...and encouragement in the form of realism. There is always a market for excellence, which I do not doubt both of you deliver in your work.

There is a mystical element to Christianity where it overlaps with psychology - our own will and the Will of God sometimes diverge. Some of the job changes I've had over my own life which resulted from layoffs, RIF or (yep) termination for cause (I was a bad bad boy) led to some of the most fulfilling, rewarding jobs. 

I was told once by an HR person who was very sharp, that a person's career is not just our experiences in gainful employment, but everything we experience in work OR play, from our first job to our last. For instance, working (without pay) as a caregiver for my terminally-ill mother and my Alzheimer's-afflicted step-father gave me experiences in dealing with stress and acting out of irrational anger by others that translated well into armed security patrol work I did later.

So did my hobby of owning, using firearms safely (I became a marksman with a (.38/.357/9mm) pistol w both hands at 25 yards which allowed me to pass the open carry tests fairly easily. 

When working for a company, whatever the job was I always tried to give it 110% - my goal was to give my boss the opportunity to read the paper all day if they wanted to. I aim to give my company more than what they paid for out of my work day. It's been a successful strategy so far.

Although I have worked with people I did not respect much, I tried never to work under the authority of an immediate supervisor I did not respect, any longer than necessary. I don't have to like someone personally in order to work under their direct authority, but I do need to be able to respect them. If I can't, I walk ASAP. More often though, I found that supervisors I disliked soon moved on themselves (fired/quit). So after awhile I learned to wait-out bad bosses if feasible which was better than running away. 

One of the best pieces of advice I've gotten was to never work for money alone any longer than absolutely necessary - it's far better to have a job doing something one is good at and also enjoys rather than to focus only on cash. The trifecta is to  find someone willing to pay you for doing something well that you enjoy!!

I have known people who made a LOT more money than I who were by all appearances miserable human beings - because they never learned that the hidden cost of doing something you hate is that it robs you of quality of life and at best, any extra money you earn will be spent on psychotherapy or some other means to ameliorate depression. 

For example, I worked as a security officer at many H-Wood studios over 20 years, including (9) years at NBC studios in Burbank. I worked at the main gate, in the lobbies, studios (including the Tonight Show w Leno). Security was one of two jobs I always worked the whole time, and I purposely avoided "promotion" to supervisor (the turnover-rate on supervisor positions was 10X that of regular officers - I read the writing on the wall). After nine years, I observed that I was only one of two security employees of my sub-contracted company who was still there. I didn't get much sleep but I had fun, learned a lot and made a LOT on overtime (my check was usually double my boss's take-home week)!!

 I got to observe big name "talent", producers, executives come and go...sometimes with the most miserable, unhappy expressions on their faces day after day. I asked my older brother(a smart, happy, successful senior executive in retail) why he thought that was. He also knew people in the Industry and he said, "The reason H-Wood executives and talent are so unhappy is that they start and end every day knowing that they will have to do something that they detest in order to get that big paycheck. They will have to betray a friend, ruin some poor schmuck's life who trusted them, fire someone who is innocent of any error or wrong-doing or worse hire some incompetent cacogen just because of company politics, etc. So they are haunted by this every day. THERE IS TOO MUCH MONEY INVOLVED TO PERMIT MORALITY TO BECOME A FACTOR IN THEIR DECISIONS". That really made a lot of sense and I believe it now more than ever.

That is linked to the truism, "When you have a lot of money, you don't have it, it has YOU!!!" 

That is linked to psychological studies that show suicide rates are the same for all economic groups above the poverty line. Poverty is by far the highest factor in suicide (being poor is horribly stressful and unpleasant), but once that is removed, the rate is the same from the lower-middle class all the way up to millionaire. 

Happiness is apparently an art even some who make tons of cash never learn, and so they spiral down into alcohol/drug abuse, sex addiction (cheating on spouses/mates), wicked misanthropy and eventually suicidal depression. 

 A similar study asking people who self-identified as "happy" found a common factor was that virtually none of them (not even those who were very well off financially) said that they concentrated on trying to get rich. Rather, they concentrated on trying to get comfortable first. They focused on enjoying what they had rather than focusing on obtaining more than what they had. It's a subtle distinction but a vital one.