My Tipping Point
There is one consistent piece of feedback I've gotten about my Manifesto for Love, at Work: "Caroline, we want to hear more about your story." Every time I hear it, I smile, as if this reassurance is a confirmation I am back on track.
2023 has been full of delights: more travel than expected, quality time with family in both countries 🇺🇸🇨🇦, a renewed creative confidence, the deepening of meaningful connections in my life, business performance I never even imagined possible... And love. It's been there all along: I wrote this story in March. With some foundational pieces back in place, and some future visions clearly outlined, it's finally time to get real about Love, at Work™.
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Love, at Work: Chapter 1 (Starting with Love, excerpt)
Somewhere between the great resignation and the quiet quitting, like more than half of Americans, I'd become dissatisfied with my work. In fact, I’d picked up a case. A case of the Sunday scaries. Maybe you know it: that feeling of dread that hits you the night before going back to work. Sometimes, my Sunday scaries were every day scaries.
It had come to a tipping point, at 4AM on a workday. I’m staring at the ceiling in a budget New York City hotel room. I can’t sleep. It’s like I am on a treadmill in my head. But definitely not the kind I've trained for Ironman on. As desperate as I am for rest, and as still as I am laying there, I can't stop the feeling that it's all moving a little bit too fast. One false move, and I could face plant at any moment.
Truth is, at work, I am running around all day. Usually late, from one 30-minute meeting to the other. Get this: I'm in meetings where nothing gets done but I can't catch my breath! Seems to me like all I do is run, all day, but I'm going nowhere. And in this hotel room, tired, before the sun even comes up, I ironically decide: "I might as well get up".
I fumble around towards the in-room coffee situation I so desperately need to get going. I switch the light on. And right where the "partial" view usually is, above the garbage alley down below, I see my reflection in the window. I'm looking at myself, not surprised I'm actually the one that looks like garbage yet surprised I've let it get this far. I only have to ask myself one question:
Girl, where is the love?
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What I realize in that moment is that I'm looking ahead at a life of work that doesn't serve anyone, including me. Doomed for an omnipresent sense of hopelessness. Being asked to stand in a lineage of leaders I don’t even want to be like. Incapable of seeing a future scenario where I can become the best version of myself.
That was it. I packed up my bags, took my coffee to go, left the Big Apple and set out to revolutionize my workplace.
I made the choice to start with love.