There are so many shoulds in our life, in society and in the world around us that molds us into who we should be. When I graduated from college, I knew I should get a “grown up” job that would allow me to be financially stable. What defines being a grown up anyway? Graduating from college? Having a “real job”? Ella Luna writes in The Crossroads of Should and Must, “all too often, we feel that we are not living the fullness of our lives because we are not expressing the fullness of our gifts. We are choosing the shoulds and not finding our musts.
We accept a 9-5 job that makes us enough money to buy an apartment and attend daily happy hours with our co-workers- or at least I did. I accepted the first job that was offered to me because I thought why not; I should have a full time job after college. This job was appealing too. They targeted recent graduates to come and recruit in the firm and explained how I could be making six figures within two years. That seemed pretty awesome. Working with about twenty people all around the same age as me who were enthusiastic and loved going out.
But what they failed to mention was that only the top 10% of the employees make those six figures and the other employees make absolute pennies. I was killing myself to hit numbers every week and then when I finally hit my numbers, I would have to start from scratch the following Monday. Each week erased the last. I was being micromanaged – I hate being micro managed. But I stayed. I worked my tail off, I went home crying more days than not. I dreamed of how I would quit since my second day in the office. I was miserable.
Why did I put myself through this? Simple- I thought I had to, that I should stay at my first job for two years for it to look good on a resume. Well – screw that! Looking back, it was a great experience but I was there because I felt that I needed to stay at a job so that I could get an even better job next. Reality check: if you are miserable, stop what you are doing. Your options are endless in this world. Claire cook says it best, “if plan A doesn’t work, the alphabet has 25 more letters”. So go out and see what the other 25 letters have in store for you.
