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5 things you should never give up for a job
Success and fulfillment often depend upon your ability to set good boundaries. Once you can do this, everything else just falls into place. We need to establish boundaries between our personal and professional lives. When we do not, our work, our health, and our personal lives suffer. You need to make the critical distinction between what belongs to your employer and what belongs to you and you only. If you don’t set boundaries around them and learn to say no to your boss, you are giving away something with immeasurable value.
- Your Health
It is difficult to know when to set boundaries around your health at work because the decline is so gradual. Allowing stress to build up, losing sleep, and sitting all day without exercising all add up. Sacrificing your health and well-being demonstrates your lack of prioritizing yourself as important, failing to understand that you need to care and restore for yourself every day. You should put yourself first before you can be of true service to anyone else, your family or your employer. The key thing here is to not let things sneak up on you, and the way you do that is by keeping a consistent routine. Think about what you need to do to keep yourself healthy, make a plan, and stick to it no matter what. If you do not, you are allowing your work to overstep its bounds.
- Your Family
It’s easy to let your family suffer for your work. Many of us do this because we see our jobs as a means of maintaining our families but a lack of quality family time could be a major consequence of over-working that impacts family relationships for the worse. Be sure to choose a job that does not interfere with your family.
- Your Sanity
A job that takes even a small portion of your sanity is taking more than it is entitled to. Your sanity is something that is difficult for your boss to keep track of. You have to monitor it on your own and set good limits to keep yourself healthy. Often, it is your life outside of work that keeps you sane. When you have already put in hard work on a good day and your boss wants more, the most productive thing you can do is say no, and then go and enjoy your friends, family and hobbies. This way, you return to work feeling refreshed.
- Your Identity
While your work is an important part of your identity, it is dangerous to allow your work to become your whole identity. You know you have allowed this to go too far when you reflect on what is important to you and work is most of what comes to mind. If a job demands so much of your time and mental energy that you lack outside hobbies, it may begin to rub off on your identity outside of work. Having an identity outside of work is about more than just having fun. It also helps you relieve stress, grow as a person, and avoid burnout.
- Your Integrity
One who has strong and well-defined standards of integrity behaves with wholeness, honesty and does right by himself or herself and by others. Standards of integrity involve values and virtues such as honesty, kindness, trust, wisdom, loyalty etc. Sacrificing your integrity causes you to experience massive amounts of stress. Once you realize that your actions and beliefs are no longer in alignment, it is time to make it clear to your employer that you are not willing to do things his or her way. If that poses a problem for your boss, it might be time to part ways. Those who are guided by a strong sense of integrity fare much better in professional life, and will be successful where other people fail.
