How did you detox from the Corporate world?

[DoristheDuchess]

I'm in the processing of leaving the corporate world behind. It feels like such a relief to be honest but it's also made me realise how groomed I've been over the years to seek and want approval from it.

If you felt throughly burnt out and jaded from it, how did you recover? how did you reprogram your brain into a more normal grounded life?

I recognise so many toxic thought processes and attitudes that I just want to let go off.

Time, really. I left, I went self employed, I learnt to assess how I was doing in different ways and to get meaning/structure without the external rubrics.

I suspect time is going to be key here. A sense of perspective on it all.

Going self employed would certainly focus the mind on what is actually important not just office politics.

I'm in the waiting lounge to depart the company, which is probably making it worse! not in, not out yet.

I went into my own business and for me what was important was not to concentrate on how much time anything took. Timesheets and pressure to have particular records on them made no difference to the quality or quantity of my work and hindered my ability to flex what I was working on to the benefit of the corporate business. In my own business I can self prioritise and things are more focussed and smoother for it.

I'm not self employed but I have moved somewhere entirely different.

I think time and perspective.

When you're in that world it's just all consuming. I think the key for me has been challenging my previous "beliefs" I.e. the basic underpinnings of how you had to work & working out what's actually needed to get a good job done.

I also went in with the mindset of - this is enough £, I don't want promotion and I don't want to kill myself for a poxy bonus which I'd probably never get anyway.

I also follow a couple of women on SM who have made similar moves & do leadership & coaching & productivity training.

Watching with interest. I'm also in the headspace of 'I don't want promotion, I'm steering clear of politics as best I can, I'm not working out of hours unless I really have to, but will do a really good job in the meantime'. The money is good, I'm experienced and very knowledgeable about a very complex company and industry - so am going to hang on in there for a few more years until financial commitments reduce, then I'm out.

Voluntary work.

Retrains the mind and focuses on what's important.

I do something that's a few hours a handful of times a year so I can still do other stuff.