A breakdown at work led Catherine Avendano to a breakthrough in her personal journey
I paused at the door to my office high rise and took a deep breath to combat the palpable dread in my gut. One long deliberate exhale later, I reached for the handle and grimaced as I walked inside.
Last month I realized that I had hit a critical tipping point—I had woken up too many days in a row dreading going to a work. My old CEO once told our team to use that as a barometer for deciding to stay or leave a job. It had been a tough year: I had worked under four different bosses; I could count 30 people I had seen let go or quit with more on the way; our teams were cobbling their way through the ”are you good enough to make it” tests under the newest executive team; every process and system we’d created seemed to get undone and redone again so that when you looked back at your last 6 months you felt like you accomplished nothing.
And when you work for a startup, it is a lifestyle, not a job, so the emotional stuff really starts to seep into your skin. We were in a thick muck and I could feel it’s full weight. I was unhappy and considered whether or not it was time to stay or go. I got through 1.5 meetings that morning before our VP of Sales said, “You really are overwhelmed, aren’t you?”
Crushed that I couldn’t better mask my feelings at work, I returned to my desk and tried desperately to busy myself and not burst into tears of stress, frustration, and spiritual fatigue. “Catherine, go home. You’re not going to solve anything by working harder. Do not cry at work. Get up and walk away,” my good friend told me when I let on how I was actually feeling.
This was one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten.
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