How Do You Know When to Walk Away?

How Do You Know When to Walk Away?
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If you know me, or if you've read my previous posts, then you know that my life has changed a lot in the last few years. Some of these changes have involved walking away from things you aren't supposed to walk away from, including a marriage and a Ph.D program. While almost everyone can relate to the struggle involved in making such difficult decisions, I have been asked more than once, "How did you know it was time to go?" When I look back at the steps I took and how I knew it was time to walk away, a pattern emerges, regardless of whether the situation was personal or professional. While these decisions took time to make and caused heartbreak along the way (including mine), I can say with confidence that I made the right decisions and I am a better person for it.

The type of gut-wrenching decisions I'm talking about aren't when you first start a new job or find yourself in a new relationship. With any new experience, there may be growing pains or an adjustment period. Unless you embrace it actively, change can be very uncomfortable. What I'm referring to are the experiences where you can look back and recognize that you've been unhappy for a significant amount of time. I have friends and colleagues who have told me stories about how unhappy they were in a work environment or relationship for YEARS before they finally made the decision to move on. There is certainly something to be said about putting in the time and effort to make something work, but life is too short to spend all of your time frustrated, stressed, or simply going through the motions. As much as we hate to admit it, these situations are not isolated, and they often bleed over into other aspects of our lives. In Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek cites a study done at the Graduate School of Social Work at Boston College about children whose parents work long hours and whether or not they are fulfilled in their work. The result of the study may seem counterintuitive at first: It was not the number of hours a parent spends with a child that ultimately determines the child's happiness, but the quality of those hours. If you work long hours for a cause about which you are passionate, children can feel it. If you are constantly stressed about your work, children notice that too. Is it worth it to jeopardize your health and relationships to continue doing something that drains you?

In addition to the woes of having to look for another job or claims like, "I'll die alone if we break up," another common excuse I've heard plenty of times is, "But it used to be so good." Again, this goes for the job or the relationship. Getting into a new role or dating someone new has its honeymoon phase when everything is great, but you cannot live solely on memories. When I hear this, I feel like saying, "You're right. And I ate last week, so it's ok if I'm starving now." I have found that the best careers and connections continuously nurture you and help you grow.

So how do you know if you should stay or go? When I found myself in these situations, here are the steps I followed:

1. I identified (and wrote down) the reasons I was unhappy.
2. I took the time to articulate WHY these reasons made me unhappy. This step was critical because I knew that if I decided the right move was to leave the current situation behind, the last thing I wanted was to end up in a similar situation in the future.
3. Now that I knew why I wasn't unhappy, I made a plan to fix the issues. Is your main complaint lack of communication with your boss or significant other? You can write down steps to address this issue head on and remedy the situation on your end instead of waiting for someone else to fix it. This has to be a concerted effort to actually find ways to make the situation better. You don't want to look back years from now and wonder "what if."
4. Once I had a plan, I set a timeline to check in with my progress. For my graduate program, it took six months after identifying what was making me unhappy and why before I made the decision to leave.

If you get to the end of your plan and timeline and the situation or your attitude has not changed, then it may be time to walk away. But you get to walk away with a clear conscience, knowing you truly gave it your best effort.

Anytime we consider leaving something behind, it is natural to become nostalgic. Dan Ariely discusses this phenomenon in detail in The Predictably Irrational. When we consider selling an old car, we reminisce about all the road trips and memories. We have a tendency to focus more on what we are giving up than what we are gaining. Try to take a step back and look at the situation objectively. What advice would you give to a friend in the same situation? If you ultimately decide to walk away from the situation that is causing your unhappiness, remember Brené Brown's advice that just because you have failed, this does not make you a failure. Or better yet, try my approach, which is to recognize that if I have learned from the experience and I can make better decisions in the future, then it really isn't a failure at all.

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