Before You Leave the Job You Hate
February 2, 2008 Life choices No Comments
When you hate a job there’s a great urge to just bolt out of the door one day, never to return.
Whoa!
Resist that urge until you do some planning, otherwise you’ll end up in the same or worse situation at a new location.
1. Go within and discover where you got the idea that bad treatment is OK. In spite of the good intention of our parents and significant others, most of us were raised on a lot of “you’re not worthy” or “settle for what you have” or “don’t take risks” messages. If you search back in your mind you’ll remember how old you were, where you were and what you wearing the day you got one of those messages.
Grieve the years you spent running your life based on these flawed messages and begin overwriting them with new positive, self-affirming messages. Be patient with yourself. Deeply imprinted messages take time or even outside help to overwrite. Get whatever help you need. You deserve it.
2. Examine what things you hate about your job and pick one you can change. My daughter hated lots of things about her job, but the constant griping from two of her closest coworkers was one thing she could change. How?
3. Draw the line. Make your boundaries clear to your boss and coworkers. My daughter announced to these two coworkers that she would no longer engage in negative talk about how much they hated the job. Instead, she told them she’d be happy to talk about getting new jobs and exchange words of encouragement.
In other words, like the Wicked Witch of the West(?) said in “The Wiz,” “Don’t bring me no bad news.”
Now instead of hating to go to work, these three became allies sharing new job leads, tips on writing resumes, articles on dealing with office politics and anecdotes of encouragement. The dark clouds had parted .
The rest of the job didn’t change, but they did. Soon all three of them found new and satisfying jobs with other companies.
Stay tuned for more about leaving the job you hate.
