Marie-Claire Asseko“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” ― Mark Twain
This quote bugs me because it implies that a “job” could possibly never be or never feel like “work” if we find the right one. 🤔
But the evolution in the meaning of the word “work” tells us that work is:
► something done which is made or manufactured;
► products of labor or toil;
► labor as a measurable commodity, etc.
↪ In a nutshell, work is not just a “job”. Work is first effort.
💫 Shoutout to stay-at-home parents who are doing work that is not recognized as a “job”. 💫
Can a Job Ever Not be “Work”?
My answer is ⛔, no.
Regardless of the job, we will always have to exert some type of *e f f o r t* in order to get something done or made. Whether physical 💪 (using our bodies as tools or means to accomplish something) or mental 💭 (cognitive, emotional, etc.).
And sometimes that effort creates cognitive dissonance regardless of the job; yes, even a job we love 🧐!
► Experiencing dissonance in our job is not limited to the tasks we don’t enjoy doing. It’s about the disconnect ✂ between our personal values and our professional identity.
► This conflicting feeling slowly (but surely) permeates our workdays and creeps into other aspects of our lives 😰.
What is Misalignment Burnout?
💡That prolonged state of disconnect creates what is called the “misalignment burnout”.
💡As a Forbes article put it, “[it] happens when we constantly engage with environments and in activities that go against our innermost values and beliefs”.
And let me tell you ⚠You get there before you realize you were on your way there! ⚠
How it Manifested For me
A bit more about me to understand how I got there
I did a DISC assessment a while ago. It showed that my Natural and Adapted behaviors are pretty similar for my most dominant traits and motivations. And it made sense to me! 🫡
Why? Well, I don’t typically separate who I am at work from who I am in my personal circles.
- What I learn at work in terms of leadership, processes or workflows⚒️, I apply in my personal life.
- The lessons learned 💡 from my personal connections that shape my empathy or my listening skills are applied at work.
In a nutshell, I strive to be and remain one and the same in whatever space I step in. Furthermore, having a single personality removes the mental load of (code-)switching.
While in the job that I was misaligned with, I had to increasingly dissociate who I was in the office from who I was in my personal life. Simply…to survive🫠.
Repressing The Pull to be Myself
On the one end, I could not be fully me😣. The company culture had many elements that:
- Created organizational gaps – i.e. differences between what the company said a process for a task was vs. the efforts it took in actuality to execute that task);
- Limited people’s ability to feel and be autonomous in their work;
- Gave favours to some individuals who had the luxury of not doing tasks that were essential for their roles, etc.
Overall the culture perpetuated a cycle of dysfunctions on top of the typical growing pains of a business.
As a high-performing employee, I tried to step into those gaps and compensate for them. Yet the organization consistently sucked the life force out of me🥵 by its unwillingness to implement sustainable changes. This pushed me to take a medical leave from work (due to that misalignment burnout) for the first time in my life.
Upon my return, I could not just fall into the same patterns. I had to protect myself by sheltering my full self from the toxicity🙈.
Paying The Cost of Going Against (My) Grain
On the other end, not being fully myself was also draining my energy.
A part of me wanted to deliver projects above and beyond. But I knew that my work environment was harmful for that part of me – part which, by the way, is probably the biggest and loudest part of my personality 😊. Again, I needed to protect it.
Yet protecting it created cognitive frictions in my thoughts, motivations and drive…daily. Slowly but surely I started to notice the signs of burnout knocking at the door of my mental health again:
- The visceral need to take a 2-hour nap by 3-4PM every single work day just to be able to function in the evening;
- The difficulty to put together and process complex thoughts;
- It was hard to focus or concentrate on my tasks — once, 1 email took me hours!;
- The increase in my stuttering and sudden outburst of emotions (going from deliriously laughing to crying in minutes);
- I was excessively critical of everything and everyone around me;
- I didn’t want to talk to anybody at work;
- My skipping of lunch time, etc.
Above all, the most alarming signal: I had knots in my stomach when it was time to get online in the morning.
Basically, it was an impossible conundrum! 🤯
So,❓ How to unstuck ourselves❓
Do not get me wrong: I love my job. It’s gratifying to see a client’s project go from mere discussions to a fully functional software. My job was not (100%) the issue.
It’s just that when you are working in an environment you are misaligned with, doing work that feels rewarding is a Band-Aid. One that you need to apply over and over again, and increasingly more over time. Even putting that Band-Aid requires increasingly more effort to do!
You need drastic measures to overcome misalignment burnout. And that’s where I was at.
Here’s what I told myself. What I tell my mentees and anyone who will listen.
Take the time to (for real, do it!):
1️⃣ Identify your core values, your non-negotiables — and STICK to them!
2️⃣ Find —or EXPLORE (it’s okay!)— what you love to do or have tangible skills for;
3️⃣ Align your values and your skills/passion with work that you can be financially compensated for.
There are plenty of tools to help you find those intersections between values, purpose and passions: IKIGAI, the Sweet Spot Exercise, the Zone of Genius, etc.
► Regardless of the tool, each requires significant introspection and self-evaluation (i.e. time!)
► But….the peace on the other side of this reflection is truly 🌟 u n m a t c h e d 🌟.
Finding that alignment won’t necessarily make things easier. You may have to sacrifice some level of comfort. But the increased congruence will make the efforts (“work”) feel much more worthwhile 🤩
Hindsight is 20/20
Honestly, looking back at that job, I can see how I led myself to that misalignment burnout, where I did not stick to my non-negotiables.
🫣I pushed aside orange flags during the interview process that ended up being bright red flags once I started. I didn’t trust my intuition.
🥺Once I realized my mistake, I was scared to make another bad decision and I decided to stick with the first one. I was overconfident in my capacity to functionally stomach it; not realizing that I am a human being, not just a functional machine.
🫨I lost track of my values and passions, completely swallowed by my survival instinct and the desire to keep my paychecks coming.
I am not saying it’s my fault, but I recognize how I played a part in my own mental demise.
I did resign eventually at the end of my reflection because the misalignment was just too deep. No financial compensation could compensate for the mental toll the organization took on me: I know how much money I left on the table but I am still grasping how much of myself I did too😕.
At least now, I am aligned with myself and I experience a peace beyond all understanding😌.
