Career grief

This topic is very dear to my heart, since I am a recovering workaholic and used to get my highs from extreme burnouts. That does sound crazy, right?!  Are you experiencing or have experienced any of the below in your workplace or business? You may not be aware when it is  happening. 

• Imposter Syndrome

• Difficult relations

• Burnouts

• Being bullied

• Not being heard

• Self-doubt 

• Redundancy 

• Unfair dismissal 

‘Oh my god, what if I am not good enough, what if they find out that I don’t know this 100%, how did I get here, did I get here by luck.’ Do they sound familiar? 

Imposter syndrome

Imposter syndrome leads to high anxiety and stress. Before I found breathwork, I used to go to bed with spiralling thoughts of not being good enough and fearing that someone would find out and I would lose my job. I was paralysed with anxiety and fear. How did I cope? I put layers of masks, whether it's my makeup or my clothes, handbags, heels, looking absolutely flawless and fearless. Deep down, I was insecure and scared. I didn't allow myself to show any emotions or weakness. On the outside, I had an amazing life, career, lifestyle but I was dying inside. Next time when you have those self-doubts and self limiting beliefs again, look back at all your achievements, your hard work and your knowledge rather than nitpicking on the 5% of things that you have not done or do not know. Acknowledge yourself. Be kind to yourself. You didn't get here by luck, and you didn’t get promoted because you do not know your stuff because you do and that's why you got it. Start changing the negative narrative! 

Breathwork taught me to be compassionate towards myself and others. This has helped me massively in a corporate environment. I have pretended to be the ‘perfect’ person, have been nasty, have had outbursts of emotions and felt the guilt after. This is especially challenging for women in the corporate industry. We try so hard to suppress the emotions and try to be like the boys and suppress our femininity. Don’t get me wrong, I am not asking you to be crying at your desk all the time. It’s ok to voice and show your emotions at times. You are only human. Lean in to your intuition and our feminine strengths. Men equally should be able to express themselves, but they are conditioned not to. Someone acting out at work could be a sign of pain and insecurity, it's not easy when you are at the receiving end to be compassionate. 

Not being heard 

Not being heard and find it challenging to speak up? I used to be the person who sits in a meeting room and thinks about what I should say and I forget what everyone else has said. When it came to my turn, my mouth would be so dry and I would speak so fast that I would forget what I just spoke about. I used to not say anything and regretted it afterwards and thought I had those good ideas too and someone else said it. 

Breathe deep down in your belly, step into your power and speak up. Honour your voice.

I breathe consciously during meetings to stay present, so my mind doesn't wander off. We tend to breathe shallowly in our chest when we are anxious. If it’s a big meeting or presentation, take some time before to breathe consciously for 3-5 minutes to ground yourself back in your body. Using breathwork can help to integrate the blocked expressions and feelings can be so liberating, to find your voice again. 

Burnout

Burnout is something that I am very familiar with and very good at coping and masking. Culturally, I grew up being told I had to work hard and stay in a stable job. ‘Work hard and don’t rock the boat’ essentially. This has been ingrained in me and that's what people know of Asians, even though stereotypical. Asians work hard and we are conscientious. It's not a bad thing to be known for but not great when this leads to repeated burnouts. Many of us survive on the adrenaline of being constantly on the go and achieving. We cannot stop. We don’t know how to. When we finally stop sometimes, we get ill or become too exhausted to enjoy our holidays or rest time. Then we restart again, ignoring what our bodies are telling us. I am guilty of that even though I tell my clients to put themselves first. I have to constantly remind myself to take some weekends off and not have any sessions to recuperate, to take some evenings off from my day job. You deserve it and it's not too late, let’s start small. 

I am a recovering burnout addict. 

Being bullied

To my fellow women, if you have been treated unfairly and thought ‘I went through hell, fire and hoops to get here.’ Well done you. Please do not think this should happen to another person so it toughens them up or they should go through that to know how you did it. Why do we have to inflict that same pain on someone else? Can we use our femininity and nurturing ways to guide someone and do it the right way? Yes we can. Let’s empower each other, let’s support each other. Heal your wounds first. 

Redundancy 

I mentioned it in my story and several posts in social media that I was made redundant a few years ago. My heart still aches a little as I am typing this. I was flying in my career and I fell from my highest point to rock bottom. I was burned out. I was on a hamster wheel and surviving on unhealthy adrenaline. The redundancy took my identity away. I was lost. I did not know who I was. I did not know what to do next. It brought up all my insecurities with financial security. It ripped off the layers of masks I built over the years, I felt exposed. I was heartbroken and disappointed as I did not recognise myself, what happened to the tough career minded women? My self-worth was ripped into pieces. 

This is when I went back to breathwork and dug deep into the nasty self limiting beliefs and self-doubts. Wow, it was not pleasant. 

Self-healing is warrior work. 

I kept going and going and I had an epiphany to help others like me to express themselves, to cope with the anxiety and fears, to integrate with past traumas and grief to cope with stresses of our daily lives with the simplicity of our own breath. I wanted to share the recipe of the breath, the power of it. 

I have some balance in my life now between my corporate life and my healing work. I am still learning and I still have my triggers. I am more aware of my triggers and patterns. I am able to bounce back quicker since I have my breath. I still speak to a therapist, do reiki and other healing modalities. 

The breath is yours and the power is within you, it's there to extract out when you are ready. 

We spend way too much time working to ignore the pain and grief it may be causing. Breathe to tap into the root cause, and start to reawaken the parts that have been hidden, hurt or unheard. Breathe to go a longer way. 

When you start to heal inside, the external situations would gradually start to shift. It will.