At some point during your career, if you care enough about your work, you would come across a project/client that really tests everything that you stand for (or wish you stand for) as a human being. It’s when your character and your values are being tested. It could be the way you are treated, how the project is being run, the amount of work and/or the way others are being treated. Whatever it is, your daily experience run so much against some of the most important values that you hold dear to your heart.
When you go through it, the struggle inside weights heavily on your soul. You could see how your emotion starts to run out of control and you may have regrettable reactions. And by the way, it is awfully too easy for you to fall into the “drama triangle” (developed by Steve Karpman ).
I have seen myself or others to become “persecutor” or “victim” easily. We blame others or ourselves. We point finger, become a control freak, or be hyper critical. It’s always someone else’s fault. The reality that we perceive starts to diverge heavily from what it actually is.
Well one piece of good news is that if you survive it and learn from it, you would be much stronger after. You may not learn the technical skill through the project but you would become a better human being, a better version of yourself and that would last forever 😃.
Alternatively, you may lose part of yourself, become another version of yourselves that you may not like. It is most painful when you are still aware enough to see that you are losing part of yourself.
Don’t!
Let’s face it. No projects/clients are so important that justifies losing part of yourself working on it. But I guess you know that already. The question is how you could go through the experience and survive! Be strong, exercise often or a lot more than usual, talk with your spouse, your friends, spend time with your family. It would help you to balance, to remind yourself that work is just a part of life. You are also a human being, a son/daughter, a husband/wife, a father/mother, a friend, a community leader etc… What if you would stop work tomorrow, or stop working on the project/client, how would you react? would that impact your identity, your life? For me, I always try to relate this back to my definite chief aim in life and understand how the experience would help me in my journey. Also every time I want to quit, to give up, the little voice inside reminds me that no one forced me to do certain thing, I made my own decision and now I have to live with it, have to go through with it.
I realise that this post may not resonate with many of you but a few. If it does, I hope it helps you a bit; or at the very least, knowing that there are people who went through what you are experiencing now and some of us survive to say that it would be alright 🙂