Not a week goes by that I don’t hear someone say, “I hate my job. It’s great money, but it’s draining the life out of me. And I’m so discouraged, I don’t know what to do.”
Here’s what you need to know, if that’s where you find yourself in life. You are going to lose this job soon. Yeah, that’s what somebody needs to have guts enough to tell you. The fact that you hate your job isn’t a secret. It’s showing, either in attitude or performance. And before too long, someone will come up who loves that job, do it better and cheaper, and you’ll be on the road. So consider this your wake-up call. Get ready, because you’re about to be unemployed.
Now, the good news is, you’re probably good enough at it that you’ve got some time to prepare to get out. Here are some things I would suggest:
- If you hate your job, suck it up and do that job well. And do that because you can, as an act of will, as a strengthening and even a demonstration of your inner character. You’re getting paid. You have a responsibility. So be good at the job you hate. And when you finally get to the work you love, it will be easy to be great because you’ve already developed the discipline it takes in an environment that was less than hospitable.
- Begin right now to free your mind that you can do the work you love, you can find and embrace your life’s calling, and you can do the work that not only fulfills a desperate need in the world around you, but a deep need in you as well.
- Begin to form a one-sentence mission statement. When Paula and I were developing Making Marriage Fun Again, the mission statement was, “Helping good people grow great marriages over time.” Each and every word in that mission statement matters. “Over time” isn’t an add-on, because great marriages aren’t grown overnight, but over time. When we decided to give our mission a vision, we came up with Making Marriage Fun Again. That’s our vision, to in the next 10 years help a million couples across the U.S. make their marriage and their life fun again. Mission statements are critical. They are at the core of what will sustain you over the long haul.
- Begin to inquire about people doing what you want to do. Ask them the question that you are going to have to answer before you can begin to take your passion and calling and turn it into a profitable business and economic model.
We could add more points, but you get the idea. The wake-up call here is, if you’re not mooing out loud because you’re in a job you’re just tolerating, you better get your “moo” on soon, because your going to be out in the field all by yourself, and you’ll need that “moo.”