Recovering Workaholic

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Recovering Workaholic

When It All Started

I look back and realized it was only 8 months ago everything changed. I was living in Chicago, happy, leaving a great job working from home, working in my career and making good money. Developed great clientele base for 4 years and absolutely loved the City of Chicago- well except the Winters. My sister was insightful and explained that Winters are half the year and therefore half my life if I stayed in Chicago long-term. Point taken.

I accepted a job in Atlanta in October and was on my way to warmer weather and a new job with more opportunities to make money. Little did I know that my efforts for what I did in Chicago was not coming with me to Atlanta. The job was different; my territory was not given to me as promised, workers started late, other sales people did the minimum. The energy changed. The motivation was not there and the work they were asking me to do was no longer my passion. I had to look at myself and realize what I wanted in life. The commission in Atlanta vs Chicago was going to be a lot harder to obtain due to the factors of the office and environment. The people had a different mentality and it was obvious I did not fit in.

How I realized I was a Workaholic

Things lead to another and I was let go- well, fired to be exact. Without a car, phone or computer. My work provided me with all those things and therefore, had a taxi take me home. Luckily my old laptop from graduate school enabled me to email my sister to call my grandmother to pick me up from home to buy a phone. It was a long time to talk about my firing event. The word itself and disappointment I had in myself had me sitting at home wondering what I was going to do. I was in a high paying apartment with 6 more months on my lease. What to do? And more importantly what happened?

I decided to move back to my hometown in Miami and spend time with family and enjoy the Sunshine again. Did I want to go back to the grind and work 70-80 hours again? No. Did I want to move back to Chicago? No. What to do? And why did I not want to work those hours and be “successful” again? Was it because I am lazy now? No. Scared to start over? No.

Workaholic Survivor: Key To Change is In Your Brain

I changed the way I think. I no longer needed to prove I was successful due to how much money I made nor did I need to work harder. I saw myself lucky and confident. Now I believe it is not luck. Its a decision. How we accomplish things like walking for the first time or learning how to feed ourselves with a fork amazes me in how much pressure we put on ourselves to succeed in everything we do. If we can accomplish walking at 9 months old we can do anything. All we need to do is see ourselves where we want to be.

I chose to start earning my own money to accomplish more in life other than hard work and a paycheck. I chose “in” to be with a group of people who see life not how much work was needed to do to get where I wanted to be, rather create leverage for what I possibilities I can create to provide me with a lifestyle I enjoy. Empower Network is one of those companies that enables you to leverage your skills to develop a life you can call your own and live life following your heart rather than your brain. Live life on purpose.

Make the decision to be in a world of abundance vs world of luck. Its not luck, its your choice. Click for a change in the right direction.