Awesome advice, not from me.

I was talking with a friend awhile back who is considering a RESET. He said the toughest part is that he feels like he is having to take a step backward in his career money-wise and responsibility-wise, but that his father gave him some powerful advice that rang true to me as well:

Sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward.

Isn’t that what a RESET is all about? I sacrifice short-term “success” as measured by the world and everyone else around me in order to launch into something else, but because I’m more passionate and now living within my strength I’ve got my foot on the accelerator and advance further, faster. At least this is how it worked for me.
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I’ve drawn this fancy little graph on more than a few napkins and post-it notes in my career coaching of others. This is my personal financial earnings trajectory since 2004:

The salary numbers are less important than the trajectory. I graduated into an average entry-level salary in 2004 but didn’t enjoy the work. So I quit to pursue passion, hence the two-year dip that landed me in graduate school in 2006 where I made almost nothing. I graduated in 2008 into a job I loved making only slightly more than I had been making four years earlier. The thing is, I loved it, so it didn’t matter. Because I loved it, I advanced into a better job two years later making more, and then in 2013 I took a bigger leap as I became even more specialized and, thus, more valuable in the marketplace. In 2014, my earnings were almost four times what I started at out of college AND I was doing something I loved everyday. So I must be a millionaire right? Ha, not quite. Turns out that raising four kids devours disposable income. But that’s not the point.

Stepping back to step forward is a tough thing to do. There were many moments — especially in 2008 when I was making only slightly more than four years earlier — when I could have said, “This isn’t worth it.”

But I was in it for the long-game.

Short-term sacrifice, long-term gain.
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One step backward, the rest of your career forward.