As the thought, “I don’t like my job,” swirls around in your brain, you may feel resistance to taking the big leap. But you want to leave for the right reasons… consider your answers to these 3 questions!
To What Extent Does Your Job Align with Your Core Values?
Do you even know what your core values are?
Per Indeed, “Core values are a set of fundamental beliefs, ideals or practices that inform how you conduct your life, both personally and professionally.”
In other words, core values drive your decisions. They are your guide, your anchor when everything else in life goes awry. Core values will never let you down, and they act as a compass when making critical decisions.
If you have not narrowed down a set of core values for yourself, it is a worthwhile exercise. Aim for 10-12 core values that resonate the most. It might be difficult to narrow down as there are many; certainly, some will be more valuable than others.
When your life and work do not align with your core values, you live out of integrity with yourself. This can feel like a forced way of living and working, and it can surely burn you out.
While it can be easy to say, “I don’t like my job,“ one insightful question to answer is, “To what degree am I living and working in alignment with my core values – and what does the result look like?”
Do You Struggle with the Hard Skills or the Soft Skills?
Let us first consider the “hard” skills. If you’d like another job simply because you desire to utilize a specific set of hard skills, then your decision can be cut and dry.
For example, perhaps you’re currently a salesman but you’d much rather be designing the tooling that you sell. Or, you’re a manufacturing engineer, but your heart lies with the duties of a test engineer. Do these examples sound all too familiar? If so, it may be very appropriate to quit and pursue the job that allows you to do the hard skills you desire.
In contrast, let us assess the soft skills. Soft skills, or power skills, include communications, maturity, accountability, ownership, resilience, self-worth, persuasion, ego, leadership, etc. For example, do you want to quit due to management styles, customers or colleagues? Perhaps you feel isolated, dismissed, or undervalued?
If you find that your desire to quit is mostly soft skills-driven, I challenge you to pause. Take a step back. Assess your soft skills before you do anything. Think about where your weaknesses lie and how you can strengthen them.
Therefore, quitting may be a temporary band-aid until you learn to strengthen your mental foundation. The soft skills you struggle with now will most likely be the same ones you take with you to the new job.
In other words, you cannot solve internal issues with external jobs.
Are You in Search of Your Dream Job?
Where oh where is that elusive dream job? You cannot find it all while telling yourself, “I don’t like my job.”
First hint: the more you look, the more likely you will fail to find it.
We have been misled. Many of us have believed, through no fault of our own, that if we do all the right things, we’ll find that dream job. We were taught that hard work will be rewarded and that your dream job will make you happy.
Second hint: don’t believe this nonsense!
A dream job, my friends, must be created. Dream jobs are not found (sure, you will meet a person or two in your lifetime who claims to have found their dream job. This is a rarity and it is the exception, not the rule). Do not believe your dream job is out there awaiting your presence any more than your dream spouse is waiting for you to find them.
If you want a dream job (or a dream spouse, for that matter), it starts within yourself. Look inside. What is your current state of being? Whatever you’re feeling and thinking internally is whatever will show up in any job you accept.
If you truly believe, “I don’t like my job,” assess your emotional state of being (not always easy)! Do you notice patterns in your behavior or in the way others treat you or in the way you feel about your job duties? Are you seeing similar soft skills issues in most jobs you’ve had?
The takeaway is that your external job, whatever its title, can never be in a better shape than your own state of being!
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