It doesn't feel so bad now, does it?

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Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

I’m back in Jamaica after celebrating my brother’s graduation in Orlando last weekend, and I’m thinking about how much time has passed since I moved back home last year. Can you believe it’s already been 6 months!

Being back in the US, especially back in Miami and being able to reconnect with friends from my old job, it definitely gave me a reason to reflect on that time in my life when I was about to quit my first job out of college. 

It always feels impossible in the moment

Like many big decisions in life, leaving my first job out of college was something that took a multiplicity of reasons, a lot of going back and forth on, and a lot of courage. It was a decision that took months to make, maybe even years if you consider how I felt during the internship that I got the job offer from, but it was certainly not easy.

In fact, it almost felt impossible.

When I first thought about leaving my job, people made it feel like there was no good reason to — everything was comfortable and I had a great set up in life and I was poised for success. (Well, someone else’s definition of success at least)

It felt like people would talk badly about me (which I’m sure they did, but that’s never stopped me from living my own life), and it felt like I was doing something that was life-altering (which in a sense it was, but in a good way, not the bad way that so many people tried to push upon me).

In the moment, it was one of those challenges that seemed almost insurmountable. How was I going to have the conversation with my boss to tell him I’m outtie? How was I going to take on the criticism I’d face in every conversation about my career after?

Yet I did it.

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It doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?

Almost a year later since leaving my first job, and 6 months since moving back to Jamaica, all those feelings have gone away.

I still get questions about my career that are “leading” - meaning I can obviously tell that they’re coming from a place of judgement about my decision to quit a big job at JPMorganChase, but I’ve learnt to deal with those conversations with a response that looks to the future more than to the past.

I look back on the decision that I made, and I recognize that my life has changed drastically and I don’t feel trapped in a toxic work environment anymore, but more so, I now recognize that everyone else has had no choice but to move on too.

What might have seemed like THE forefront topic to talk to me about — “why did you quit?” “what are you going to do with your life now?” — is no longer a topic that people feel compelled to bring up to me, and more importantly, it’s no longer a topic or conversation that I feel compelled to avoid.

Sometimes it was necessary to avoid those conversations because of the headspace that I was in. When you’re at a place in your life when you’re figuring everything out, the last thing you need someone to ask you is whether you’ve figured it out yet.

Life goes on, and that means everyone’s life will

When you face a big decision in your life, a piece of advice you might hear is, “In a couple years all of this won’t even matter anymore”.

In some ways that’s true (however, a lot of the times it will still matter, albeit less so), but the main takeaway from my reflection isn’t necessarily that it doesn’t matter to me anymore, but rather that it doesn’t matter to anyone else anymore .

I think that’s important to clarify, because a big part of the reason why big decisions seem so big and so impossible is because we worry an outsized amount about what other people will think or say about us, and for what the social implications are within your social circles such as your family and friends.

The truth is though, that as much as people will talk, in the grand scheme of things - they don’t really care.

They have their own lives to worry about as you deal with the repercussions of your life decisions, so even though it may seem like people will always talk about you - the reality is that people care a lot less than you think, and here’s the kicker:

You’re the only person that has to live with the decisions that you make in your life.

Of course your decisions may affect other people — which is when you should be cognisant of those outside opinions — but in your heart, when you make a decision, you become responsible for the consequences, and as much as people may empathise with you from an external point of view, you have to be ready to internally and personally cope with the repercussions of any big life decisions that you make, ignoring all outside influences on that decision.

Conclusion

So after reflecting on the time away from my first job, and catching up with friends and past co-workers, my takeaway is that the time from a big decision will pass, and as it passes, the number of people that you have to contend with about your decision will dwindle down to just one — you.

At the end of the day, you’re the only one that you can hold accountable for your own decisions in your life, no matter how you want to push blame onto others or find justification from external sources.

And I’ll add here as a reminder: what you’re not changing in your life, you’re choosing.

So don’t worry about what anyone has to say about what you do with your life. Worry about the stakeholders in your decision, be it your close friends or family, but not the people that you see in passing or that you’re forced to interact with based on circumstance.

Do it for you, because you have to live with the consequences. Nobody else.

Until next Sunday,

Justin