Career Cube Blog

Googling “I hate my job” brings up a depressing website full of people complaining, often hatefully, about what they do for a living. Very few seem to be doing anything except finding fault. Are they expecting to walk into the office one day and find a significant change has taken place?

Job scenarios like these are one reason why it’s so vital to identify the components of your perfect job before you go looking. Understanding the science and psychology of the search process helps you see that through your mental attitude and ensuing choices, you’re the one controlling both the process and the outcome.

It’s generally fear that keeps people where they are: fear of change combined with landing in the same miserable type of environment. If you’ve never had a job you enjoyed, you’ve no reason to believe the next one could be different. But a shift in perspective and you can say, “Maybe every job isn’t bad; maybe it’s how I’m looking for them.”

Once you’ve stopped blaming circumstances outside yourself, then you can take responsibility, be open to finding a new way, and watch your search unfold in a dramatically different manner.

Fear of change, fear of landing in the same situation, fear that you won’t be paid well or enough or more, that it will be too far to drive (the list goes on) are all underlying - and often unconscious - reasons why change doesn’t happen.

It’s the belief that “There’s nothing out there that’s different/better than this,” that’s part of the problem. What you think, what you say, and what you believe is what you manifest, thus the belief perpetuates itself. If that’s what you believe, you won’t look. But how will you find anything if you don’t look? Or if when you look, you find something wrong with every opportunity that catches your eye?

“Oh I could do that! No, probably too far to drive.”
“There’s something….yeah, but they’re not going to pay me as much.”
“Hmmm - what about this? No, that sounds like it’s going to be a lot of hours.”

And nothing changes. You sabotage every potential opportunity or optimistic thought about changing companies.

But that’s entirely normal. Underneath all that is fear of rejection, anxiety, fear of making the wrong decision, and once you’re into the process - fear of having botched the interview, feeling as if you are botching the interview process - right now. Why not just blow it off? After all, you’ve got a job that pays.

Some get started but can’t seem to follow through. You begin, thinking of all the reasons why you want to leave. Then as an offer seems impending, you think of all the reasons why you want to stay. So you do, and find that nothing has changed. You still want to leave, only now you’re kicking yourself for having turned down a job you worked so hard to find.

The best way to conquer fear is to walk straight into it. Write down the reasons why your job isn’t satisfying. When you’re close to getting an offer, go back to that list. Know that the job you’re leaving isn’t going to change, and that’s why you are.

Because once you’ve made the switch, you’ll find the fear disappears and a renewed confidence takes its place. And once you’ve committed yourself to a new path, the new becomes the familiar, and you’ll wonder why you contemplated staying at the job that made you so miserable.

If you’ve done your homework on what you want, if you’ve done your prep before the interview, if you’ve been honest with yourself and the hiring authorities, you could find yourself in a job you love. And there are a lot of people like that. Just google “I love my job” instead of its alternative. Which site would you rather have an entry on?

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