“You are just a quitter.” So said my ex-boss.
I felt the wind knocked out of me in that instant, too taken aback to offer any plausible response. Like a child who had been caught stealing sweets from the store (“Devious child!), I just stood there with my head hung low – hurt, embarrassed, shamed, indignant for being called out. That this condemnation came from a supposedly wiser senior made it felt worse, justified even. I didn’t know any better then.
Even though it was just an episode, little did I know that those words would continue to haunt me in such a dramatic way in the years to come, that it would shape my beliefs and unknowingly change the way I came to perceive myself.
When I was a child, I was always looking at the world with a deep curiosity. Why doesn’t my skin get soaked through when every paper does in the water? Why do leaves grow on trees? Why am I here, in this body and not that body? I question everything and see possibilities in everything. That explained why, when I was pursuing a banking diploma (because “Finance pays well”, everyone told me, even though I hated numbers), I was more intrigued with the marketing aspect, and when I got into marketing, I became restless when I had to do the same campaigns over and over again. There was always a restlessness in me that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around nor address – I just knew something didn’t feel right in me. That explained why, each time I felt I was getting stagnant or wasn’t feeling fulfilled in a job, I quit.
And felt guilty about it.
Because then, what my ex-boss said about me must be true. I can’t hold a job for long. I am weak. I am a coward. I am selfish for quitting without a job and not caring how it will affect my family. I am worse than a petulant child who whines when she can’t get her way. I am inconsiderate, self-indulgent, a serial job-hopper and a useless good-for-nothing. For many years, I lived with her words and shamefully accepted that all these were true—they were all me. I began to accept that I was a quitter who would run away every time I hit a snag. Too stressed over work – quit. Cannot manage bosses – quit. Feeling overlooked at work – quit. I would come up with a million reasons to justify to people why I quit just so I could alleviate my sense of misdoing. There were times too, when I would even overextend my tenure in a company just to lessen that sense of guilt and shame. The worst thing was, I would even try to convince myself like I was a third person who needed convincing!
It was only after I started to look deeply that I began to see the damaging impact those words had on me. Without a conscious filter that allowed me to see me for who I really was, those words remained etched in the abysses of my heart and ate me up slowly but surely. I began to believe that they were me. Except of course, they were not. They were simply people’s perceptions of me, based on their own experiences and backgrounds. My ex-boss formed a perception of me based her own experience and background. She had always wanted to be free from family burdens but found herself trapped. My job-hopping, or perceived job-hopping was borne out of her conditioned perception that one should stay dutifully in a job for security sake. Her perception is based on her experience, but she had projected her experience on me and found it fitting to label me as a job-hopper and quitter simply because it did not fit into her perception of what is acceptable, morally or societally.
Quite simply, what she didn’t see was that I wasn’t her. We all have our own journeys in life, shaped and made colorful by different experiences and backgrounds. By allowing her words to shade my life, I was living her idea of life. The feeling of guilt and shame was because I was trying to validate myself to match people’s expectations of me. The feeling of loss was because I felt trapped between trying to live up to people’s expectations and finding my own path. I was denying my own existence!
Realising the root cause of my self-condemnation and seeing how I had bounded myself all these years, I begin to release the guilt and shame I had held onto for so long. I could even feel compassion for the ex-boss seeing how she was herself tied to an existence that was living for others. I wasn’t a job hopper. I left because I could not find purpose in what I was doing. I did not quit. I simply stopped digging because I saw that the hole wasn’t leading me anywhere. None of those work because you just can’t fit a square peg to a round hole. And I would always be restless until I find the thing that fuels me.
Does that make me a quitter?
Well, we only have this life, limited in our earthly existence. By quitting, we just stop doing what is not right for us and start along a path that changes our trajectory. Quitting is not a surrender and it does not mean that we are a failure. Sometimes, we win more when we know when to stop.
Remember, it’s okay to quit — and let nobody convince you otherwise.
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