“Over the years,
the real person inside of us gets tangled in the cobweb of building careers, we
forget our true essence,” writes author Batoul Ajlouni in her recently
published memoir, Ditching Success?
اضافة اعلان
Ditching Success? delves
into Ajlouni’s decision to resign from an executive role at a company that she
had been pouring her heart into for decades – since its very inception in the
late 1980s.
“The book is not about
success,” explained Ajlouni in an interview with
Jordan News.
“Much of what I describe in
the book is a lot related to the long duration of being consistently under
stress.”
“Leaving a company I have
worked so hard to see succeed… Does that make me ditch success? Or is there
success elsewhere? That’s why I have the question mark there,” she said of her
book’s title.
“If I’m doing nothing, or if
I’m doing something else, does that make me unsuccessful? Does that make me
really have ditched success? I want people to have these questions in mind.”
While Ajlouni spoke candidly
about the need to challenge conventional notions of success, she initially
struggled to get to this point.
At several points in her
memoir, Ajlouni expresses reluctance to turn her back on her career.
“I felt like a sudden
drifter waiting helplessly for the wind to take me to whichever direction it
was headed, dropping me off at some location along the way,” she writes.
Yet, despite looming
self-doubt and uncertainty, Ajlouni remained hopeful.
“There had to be something
else out there for me to do, I thought. Another purpose to fulfill. Another way
to make an impact on the world,” she writes.
Reflecting on the best thing
to come out of her decision to leave her corporate job, Ajlouni told
Jordan
News: “Going back to myself. Work changed me, changed my priorities. I’m
happy to be going back to the things that matter most at this age, to family.”
Asked who ideally she would like
to pick up her memoir at a bookstore, Ajlouni said that while she had people
between the ages of 45 and 60 in mind, her book is directed at anyone who feels
stressed at work.
Specifically, “adults
grappling with the question: what do I do next?”
“I was hoping to give them
some kind of courage... to say: you know what? It’s not the end of the world.
Make that change, it’ll be okay,” she said.
As such, three messages are
imbued in her memoir.
“The first message is as an
early warning sign to people, try to avoid burnout if you can. The second
message is, if you do get sucked into it, try to fix or ditch it. The third
message is to be hopeful once you make the change.”
She
wants her readers “to be inspired that someone else has gone through this… [to
know] they’re not alone.”
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