Photo: Adam Foster | Codefor
How many people do you know that hate their jobs? Granted, there are varying levels of unhappiness that one can feel from one’s job, but I’m talking about the people who truly loathe what they do. For those who aren’t in their own personal hell everyday, what about the people who seriously dislike what they do? Between the “hang me, this is unbearable” crowd and the “UGH, this job SUCKS” crowd – you probably know quite a few.
And I’m not talking about the people putting in their time at a job, working their way up the ladder. I’m talking about lifers. Why do they put up with it?
By-in-large, people stay at crappy jobs because they are either scared or weak.
“But Tim, you don’t understand! I can’t quit my job! I have a wife and kids and bills. I’m special and different from everyone else, I can’t just quit!”
Thanks, Champ, but you still fall into the “scared” category. You have obligations and liabilities, I get it. We all do. And it is fear of defaulting on those responsibilities that’s keeping you at your crappy job. That doesn’t make you a bad or weak person (you should be anxious about fulfilling those obligations), but you need to be honest with what’s keeping you there before you can change it. If you tell yourself it’s not fear, that you’re in some unique situation that no one can understand, you’re going nowhere, pal.
Besides, no one’s advocating you walk in tomorrow, tell your boss to go F himself, and storm out. Quitting your job should be done in a measured way, ideally with a backup job in place. This isn’t always possible, so if you’re ready to go postal and need to quit before you have another job, tap into your network ASAP, reassess your skills, and start prepping to find a new job. This will take a lot of work, and if the job you hate is demanding, this will take night and weekend work.
The Weak Shall Inherit the Crappy Jobs
Now we get into what keeps most people in crappy jobs. They are just too weak to get themselves out. They’ve either been there for years and have grown complacent, or they’ve never really been that ambitious so they lack the get-up-and-go required to find a new job (like prepping nights and weekends), or they are perfectly happy to complain and complain and complain. These people are insufferable, and in my experience they make up the majority of why people stay at jobs they hate.
This is because everyone’s afraid to a certain extent. But after you look that fear in the eye and see it for what it is, you see that you actually control it (apply this to jobs, or relationships, or lifestyles, or bad habits). Once you identify that fear, you start to see its weakness and you can beat it or control it. But if you are the weak one in the equation, you’ll never take that hard look to see what’s wrong. You’ll never make the tough choice, and you’ll stay where you are, forever.
The beauty here, is that both scenarios are up to you to change. Granted, the fearful have an easier time changing than the weak. The fearful see and can point to the things holding them back (bills, obligations, etc.), where the weak tend to just complain and feel sorry for themselves without ever identifying the problem. But both types can wake up and say, “Enough. I’m sick of this, I’m sick of feeling like this, I’m sick of living like this. Something has to change.” It’s just a matter of who wakes up and who allows the bad dream to continue.
Afterward:
Now, I often hear, “Well, that’s easy for you to say. You had this, this, and this – I didn’t!”
To them I say “Fair.” It might be easier for me to say.
But the ease or difficulty of what I’m saying is wholly irrelevant. What matters is if it’s true or not.
It’s like when you talk to a friend who’s in an abusive relationship. If you tell your friend, “Hey, you need to leave this person. They’re bad to you, they make you feel like crap, and I’m worried you’ll get hurt” – they almost always fire back with, “Well that’s easy for you to say!” OK, if it were harder for me to say, would that somehow make it more true?
The point is, attacking the messenger as having an easy job is a classic way of giving yourself a pass. Listen to what people say, not how easy or difficult it is for them to say it.
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