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April-June, 2016

I Quit

by Rev. Carly D. Glasmyre, O.M.C.

I walked into my manager’s office, tension running through my body. I sat down, looked into her eyes, told her I was giving my two weeks, and promptly burst into tears.

I was not happy at my current job, and I’d gotten a new one that paid more and was closer to my home. It was a victory, really. It just didn’t feel that way.

Ever since I was young, I believed that my job should make me happy. I grew up with people telling me to “follow my passion.” I read books that said doing what you love to do is the meaning of life. And, conversely, I watched adults in my life suffer and curse their jobs as the source of their unhappiness.

I was totally duped. I bought into the equation that job = happiness, and gave all my power away.

When I found that my current job didn’t fulfill me, I decided to do something more “meaningful,” and began life coaching. I got trained, set up a business, took on clients. But that didn’t make me happy either. I was essentially working two jobs, and felt completely burnt out.

So I began my search for a new job, interviewed, and got a position. I was flooded with excitement; surely this was the job that would make me happy. Yet a day later I was in my manager’s office crying! What the heck?!

What is so funny is that these events were happening at the same time that I was studying with Pathways of Light. I was working with and learning from Rev. Maria Felipe, who has always spoken openly about her grievance with men and how she used to believe relationships were supposed to make her happy.

I understood that I couldn’t make other people responsible for my happiness, and I felt like I could apply this in my life to my relationships with people in my life. But I couldn’t seem to apply it to my job. I couldn’t see that I was making my job responsible for my happiness.

I wrote to Maria asking her what I should do to stop feeling sad, and she reminded me that there’s nothing wrong with being sad. She told me that my job was just to be aware that I was choosing to be sad and hand it over to Holy Spirit. Maria’s gentle reassurance that I wasn’t wrong for being sad helped me connect to my willingness to see differently.

So after that tearful day, I went home and wrote to Holy Spirit, “Help! I feel terrible about quitting my old job and now I’m fearful to start my new one! How can I see this differently?”

Spirit said, What if your job wasn’t the cause of your happiness?

It all clicked into place: I’d been foisting the responsibility for my happiness onto my job. Further, this job transition was PROOF that my job couldn’t make me happy. I’d gotten a new one with a better pay and location, and I still felt like crap! I’d been playing all the old ego tricks with my jobs — telling people that I was unhappy, getting them to agree with me that I was right and the job was wrong, believing that I could change something outside of me to feel better within.

Though something is changing on the outside for me at this time, in truth, I never need to change something outside of myself to be happy. My happiness really comes from God. He is the true source of fulfillment. He is the meaning of life.

Lesson 50 in the Workbook says that I believe that I’m sustained by everything but God (W-pI.50.1:2), and I never realized until this job transition that I believed my job was my sustenance. I never realized that I was using my job as a replacement for God.

So, I’ve decided I’m quitting more than just my job this week—I also quit using my job to replace God. I quit believing that my job will make me happy. I quit giving away my power. I quit putting expectations on whatever task I’m doing! Today, I’m putting God first, and connecting to His Love, which is my true sustenance.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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