With the rise of social media and increasing ‘influencer’ advice about how to best live your life, many aid workers and development professionals feel overwhelmed by the achievement of success that is expected of them. The general feeling is of a continuous need to move up the career ladder and, if that doesn’t happen, then it feels like failure. So, how realistic is a career that continually progresses for 40 or 50 years without any stepping back at all?
Sanne Van der Bruggen (42) had a ‘super fun job’.
“I worked for a large publishing house and supervised Dutch authors in their writing. I really enjoyed it and found a lot of challenges in my work, but it was never finished. I mostly read the manuscripts in the evenings and weekends. It was difficult to keep a balance,” she confessed.
Van der Bruggen suffered burnout in 2008 and, with no action taken to resolve the problem, she ended up in hospital in 2016 with pneumonia. It was then she decided things had to change and she now works for two and a half days at a Bruna bookstore and the rest of the time she draws illustrations for books, magazines, and private collections.
“As a child, I drew a lot and I always thought: when I’m retired, I’ll have time for that again. When I had to rest during my burnout and picked up painting, I noticed again how happy it made me. I thought: why wait until I retire to do what I love to do?”
For Van der Bruggen, the career switch meant taking a significant step backwards in income but at the same time she feels “calmer, healthier and stronger.”
“We’re from Brazil, but my work in global health took our family to countless locations in Latin America, Africa, and North America. I’m proud of my work in the Global South, but the job instability, burnout, and great emotional costs for me and my family are brutal,” states Monica Malta, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto.
Richard Jongsma is an HR advisor who says that ‘Nothing fails as much as success’.
“Now it is often the case in organizations that when you function well and are well positioned within a company, you are in principle promoted. But there is a limit to your abilities. For example, if you are strong in content, it does not mean that you are also a good manager,” says the HR expert.
Not only positive impacts
According to Rene Schalk, Professor of Social Work at Tilburg University, stepping back in one’s career does not always bring positive impacts to mental health.
“Demotion often arises for health reasons or because functions are canceled due to a reorganization. What you, unfortunately, see on average is that after a demotion, people are less satisfied with the content of their work and that their health does not improve.
It is often a painful event; there is usually a drop in salary and the job is less respected. Still, if a demotion is handled differently, if it happens in good harmony between employer and employee, it can be a good form of personnel policy. It can be nice to adjust your work in a way that suits your life at that moment. It only stands or falls with good communication. It must be clearly agreed that the position can also be adapted again in the long term. And just because a job is lighter, doesn’t mean it can’t be challenging.”
According to psychologists, some of the signs of burnout signs are a sense of failure and self-doubt, feeling helpless, trapped, and defeated, the loss of motivation, an increasingly cynical and negative outlook, or decreased satisfaction and sense of accomplishment.
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