What’s Your Body Telling You About Your Career?

An odd question you may think! Well consider this, think back to the last time you were feeling under stress. Think about how your body reacted to the stress. Headaches, anxious feeling in the stomach, lack of sleep. These are physical signs that something isn’t right and your body is trying to get your attention so that you can make a change to eliminate what’s causing the stress.

But do we listen? Quite often, no!

Now think about the impact on your body if you’re exposed to the stress and these reactions over a long period of time. It eventually becomes the norm and we stop paying attention. Ultimately then our body starts sending louder messages to get our attention. This is when we start to see aches and pains that just won’t go away, or even worse, more serious illness can ultimately result.

In my book, Career Awakening: How To Align Your Career With Your Soul Purpose, I touch on how quantum physics has proven the mind/body connection. Ever heard the expression “your issues are stored in your tissues”? Almost simultaneously when we have a thought, it is felt in the body at a cellular level. Let that sink in.  This is how it works:

What thoughts are rattling around in your mind all day long when you’re at work? What is your self talk like? If you knew this is having an impact on your body, what would you tell yourself instead, or would you continue to endure the stress, or not being valued in your role, or listening to that colleague who complains all day long? No, of course not.

So how does this show up in our lives?

I’ve coached many clients who have either put up with something in their career, not stood up to someone, kept doing a job even though they hated it, and have been dealing with a major health issue, not realising that the two are connected. You see, once you know what’s causing the physical signs, you know what you need to do to dissipate them. The study of psychosomatics shows the often interesting link between certain parts of the body and what they represent and are trying to tell you. I had one client who developed IBS as a result of being bullied over a significant period of time, another lady had her writing arm start to shut down as a result of constantly writing reports which caused her a lot of frustration as she no longer felt she was adding the value she’d been employed to bring to the table. Some people choose to stay in a job they dislike because it pays well and ignore the toll it’s taking on their health. But how much does it cost you to regain your health, if you can?

What’s the Answer?

What To Look for

Here are some guiding ideas of what might be causing pain or discomfort in certain areas of your body from Inna Segal’s book ‘The Secret Language Of Your Body’:

• Abdomen: difficulty digesting life
• Ankles: feeling weighted down, overcommitted
• Hips: lack of support
• Knees: inflexibility, stuck
• Neck: feeling stuck, inflexible, pressured
• Shoulders: carrying the world on your shoulders
• Skin: irritated, angry, frustrated
• Throat: difficulty communicating or shut down
• Thyroid: disconnected to life’s purpose.

So if you want to move from surviving to thriving, you can take the first step by making sure you’re in the right job. You can start here to see if you are, but at the very least, start paying attention to your body and asking it what it’s trying to show you.