Written by Yvonne Foo, Counsellor and Gottman Level 3 Therapist.
6 years ago, I resigned from my first job. After investing 18 years of my youth into this job, I decided that it was time to leave. I wasn’t sure what the last straw that made me quit was, perhaps the burnout finally caught up to me, but I did know that if I had continued to stay, it wouldn’t have added any meaning or purpose to my life.
The first 6 months of waiting and job-searching were tough. Self-doubt crept into my heart and I asked myself why I was stupid enough to resign without any backup plans. I felt so stressed, anxious, and fearful that I even started experiencing brain fog.
Thankfully, I had my family and friends to help me stop engaging with these negative and unhelpful thoughts. With their support, I was able to see some clarity. I also tried to maintain a healthy lifestyle by reading, eating well, and keeping good sleep hygiene.
Despite this, my thoughts still lingered on my decision to quit, and I often caught myself wondering just why I decided to resign. While ruminating one day, something amazing happened. Somehow, I accidentally unearthed a document from many years ago. It was a psychometric test report that I had completed with my career counsellor.
Out of curiosity, I read through it and learnt that being a counsellor could apparently be a potential career choice for me based on my personality traits. With this insight, and after some discussion with my family, I took a leap of faith and enrolled in a local university to major in Counselling.
While studying, I worked a few part-time jobs before later landing a full-time job in social services. Although this job wasn’t fully related to what I studied, I continued to forge ahead to hopefully establish a new stable career for myself. However, before I could do so, the Covid-19 pandemic hit and my world was shaken up again. The “what if” questions returned with a vengeance and I felt so helpless and fearful once again.
Fortunately, the skills that I learnt from my counselling training came in handy for helping myself during this period. I practised replacing each of my unhelpful thoughts with a grateful one instead. I reminded myself that I’ve also been blessed with many boons during this career transition period and tried to stay focused on my own goals instead of fixating on the negatives.
As I was working on myself, I chanced upon a book about resilience which made me reflect that adversities in life are unavoidable and life is really like a yo-yo. Usually, when we compare life to a yo-yo, we’d think that life is full of ups and downs. But I also think of a yo-yo as something that keeps moving due to the forces applied on it, much like life. When the yo-yo is held above the ground, the yo-yo has potential energy from the gravity that is already pulling it down. As the yo-yo falls, that potential energy changes to kinetic energy, which increases as the yo-yo falls down. As the toy climbs back up, the kinetic energy changes back to potential energy.
To me, our values, strengths, beliefs, and past experiences are like the potential energy that we have stored up in our arsenal ready to be converted and used, while our support systems, like family members and friends, are like kinetic energy which motivate and push us along in our journey of life. These two energies work in tandem to keep the yo-yo swinging and moving, just like how these factors help us keep going in life.
As we journey along our paths and learn to tap on our energies to recover from any setbacks, we build resilience. We gradually learn to lean on what we have, our capabilities, to prevent us from slipping into negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. This resilience graph (above) helps me to see the tangible stages of working towards growth. In the context of my own employment story, I moved past the “Survival” stage in the graph by asking myself what motivates me to stay in my new job. To reach “Adaptation”, I tried to stay curious and keep an open mind while working towards my new goals. From there, I strived towards “Recovery”, where any feelings of burnout, loss and grief, or resentment from my previous career were behind me, eventually reaching potential “Growth” in my new career.
Dealing with change and staying resilient are never easy. It was a trying time for me but I’m grateful I’ve made it through. Hence, I encourage all to tap into your potential and kinetic energies and seek help from your support systems when you’re in a rough patch. And if you ever feel like you need more advice or guidance, know that professional counselling is only a call or click away.
