaps a bit more energizing, a bit extra hopeful. Then I used to be targeted on constructing a tech startup (which finally failed). I had not the foggiest that I’d find yourself writing a ebook about leaving company life, however I feel even then I knew my door would at all times be open to assist individuals who had been sad of their jobs.
I had a excessive bar for what life ‘exterior’ can be like. Perhaps it was unrealistic, however I’d dreamed about it for therefore a few years.
My dad at all times moaned about his company job in prescribed drugs, whereas my mum couldn’t have been extra pleased with her’s and loved each second. My dad was made redundant in his fifties and by no means went again to “a correct job” – he blew his redundancy payout on a yacht chartering franchise and when it failed, he taught individuals the best way to sail. My mum went to college in her fifties, beat all her kids to a First and labored previous her retirement.
I’ll sound extra like my dad, however I’m way more like my mum. I devoted Company Escapology to her principally as a result of, as a librarian, she would have been pleased with me writing an actual ebook, but in addition as a result of she set a excessive bar for me when it got here to work: it needs to be satisfying, it ought to make you be ok with your self, it ought to assist you to develop.
And I assume that’s why, finally, I needed to go away BP as a result of if I hadn’t hit that prime bar within the first 16 years, it was unlikely I’d hit it within the second.
I’d plateaued decrease than my value. Have you ever?
Different individuals noticed it sooner than I did. However after I did, it was time to go.
Time to interrupt by way of my BP glass ceiling and begin fulfilling my potential – in addition to get again to that prime bar my mum set for work.
She died 5 years in the past, so by no means needed to see me volunteer to go away my safe job. She’d have been horrified, empathising with my spouse Megan. I most likely wouldn’t have informed her till after the very fact.
She’d nonetheless be worrying at the moment, however she was a extremely delicate, empathetic girl and I do know she’d have registered a change in me, in my self-confidence and self-belief.
She would sense that what I get from work now’s simply what she had acquired from work: enjoyment, self-worth and progress.
I don’t need to peddle a lie about this life – it’s actually not unicorns and roses – however in the event you don’t need to be in the identical place this time subsequent yr, a vacation is an efficient time to begin making ready for what’s subsequent. Much better to plan for this than be compelled to reply to another person’s timing.
Purchase the ebook, purchase the course or signal as much as my teaching. Escapology Dwell group teaching begins in January – you possibly can join right here.
And the identical goes if somebody who wants assist.
Pleased holidays everybody, thanks for making my 2024 a very particular one for me – a yr I gained’t ever neglect.
That’s truly the sort of bar all of us ought to have.
