The Deafening Silence After Leaving a Job
When you consider a big life change, do you think about the day after?
Take leaving a job for example.
There’s a distinct quiet that comes the day after you leave a company.
After the computer is turned in and the apps are removed from your phone. When the endless stream of emails, pings, Slack messages, texts, and reminders stops.
Life goes from: email.Slack.email.meeting.phone call.text.calendar reminder.shoot I’m late.email again. Slack.
To: quiet. silence. nothingness.
It can be hard to experience peace in the quiet because it all feels so unnatural.
You might find yourself continuing to check your phone, looking for the messages that aren’t going to be there.
It can feel oppressive.
Like the ringing in your ears after a loud concert when there is no longer anything to hear but your body is conditioned to expect it.
What’s really going on is a fundamental internal shift.
In my case, here’s what happened.
Back in my corporate days, I felt valued because other people needed me. I had questions to answer, things to get unstuck, and people to help. I had meetings to attend and reports to submit.
My knowledge and connections were useful. I felt like I was making a difference with every response or update (obviously some more than others).
But the day after I left, when the quiet came, that pattern was interrupted.
I wasn’t feeling the satisfaction of helping a teammate.
I wasn’t getting a hit of dopamine from checking off the completed box at the end of the week.
No product launches to celebrate or good feedback to savor.
It triggered a mini-crisis.
If no one needed me, did no one need me?
I sat with the guilt of being ‘unproductive’ and the questions about my self-worth.
It was generally unpleasant and it took a long time to unwind those old patterns and re-learn new ones.
With the benefit of hindsight, I can see these quiet moments were the first day of my next chapter. And the first steps toward figuring out what the heck I wanted to be when I grew up.
Want to learn more about the journey to find your own purpose? Start here.