Turning a Stressful Career Around and Finding Gratitude Along the Way
Stress, anxiety, and unhappiness — three things that you don’t sign up for when you become an adult. In fact, a recent study estimates that over 8 million people in the US suffer from serious psychological distress. As kids, we grow up believing that we will achieve fulfillment and joy from having that perfect job, significant other, and lifestyle. What we weren’t told was that chasing that dream comes at a cost to our mental well-being and health.
Personally, I’ve had my own battles with these issues. It came from my desire to be successful in my career and my drive to live up to really high expectations. The crazy thing is that for most of my life I ignored many of the warning flags and put my head down to keep working harder towards the things that were dragging me down. I always had a light at the end of the tunnel when things were getting bad whether it was business school or a new job so I didn’t need to take action to the root cause. I simply had to hang in there for just a bit longer.
It wasn’t until recently where I found myself between jobs that I finally took time to confront what had been weighing down on me all those years. During my reflection, I discovered that my stress and unhappiness came from a constant desire to seek the things I didn’t have. Once I diagnosed the cause, I worked on searching for a solution that would help me reset and provide clarity into what I needed to do next in my career and personal life.
This is how I discovered the power of being grateful.
As I approached the milestone of turning 30, everything seemed to be going right. After undergrad, I was traveling around the country working for a highly respected management consulting company and making good money. I was then accepted to a top business school and landed a job in the role and industry I wanted to be in along with great work/life balance.
On paper, I checked all the boxes. Here I was this minority kid that grew up in town with just over 6,000 people in the middle of South Carolina to a pair of non-college educated immigrants, living the American Dream.
Despite having all of this something still didn’t feel right. I was looking for more. I had this huge chip on my shoulder that I hadn’t done enough to prove myself. My salary and title were good but it could be better. Satisfaction and fulfillment felt out of reach in the traditional corporate world so I did the only rational thing I could think of at the time.
I took a 30% pay cut and joined a 10 person startup (see article: Why I Left to Join a Startup for my rationale) so I could get the autonomy and the company feel good mission that was missing in my safe and traditional jobs of the past.
For a while, I was finally feeling happy and fulfilled but no good things last forever because the startup pivoted and left me back on the job hunt. The stress, anxiety, and doubt came flooding back as I sought my next move and struggled to find meaning in my career.
However, during my this period, I realized something. I was letting my career define who I was as an individual and my worth was being evaluated against everyone else who always seemed to have more and do more with their lives.
As a devastating side effect of my relentless pursuit of success, I had lost touch with many of my important friends and was taking my family members for granted. I was unable to be in the present when spending time with my girlfriend because my mind was wrapped up in what I needed to do in the future. I stopped making the effort to create deep relationships with people if they weren’t involved in helping me get ahead. No wonder it gets lonely at the top. This wasn’t the person I wanted to become.
I needed a way to turn things around and rebuild the foundation of whom I wanted to be as a person and how I saw the world. It was the only way to make sure I didn’t return back to the negative state that I was stuck in before.
One day I decided to reflect back on my life and practice the art of being grateful. This was triggered by a podcast focused on happiness that I had listened to years ago and vaguely remembered (edit: found the podcast episode — TED Radio Hour — Simply Happy). The premise was that taking time to be grateful for the things that you do have will remind you of the important things to focus on in life. It blocks out the noise that comes from chasing what you don’t have which is due to the brainwashing of marketers and social media.
I guess gratitude was never top of mind for me without something like religion or super involved parents to remind me to be thankful. However, going through this exercise has had a profound impact on me. Turns out after 30 years of living on this planet, I had a lot to be thankful for. Over the last few weeks, I have gained a new sense of purpose on where to steer my personal and professional life. This has led to me take a new job offer, work on a new side project to help people, and make an impromptu cross-country trip to visit my family and friends.
I could end my advice here but I would be remiss not to share one of my most powerful moments of reflection and being grateful. Here is the story of my parents.
My parents grew up poor in rural China. Like living on a farm with no running water poor. I once saw some old paperwork they had from coming into the US that listed their occupation as “peasant”.
A recent photo of the area they grew up in (above)
Most families never make it off their small plots of land much less find their way into the US which is why I think it is incredible that I am even here today. My dad’s family made it over thanks to my uncle who smuggled himself to Hong Kong and met the right people who would offer him a low wage job in America. My mom’s family found their way over because my aunt left the family to study in the US on her own. My parents would shortly follow with no money or plans on what they would do once they arrived.
Had my parents and their families made a different decision, I could very well be working a farm or assembling iPhones at a plant right now like millions of other people in China. Talk about humbling.
Fast forward a few years, and my parents are working together at my uncle’s Chinese restaurant in South Carolina. My brother and I were born, and we lived in a small trailer as my parents worked hard to make ends meet. This situation would have been good enough for many people. Living in America. Steady job. Access to nice beaches.
But that was the easy and safe route. My parents continued to roll the dice and took a huge risk by moving to Marion, SC (population — 6,701) to open up their own restaurant with their meager savings and a lot of IOUs. What made this even more incredible was that neither of them received more than a high school education in China, and they both barely spoke English.
My parents worked at this restaurant for over 25 years (above)
They would then spend the next 25+ years working 12 hour days, 7 days a week to create a future for us. I would spend 18 of those years myself at the restaurant scrubbing dishes, clearing tables, and answering phones — trading in a much more enjoyable childhood that my friends were enjoying to do my part. I didn’t know it at the time but that decision to keep me at the restaurant and put me to work rather than send me off to childcare is what gave me my work ethic and desire to be successful.
We spend a lot of time and attention on lottery winners or entrepreneurs that defy the odds and get their big breaks that transform their lives. But the reality is that many of us have already gotten our own big breaks thanks to others in my life. It’s nothing short of a miracle that luck, risk, and sacrifice by my parents have allowed me to be where I am today.
When you start seeing life through this lens, you stop worrying about what you don’t have. You start appreciating and making the most of what you do have. Because you know what the world doesn’t owe you anything. It’s already given you so much.
That mindset is where you’ll start to find happiness and clarity.
PS — I can never say this enough but thank you mom and dad. I love you and owe you two so much.
My point in writing this is to say you can’t live life being unhappy all the time. Take a moment to step away from it all and think about your motivations and what is really important to you. As in my case, you may find that you have the wrong motivations driving your behaviors. If so don’t be afraid to take action and realign yourself by embracing a bit of change and risk.
More importantly, take time to appreciate and be grateful for what you do have. That’s what will keep you grounded and allow for success and happiness to enter your life. This exercise has certainly guided me in how I approach my new job and side projects and reminded me to rekindle my relationships.
I hope this inspires some new thoughts, and I wish you the best of luck in your journey.
