Stay, leave, or change the rules of the game?

Three scenarios that keep coming up in my office.

The beginning is usually similar.

A window on Zoom. On the other side, someone fixes their hair, takes a sip of tea, and talks for a moment about the “difficult period at work.” About how “everyone is tired,” how “these are the times we live in.” A busy schedule, an overflowing inbox, reports, projects, people.

And only after the third or fourth sentence, a little more quietly, does the real issue come up:

I don't think I want this anymore. I just don't know what to do about it.

Leave everything as it is.

Leave.

Or try to change the rules of the game where I am.

Three scenarios. They come back like a refrain. In the background, there are loans, children, apartments, bodies that are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with “I'll manage somehow.”

I don't believe in the neutrality of these decisions. Each one protects something, and each one comes at a price.

1. Stay

From the outside, this usually seems the most sensible option.

You have a contract. You have a steady paycheck on the tenth of every month. You have a team that you know inside out. You know who will pick up the phone and who will reply after three days. You know the keyboard shortcuts for the system and the behavioral shortcuts to avoid making enemies.

One of my clients said:

“It's not that I love this job. I just know how it works. I know what to expect. A new place means proving myself all over again.”

And I understand that.

Staying can be a very sobering choice.

Because at this point in life, there is no room for big risks. Because your body is so tired that the very thought of recruitment, interviews, and settling in causes more shivers than enthusiasm. Because your children are changing schools. Because your partner is changing careers and will be on a lower salary for several months. Because your parents are ill and you are one of the pillars on which the home system rests.

The home system also has its own architecture and demands.

It's just that “staying” has a darker side that is less often mentioned in presentations on work-life balance.

You agree to take on too much work, “because this is just a temporary situation, and things will even out later.” You push your limits because “everyone else is doing it.” You stay longer, remain silent in meetings, take on one more “just this one thing,” until one day you realize that you no longer know if you're still here by choice or just out of momentum.

Then I often hear the phrase:

“Maybe I'm just ungrateful. So many people would like to be in my place.”

This is the moment when I pause.

And I ask a question that is not always comfortable:

Is it really gratitude, or rather fear of change?

Staying has its price: daily micro-compromises with yourself. So small that you often don't even notice them.

2. Leave

The second scenario sounds like freedom.

A new beginning. A clean desk. Logging out of a system you've been complaining about for a long time. Sometimes “leaving” means changing companies. Sometimes it means taking a break. Sometimes it means finally saying “no” to a relationship in which you've been primarily a function to fulfill someone else's needs for years.

The day you hand in your notice often sounds like a scene from a movie in stories.

A pen. A signature. Slightly trembling hands. An elevator that seems to be going slower this time. The door of the building, behind which there is... nothing for a moment. The feeling that there is no floor under your feet for a moment.

In theory – relief.

In practice – relief mixed with terror.

Because leaving is not just “I'm finally getting out of here.”

It's also a vacuum in which, for a while, there is nowhere to put your hands.

There is no calendar that fills itself. There are no ready-made tasks. There is no “I know what is expected of me.” A question arises that many people have been putting off for years:

What do I actually want to do?

One client, who had been dreaming of leaving for two years, said after a few weeks of freedom:

“No one warned me that it would be so loud inside. So many voices at once: that I should, that I'll waste my chance, that I'm too old now, that now I have to prove something.”

That's why, when we work on leaving, I don't stop at the slogan “I'll run away from here.”

We look to see if there's somewhere to land.

Even if it's temporary.

Do you have at least a rough outline of a safety net, financial, emotional, relational?

Is this departure an act of self-care or a desperate move from a place of “anything but this”?

Leaving has its price: fear, temporary emptiness, confrontation with your own voices, which until now have been drowned out by your schedule.

It is neither better nor worse than staying. It is simply a different answer to the same question: on what terms do I want to be in my life?

3. Change the rules of the game

The third scenario sounds the least spectacular, but it can be the most demanding.

Stay, but differently.

Not as the one who always “somehow gets it done,” takes on orphaned projects, trains others, and shares knowledge in exchange for a “thank you for agreeing.” But as someone who is starting to blaze a new trail in the old forest.

These are the moments when I hear:

“I don't want to leave yet. But I can't do it under these conditions.”

And this is where the precise work begins. Without fanfare.

Changing the rules of the game requires what most systems hate: real boundary shifting.

One woman recounted how she first went to her boss with a piece of paper. On the paper: a list of tasks, how much time they really take, where she sees the risks, what can be given up, what is crucial. No “emotional tirade.” Just specifics.

... “I left that conversation feeling like I'd just run five kilometers,” she said. ... “Tired, sweaty, but for the first time in a long time, I felt like I wasn't selling myself short for a ‘thank you for agreeing”

Sometimes such a conversation ends with a shift in responsibilities, a real reduction in workload, a change in the rhythm of work.

Sometimes the system reacts differently:

“There's no room, that's how it is, take it or leave it”

And then the third scenario becomes a test.

Is this a place that can move when you say “no”?

Or is it one where your boundaries are just “an obstacle to production”?

Changing the rules of the game rarely looks like a big revolution. More often, it's a series of micro-shifts:

one “I don't answer emails after 7 p.m.” and you really stick to it, “a meeting every week, not every day,”

“This part of the process is inhumane, let's try something different.”

This is a scenario for people who don't want to run away, but also don't want to continue paying for someone else's comfort.

They are prepared for the fact that it will be uncomfortable for a while, and that not everyone will be delighted.

Changing the rules of the game comes at a price: confrontation, the risk of rejection, uncertainty about whether the system is capable of adapting at all.

When I listen to these stories, I see one thing: there are no purely “good” or “bad” choices here.

Staying costs micro-betrayals of oneself.

Leaving costs entering a vacuum and facing fear.

Changing the rules costs confrontation with the system and the risk that it will say “no.”

In my office, I don't say: stay. I don't say: leave. I don't say: fight.

I ask:

What are you really trying to protect by staying?

What are you looking for in leaving—an escape or space for something new?

What minimum must change so that you don't betray yourself if you stay here?

Sometimes the answer comes right away, like a stone that has been asking to be moved for a long time.

Sometimes it takes weeks to emerge. Between one “I can't do it” and another “I'll try again.”

The ending rarely looks like a scene from a movie.

More often, it's like an ordinary day when someone:

sends an email with their resignation, or leaves work at 4:30 p.m. and doesn't return to their laptop that day, or says for the first time at a meeting, “This is too much, we can't deliver it with this team.”

Then the system either starts to really change.

Or it shows very clearly that it is not ready for it.

In both cases, something important is happening.

The slogan “stay, leave, or change the rules of the game” ceases to be an abstract puzzle.

It turns into your specific “yes” and your specific “no.”

Not on a slide.

In your calendar.

In your body.

In the decisions you make in your real everyday life.