#NoRegrets: I quit my job during the pandemic.

[Music] hi everybody welcome back to my channel i wanted to talk to you all about something that i did this year i feel like a lot of people at least in my circle have been reevaluating what is important to them because the pandemic has kind of forced us all to be in solitude at least for me i have a lot more time for thinking and that thinking is me figuring out what i actually want to do in my life what's important to me and what my values are so rewind back in july july of this year i quit my job saying it out loud still feels weird because it is december now i still don't have employment but i have no regrets and i want to share this video because a lot of people have asked me how the hell did i have the courage to quit my job in the middle of a pandemic especially when my partner was laid off for a job that we moved back to the bay area for which depleted our savings i'm going to be honest i'm very fortunate and i have a lot of gratitude for the financial opportunity that i did have prior to the pandemic i did rebuild my savings with the money that we did have coming in at the time so we moved here in october and up until march we rebuilt at least half of our savings not quite enough for me to take the plunge and quit my job on my own but enough to feel like i had something to fall back on some people call this an emergency fund i don't like to plan for emergencies i like to plan for freedom because i want the freedom to decide whatever the i want to do which in this case was to quit my job this is not the case for everyone i want to be clear on that so while i'm going to be sharing my personal story and that might resonate with you there's a lot of people out there that have different more nuanced situations the first time i felt like i was considering quitting my job was actually before the pandemic i wanted to make sure that i was putting in 110 of my efforts into making this the most wonderful opportunity for myself but also for everyone else involved but because i was unhappy i knew that there might come a day that i want to quit and because there might come a day i want to have all my ducks in a row however after some time more and more things came to surface and i realized that while i love my job so much this just isn't the environment for me i didn't feel like i was living my values or my integrity my spirit wasn't happy i realized that i was in situations where i felt like i had to hide myself me having my own voice just wasn't on the table i had made a lot of decisions prior in living my own truth and that is my golden rule so my golden rule is to live your truth speak the truth and be the truth and i didn't feel like i could do that i made the decision to quit because i realized that i wasn't 100 in control of my experience i just wanted a different opportunity my soul was crying for it [Music] so questions i ask myself that might be helpful for you is do you feel joy i know it sounds super weird but it is that simple my partner had shared with me happiness is fleeting but joy is everlasting and i want to dissect that a little bit i have had multiple happy moments of this company i have had the most amazing experiences and this opportunity did bring me to a lot of people that i consider family there were moments of happiness and things that did make me happy but i was using those things to convince myself to stay kind of like that relationship you know that you need to end but then it gets like good for a few days and you're like oh maybe it could work and then the thing that happens that make you think that no this isn't working and i you know i do need to end this so that was how i was feeling the foundation of my experience was not joy so i was having more days where i was just super stressed out burnt out when it came down to it i knew that this wasn't a place where i could have everlasting joy so talking about joy i've been in situations where the foundation is joy but there might be some challenges or some lows and issues that i have but those things don't even matter because the foundation is joy life is super nuanced work is nuanced relationships are nuanced you're gonna have conflict and just as long as that conflict feels worth it to you and you feel like you can at least be yourself and not compromise who you are then maybe it can work and you can stay at this job whether you're looking for a career change or leaving a company you know it's totally your call which leads me into your comfort level in financial security [Music] i had to ask myself this question because my whole financial situation had changed coming to the bay area we knew we were going to be tripling our expenses we both had jobs but with the pandemic him being laid off and me taking a pay cut and then planning and quitting i wanted to make sure that i had a runway that wasn't just three months worth of savings i knew that i wouldn't feel comfortable unless i had six months of runway and the perk would also be that my partner got a job but i wasn't banking on that i didn't want to bank on waiting around until he was able to find employment so some personal financial background our expenses together and this has included fixed and variable spending was about four thousand dollars we already had eight thousand but i wanted to have at least six months which was around twenty five thousand dollars in the bank again i feel very fortunate because i don't know how we were able to save that money but it happened we really cut down a lot i removed all the mindless spending i was doing and focused more on intuitive spending making sure that i really was only spending on what i needed there were things that contributed to my well-being and mental health those also made the cut even if it was wine or a bar of like artisanal chocolate a bath bomb those are the three things that i like to indulge in every month and i have like my self-care routine and that is worth every penny so i didn't cut out those things even though technically i didn't need it but i feel like when it comes to your health happiness it is a need it is a necessity and i take like marie kondo's uh methodology i'm re-conduing my spending and i really ask myself what sparked joy i just wanted fresh produce artisanal chocolate wine either bath salts or some bath bomb to give me a spa day and i was able to do that while also aggressively saving so now that i had my number in mind of what i wanted i said that once i hit that amount 25 000 i was going to quit my job and i was thinking that this would come in august or september but it actually happened in july while i knew that i had it in me to stick it out for a couple of months i really sat down with myself and asked okay yeah it'd be nice to have more money and you could still like definitely have your sanity but why go through that why continue on a path where you're not feeling joy i really tried hard to listen to my intuition there because that's where i feel my truth lives and my intuition was telling me nah let's not wait you should just go trust me on this one and my partner still didn't have a job so i definitely was taking a little bit of a risk but that was my risk to take because i felt comfortable with the goal of savings that i had [Music] another thing that i asked myself was what do i want to do with my time off and this helps me actually set up the amount of time that i was talking about the six months worth of savings so i wanted to rest because i had been working since i was 15 years old non-stop i have never taken a break i was either working and in school or when i wasn't in school i was working full-time when i graduated i went right to a job i worked usually two or three jobs at a time during my whole life and i was feeling burnt out i did not know how to rest i was always in hustle mode and i started to reevaluate pestle culture and it was just something that i don't vibe with i'm not here for that i'm not here for the hustle culture i think that you can find wealth and abundance and success without having to put your mind body spirit and heart through all that it is so number one was rest number two was travel i knew that during a pandemic travel was going to be different but the travel that i wanted to do was strictly just be in nature and to go camping and i got to really recharge and refuel myself i loved hiking and just road tripping listening to podcasts being in nature looking at the stars the ocean beautiful greenery mountains trees rivers i finally felt one with earth and that was something that i was longing to feel since i had been in new york city so with travel i knew that i would want to take at least a month off to do that which i did so i did a whole month of road tripping in the united states on the west coast and i also rested for another month but i really wanted three solid months of just doing nothing but nature related things and rest related things i love blobbing i needed to flop so hard i'm still in the vlogging phase fyi i am in the resting phase but slowly coming out of it i'm feeling kind of ready to get my momentum going when it comes to my own stuff which is to start my own business i've always wanted to start my own business i just didn't really know what that would look like i'm still not sure what that will look like but i wanted three solid months of hardcore focus on the reflection and foundational part which i gave myself a month to do and i'm about to be in that month the second month is the take action part and the third month is you launch this bish part okay so in total that is six months of solid me time another thing that i did was mentally prepare myself for the change and comfort that i knew was coming i knew that not having a stream of income that was something that i could count on every two weeks would bring me a lot of financial anxiety and i thought that like the biggest issue that i'd have would be oh i don't feel safe because i don't have income coming in that actually wasn't it i didn't feel like i was worthy because i wasn't making money and that's a new thing that came to mind i actually have never had that kind of thought before because i've always been making money i've always had a job and if i did have that job i always had another job lined up this was the first time since i was 15 years old that i wasn't making any income and i just felt like a piece of love that was really hard to overcome and still overcoming that and undoing that mindset but it is something that i'm working on and that's the beauty of this journey i feel like i'm working on things that i wouldn't have been able to work on if i was always distracted by my work 2020 just really pushed me to re-evaluate what matters to me i was done with that didn't make my soul feel at ease quitting my job was worth it to me because i do finally feel in alignment with my values that's really it i feel very privileged to be able to do that because not everyone else can so i'm not sure if you're watching this and you're trying to decide should i stay should i go cue the clash just kidding i do love that song though the clash is also one of my favorite bands just a heads up i hope that some of the questions that i brought up could really help you get closer to deciding what's best for you but i encourage you to always live your truth whatever that is don't compromise who you are in life there's compromises that we have to make that is just life and there's sacrifices that we have to make and again that is just life but the one thing that i will never compromise is my truth and it is also who i am and if you don't feel like you are a space where you can grow and shine and who you are then i encourage you to walk away i drop thanks for watching my video stay shiny and i hope that everyone is staying safe out there california just went on a pretty much a month-long lockdown and i have a plan to do absolutely nothing but watch elf every single day of this month and drink a lot of eggnog and hot buttered rum because why not oh and also throw in a nice yummy bubble bath because i just gotta calm my nervous system you know all right i will end it here because i am being delirious and silly [Music] bye you

Channel: Stella Gold

Views: 13,240

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Id: EtDDdNUFO4k

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2020