Starting From Scratch: Do it, even if you Fail.
In about 6 days time I will be out the door of my apartment and onto a flight to Darwin, where I begin a new search of knowledge and experience. After living and working in Sydney for 2 and half years, I have decided to leave it all behind for a complete sea change in both location and occupation. You would think that such a change is risky, so left of field that it threatens to undermine all the work I had put into my job and unravel all the progress towards success in the Hotel Industry. That a $98,000 hotel school debt, 3 years of study and thousands of hours in the industry would suggest I’ve come too far to stop now. That I fail if I were to leave.
I am happy to report that I find it is a source of success to be able to walk away from not only these obligations, but the very mindset of what failure is. It of course, didn’t come overnight, it was a decision that was difficult and cross examined under the very conditions I mentioned earlier; University, Work and Time.
These conditions of success as I like to call them, are natural goals to ensure we keep on track in whatever we do. In my opinion, I believe it’s these conditions that are most adhered to by the majority of us. When we think about our careers, we are particularly effective at disciplining ourselves to keep on that course, particularly when you contrast this to lets say a New Years Resolution. We seem to stay back late more often than not, come in on our days off and make those tough decisions to put work before our personal lives, all to ensure we continue to progress. But why is that? Well it is as I said before. Time invested, progress made and our obligations to succeed on the very things we have worked so hard to achieve.
Most of us have studied relentlessly, worked too hard and made too many sacrifices to walk away from the career we have chosen. It is a mindset that in some aspects is a fantastic way to find resolve, however can at times, trap us in a monotony that forces us to keep on path without any real sense of purpose.
We turn a blind eye to office politics, toxic cultures and anti-social behaviours, simply because the stakes are too high. The mere thought of leaving renders our work meaningless and our attempts at success a resounding failure. We define ourselves through our work and the very notion of leaving it, or even calling it out, comes as a direct threat to our very identity.
It is at this moment that I realise that what makes you successful and its conditions are not necessarily the time you invested nor that hard work you put in, rather its the manner in which you achieved it. It is the mentors you had along the way and the impact you had on the teams you worked with, not that title you earned nor the salary you set out for.
We ought to be careful to let our work define who we are after all. It is a risk far greater than the one I find myself undertaking as I write this article. It is critical in this regard to think about what we bring to to the table when the house has come crashing down. That if overnight, your job is gone, career ended, what do you have to say for yourself at the end of the day?
It should be ones first ambition to seek out new journeys in any aspect of life. Lest we forget that at the end of the day, your job title and your gravitas are as valuable as you make them, there is no worth to it outside of that.
I leave Sydney not because I failed, nor does leaving make me a failure. Rather, I find it to be an ultimate success when to conquer the minds fears of change and sacrifice.
