Your Own Definition of Enough

Life on the outside: How elimination of her corporate role brought one woman to a place of peace and clarity about what matters

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, a favorite former coworker (Jessica) popped to mind. As I am wont to do with friends and family, I called her out of the blue to see how life post-layoff was going. Forget exchanging multiple texts to figure out when we’re mutually available; how about that old-fashioned, non-corporate, pick-up-the-phone-and-just-call thing?

Hours and many scribbled notes later, we wrapped up a really good talk about the stuff that really matters—the purpose of work, how we lose our way, what we’re learning about “enough” and living meaningfully.

Like many of you, she’s married, a busy parent with three kids in different stages of life, involved in the community and an all-around upstanding citizen. She tends to put the needs of others ahead of her own and I’d guess she’s the last to bed and the first one up at her house.

Don’t even hint to her that you might sorta need something, because she will find a way to fill that need. And often does so even when you haven’t even said anything.

It’s impossible, especially for my first interview of sorts, to share with you all the goodness from the spontaneous conversation I had with Jessica, but I can’t keep her wisdom to myself. Please enjoy this glimpse into our conversation, shared with her permission.

Life in corporate:

We’ll not belabor the common woes of corporate/employed life here, but let’s just say, Jessica was miserable in her most recent role as a director for a hot-shot global analytics company.

And she is not the sort of person to be miserable and she’s the opposite of lazy. She’s been working since she was 15, when she and her barely-older sister ran the local Little Caesars. There’s no shortage of work ethic and spirit in this woman. She’s also smart, a born connector, and wicked smart. She’s from New York so I think the use of “wicked” is doubly fitting.

If you’ve ever been miserable in a job, you don’t have to think too hard to remember what it’s like: managers who aren’t meant to manage people, lots of meetings, poorly managed change, very little opportunity for internal moves despite lots of lip service to personal and professional development.

For four draining years, Jessica tried to make things work. Over and over, she’d reinvest yet again into liking her job and stepping it up even more, volunteering for extra or employee enrichment assignments.

Of course she had looked for other jobs, but hadn’t found anything that made it worth leaving “the devil you know” to go to the one you don’t.

In late fall of 2023, she went to HR and announced she couldn’t take anymore. It wasn’t exactly a resignation but a trusted friend in HR knew she wasn’t going to be talked into staying, and negotiated a couple months severance.

Life on the outside:

Since she largely instigated her departure, you would guess accurately that it was a relief to be out, to be done pretending and dealing with the perpetual stress. But it hasn’t all been sunshine. It has been hard.

She had to first “get over the panic stage and accept the fact that I don’t have a job. I had to get over the shame of being unemployed.”

But she went on to elaborate on how necessary it was: “I had to get uncomfortable. I knew I needed it. I was seeking the change, the transition. I just didn’t have the courage to do it on my own.”

The uncomfortable chapter has included explaining her situation when she applies for new roles, facing fears, and getting honest about what she really wants her life and her family’s life to look like, and what that means for her next chapter of work.

She’s had to “separate my self-worth from my job. For the longest time my self-worth was my job.”

But that’s nothing that can be done overnight. It’s taken time and reflection away from that work situation to have these honest conversations with herself.

“My full-time job after job loss became resetting my life. It gave me time to think through these deeper things—what are my values? Why am I ashamed of being unemployed? What actually matters to me?”

One thing she’s been surprised by in all this uncertainty, is the peace that comes unexpectedly. “All of a sudden I had these moments of peace. They didn’t come from looking at my phone. They just came organically.”

I shared with her the epiphany I had one day in my 20s. Things looked pretty darn bleak on multiple financial fronts and I pulled away from work, stressed as usual. At that time I listened to the radio—remember that thing?—and a cheerful country song came on. The sun was shining, the sky was a deep blue, and I was surprised by a feeling of rightness in the world.

Even if I ended up dead broke, jobless and carless, I could still enjoy sunshine and a blue sky. No one could take those simple enjoyments away from me, and that was a game-changing realization.

She related a lot to this. She’s had more moments of just admiring things like trees, and the sky. You know, the beauty that surrounds us that can be so easy to miss when we’re mired in stress.

What’s next:

As she searches for new jobs (choosing between 2 awesome opportunities) and considers her next chapter, Jessica knows three things she does not want:

• Management. This most often means more money and a fancier title, but also loads of meetings, and being removed from actually doing work which is where much of the fun and satisfaction lies.

• Pigeon-holed. She doesn’t want to be pigeon-holed into doing a few things. She makes an excellent wearer of many hats and doing only a few things over and over is woefully stifling.

• Posturing. She does not want a job where she has to pretend to be anyone other than who she is. Or to be part of pretending like everything’s fine when it’s broken.

And she’s willing to take a pay cut and move “backward” if that’s what it takes to opt out of these things and get the quality of life she desires.

“It’s easy to get seduced into wanting a new car, the bigger house, the vacations” she admits. But then, laughing, she shares “I actually love my mini-van!” And she loves her home and the life she has with her family.

One opportunity in the past asked her to send a slide that summarized her career. I am sure he was expected a list of titles and roles and accomplishments, but she provided a map with a dotted line indicating that it, like most interesting lives, has been unexpected and non-linear. I like that. It’s accurate, and very non-corporate.

She is clearer than ever on her own definition of what it means to have enough, and what it means to be successful.

People ask her why she didn’t move up. Her answer? “I went to different places at different times for different reasons.” Depending on how you look at it, that’s either a tremendously political or not political at all answer. I love it. Because it’s honest. Sometimes the right move simply is to take a step backward in your career in order to take a step forward for your overall life.

At 30, I made a huge shift in my career. I went to a web dev bootcamp and learned how to code. Ish. Let’s just say, I learned enough to get a job as a web developer intern making something like $12/hour.

This was definitely a backward move y’all, and took some humility to be a 30-year-old intern. But that intentional career move propelled my career and life forward in the long run. I knew it would benefit both career opportunities and my own business opportunities (it has) and that’s why I made the change. Backward to go forward.

But back to the question Jessica sometimes gets asked. Sometimes the answer to the question of “Why didn’t you move up?” is simply a very frank: “I didn’t want to.”

Life is what happens inside.

Someone toward the end of our conversation we got around to talking about her grandparents. Turns out you can cover a lot of ground in 2+ hours.

Her reflections included thoughts of their homes which she described as “tiny.”

But tiny wasn’t a bad thing. She remember them not for flashy jobs or titles or monetary success. She remembers them in their modest homes filled with green shag carpet, family and friends, and lots of laughter. We agreed that what matters most about a home is the way people live their lives inside of it.

Perhaps we’ve gotten that backward in our time; our efforts are spent on the outside stuff, or in furnishing homes we have a hard time affording. And then are too busy or stressed to enjoy living in those homes. Or all of our efforts go toward structural things in our life, errands, running around, meeting obligations, attending social events. Meanwhile, our inner lives are bankrupt.

But every time I have a conversation like this one, I’m reminded of just how many of us want to live and work more intentionally. And are willing to make sacrifices to get it. Sacrifices that pay big in the long- and short-term.

I’ll wrap up this piece with a final assessment: Jessica and I are mid-ish-life friends from opposite corners of the U.S. and I’ve never met her grandparents.

But knowing what I know of her and her roots, I don’t think I’m overstepping when I say that I bet her grandparents love the realizations she’s had while there’s still plenty of time left to create and enjoy meaningful work.

We can’t wait to see what you do, Jessica.