Be proud of the career break you took to recalibrate

When LinkedIn introduced its Career Break feature early this year, I rejoiced. This was a significant symbolic move to acknowledge and normalize the often-vilified phenomenon of career breaks as part of healthy career progression and personal development. When I made the difficult decision to take mine back in 2019, the prevailing attitude was still one of disdain, stigma, and suspicion. The gap in my resume seemed to lower my value, becoming a red employment flag.

To my surprise,?Taking a professional pause isn’t so uncommon after all, yet still, a source of shame and consequently not as talked about as it should be. A career break is often perceived as a disgraceful antithesis to today’s rampant hustle culture. Still, I believe it to be a much-needed remedy for the hustle-wearied mind, body, and soul, for you to emerge from the fog of life, recalibrate your priorities, and renew your verve for life.

The first signs that I needed a break came from within my body – I realized my mental exhaustion was catching up to me physically. My cup was quickly emptying without any sustainable source of replenishing. In 2019, I was diagnosed with persistent hives. My face and body would be covered in swollen, itchy red lumps that nobody seemed able to explain. No matter what I consumed, I would face these terrible aftereffects, not even knowing which ingredient had triggered my misery. I had difficulty sleeping, exercising, and even looking at myself in the mirror. I avoided meeting friends, choosing instead to hole up at home – I was extra conscious of how I looked and didn’t want to explain my condition over and over. In the meantime, I saw a series of skin specialists, taking all manner of tests to isolate and diagnose the cause, to no avail.?

Until then, I had always found much self-validation and recognition in the work achievements I’d slogged for, albeit clearly at the expense of my health. Being helpless, in discomfort, and in poor health at home thus took a toll on my mental health, depriving me of the normalcy and self-confidence work always provided. My family advised me to heed my body's warnings, screaming for me to pull the brakes on life. As much as it killed me not to get back into the career rat race, I finally made the difficult decision to take time off work first to get my health and wellness in order.?

It took an episode like this and a disdained career break to put things into perspective. I would have nothing to give if I wasn’t in the pink of health. I would be nothing if my sense of validation and confidence lay only in my work. My career break was chiefly a lesson in self-care; I learned, painstakingly, to slow down and take time to care for myself before anything else. There were no quick remedies for when your body eventually broke down, but I would never again allow it to get to such a point. Over the next two years, I found that taking more deliberate, careful, and regular care for myself with exercise, meditation, and traditional Chinese medicine did the trick for me.?

In short, my career break was a wake-up call for me on my body's needs. I brought with me this newfound culture of care when I eventually reentered the working world five months later, and it continues to stay with me today. After all, you cannot serve from an empty cup – a lesson I first uncovered then, which keeps showing itself in various parts of my life, reminding me to replenish regularly.?

At about the same time, I had an epiphany on the importance of my health above all else; my family was undergoing a difficult season of transition and change. My grandmother had moved in with my mother, and there was a significant reshuffling of lifestyles, schedules, and many more to accommodate her needs. The medical expenses, mobility issues, and other nitty-gritty were taking a toll on my family, and we struggled to adjust and support one another. Meanwhile, my younger sister had freshly graduated, was about to enter the workforce, and needed guidance on these next steps.?

I soon realized that the long hours I expended on my career weren’t compatible with the level of commitment and support I knew my family needed from me during that period. By then, I had already been working for more than a decade and couldn’t exactly fathom taking so much time off. But stepping in to show up for my family entirely was a decision I wanted to make and one I never did regret – the career break I chose to take, however uncomfortable it was at first, showed me just how much of a priority my family was and still is to me.?

There’s something about taking a break that simultaneously puts the life you’ve been living under a microscope and gives you bigger-picture clarity on what exactly in that life truly matters to you. As I became a career mentor for my sister, it gave me a sense of fulfillment and pride to see her work on understanding herself, her strengths, weaknesses, inspiration, and goals – and it drove me to try to understand my own too. From taking turns with the rest of my family to caring for my grandmother, I became acutely aware of how fleeting life was and how quickly time was marching on. It made me surer that, what little time there was, we ought to spend on the things and people that matter most. My top priority had always been my family, but somehow that had gotten lost in the debris of life along the way. My career break had allowed me to recalibrate and re-learn how to make space and time for this top priority of mine at a time where I seemed to have lost sight of it and be truly present for my family – a commitment I hold dear to my heart and still deliver on today.

Before my career break, I attended my sister’s graduation ceremony and watched her transition into and enter her first chapter of adulthood. This was a striking parallel to my own life then. I had been working for several years, yet I slowly wilted. As I nursed my health and my family’s and guided my sister in her journey, I felt sure I was at a pivotal juncture of my life but increasingly unsure of what my next chapter would be. I knew I needed time to reflect and reevaluate what I was doing, whether I wanted to keep going, and what I saw for myself in my future.?

My career break had stripped me of the busy life I occupied myself with and forced me to take a good hard look at my life and be completely honest with myself. Was I satisfied where I was? Was there more to life than simply working for an income? The inclination toward sheer practicality is both an advantage and an ailment of the older generation. My father had been the sole breadwinner; work was a grueling means of income so he could provide our family of four with our basic needs and a roof over our heads. I held great respect for what my father had done for our family; he had taught me resilience in the face of life’s most significant hardships and the power of hard work to turn everything around.?

Upon deeper reflection, I found that merely working hard was no longer enough. I needed out of my work something more than just a living or an income to feel truly fulfilled. Taking time to care for myself and my family had given me a different kind of fulfillment that I hadn’t yet found in the work I was doing then. I spent my break contemplating my past and aspirations and taking inspiration from authors who’d been down this same path. I read Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection and Shad Helmsetter’s What to say when you talk to yourself from cover to cover, trying to pinpoint the formula for satisfaction but concluding that everyone’s journey is different.?

It took me several months to discover that my ‘what’s next?’ was society, beyond just myself. I had invested years into my personal development, and I was emerging from that, realizing I had reached a point where I wanted to use it to add value and give back to society. Those four months I spent out of the office had given me a new perspective on my career trajectory – and renewed purpose! Moving forward, I was sure I no longer wanted to work simply for the sake of it. When I entered a financial advisory firm shortly after, I was moved by its mission to empower people to confidently live their lives to the fullest. And I knew this would be my next chapter.

The hustle culture of today has made us so ashamed of slowing down and taking a breather. When faced with hiring managers’ suspicion, we find it difficult to explain our career breaks without being perceived as incapable or defensive. But everyone needs a break. Mine helped me learn my body's needs and how to care for myself sustainably. It also gave me ample space and time to be an active pillar of support for my family and to chart my course into a new phase of my career and life.?

A non-linear career path is a risk but one that I’ve found incredibly worthwhile – so much can happen and change in a few good months of proper rest, care, and reflection. Take the intermission you need to realign and find yourself; your next act will be even better.?