How do you know when it's time to quit?
For anyone on the verge of blowing up their career.
So, you’ve spent years working your way up, getting the promotion, the pay rise and the title. Until one day you wake up and wonder what exactly it is you’ve been working for?
You dream of a life where you’re not chained to your laptop, you can take holiday without having to request it, and god forbid you decide to take a morning off to enjoy the sunny weather (without feeling a surge of guilt and the need to check Teams every 5 seconds).
So, you sign up for the course, you invest in a coach, you book some travel.
Meanwhile, you’re still feeling drained and exhausted because that small dream of yours, stays small. While the other demands of life, keep piling up.
On your best days, you truly believe you can make your dream a reality and build the life you crave. You can’t explain it but you know it will happen. On your worst days, it feels heavy and unachievable.
And when you voice to a friend or loved one that you want to work less and get paid more, they reply “ha, don’t we all” in a defeatist, slightly bitter tone. And your dream shrinks even more. Who are you to want this? Wouldn’t everyone be doing it, if it were possible?
This has been my experience - up until this point. And while I’ve invested in the courses, the coaches and the URL for my business, one of the hardest questions I’ve grappled with over the last few, well, years, is “how will I know when it’s time to quit my job and go all in?”
If you’ve ever been in a similar position to me, and spent hours on Instagram wistfully scrolling through other profiles of the life you want to be living - more time, more freedom, more control - you’ll know that there’s a whole range of advice out there.
From the “I quit when I was broke with no back up plan and it was the best thing I ever did” to the “your nervous system and business will suffer if you’re building from a scarcity mindset”… It really is impossible to know what the right answer is.
As quite a risk averse person, I’ve definitely been someone who has taken the more cautious approach. And a recurring thought is, would I be further ahead if I had been a little braver? Maybe.
My story started a few years ago, a deeply insecure leader really knocked my self-confidence and job fulfilment. Having somewhat of a ‘life crisis’ I turned 30, I went to Bali, I moved cities, I started an accredited coaching course and signed up to a business accelerator. Whilst still working in said job, for said leader.
Needless to say, it was a lot. And my nervous system suffered anyway.
18 months later, I completed my coaching course and I put in a flexible working request to change my working pattern from 5 days a week to 4. I thought I was being clever, cheating the system. I was still going to get paid almost as much as I was before, with a whole day free each week to start building my business.
In theory, I thought I’d cracked it. And one day a week sounded like absolute heaven. A whole day to work on my own business, with no agenda.
The reality was a little different, but perhaps not in the way you’d expect.
Working one day a week on my business didn’t lead to immediate financial success. What it did do was force me to confront a few home truths.
The way I was working was unsustainable. I was exhausted.
Work/life boundaries and saying no? Non-existent.
Allowing myself to spend time alone and recharge? A revelation.
The transition from 5 days to 4, doesn’t sound like a huge shift, but for me it was. I learned that I had to protect my time and energy like it was my job, I learned that I relied too much on external validation from my colleagues and my title and I learned that I had to be ok with feeling slightly left out. Emerging from one life, not quite in the next.
No overnight financial freedom - but important, foundational lessons nonetheless.
While this time hasn’t been focused as much on building and scaling my business as I had hoped, it has given me space and time to get really clear on who I am and the life I desire.
After a strong 6-9 months of self-reflection and, most likely, recovery from severe burnout, I started to put myself out there and meet other local female business women, creatives and entrepreneurs. For the first time it really sunk in that the life I desired was possible. I had living, breathing proof in front of me. And the energy from someone living authentically and in alignment, is quite simply, magnetic.
This was the real turning point for me, and I would even go so far to say that the community I’ve begun to build has been more beneficial than dropping down to 4 days a week. Meeting likeminded, inspirational and supportive women has been truly game changing. One of them has become my official coach and mentor - it can’t be underestimated that if you have the right person supporting you, your progress and self-belief will ten-fold. It’s validating in a totally new way, to have someone who’s path you want to follow, cheer you on and tell you that you can do this too. Because something I have rarely had in my career, is a role model.
What I have realised is that now I have more clarity with what I want to do, there is a different energy that’s driving me forward. It’s no longer a reactive, panicked impulse to quit my job. It’s a restless, impatient, yearning to pour more of myself into my business. The more momentum I make, the more conscious I am of my time and energy being drained by a version of myself I no longer want to be.
I am still yet to make that final leap fully into my business, but what I’ve learned from my experience is that however tempting it is to quit after bad day or when a colleague annoys you or when you feel overwhelmed… this is an important signal to pay attention to, but it’s not necessarily the signal to quit.
What has been a more thoughtful and gradual process for me is to take my time, gain clarity on what I want to do, and more importantly the life I want to be living. When you start making enough momentum that you feel like your old life is dragging you back and not propelling you forward - I believe that this is the transition point.
My final piece of advice is don’t underestimate the importance of self-trust. The only way to build this is through action. You won’t always receive positive reinforcement and validation to keep going. You’ll question your capability, your credibility and your confidence - and others will question this too. In fact, some of your closest friends won’t show up and support you, or hit ‘like’ on your Instagram posts. That’s ok - what you have to remember is, this isn’t about them. And the very act of transforming your life is like holding up a mirror to others around you. And not everyone likes what they see.