Do you hate your job?
Are you feeling unfulfilled in life?
Feel like you could be doing something so much better with your time?
If you answer yes to any of these then this likely the blog post for you! Let’s talk about why you need to be leaving your job and how to do it, if you are feeling like you are based on the answers to the questions above.
Firstly, there is nothing wrong with feeling like this. It is normal and there are an array of reasons as to why we end up in career choices that we do and end up not liking them. Financial security, what your parents told you should be doing or seduced by an image of what life would be like. These are all external factors that have driven your decision and now, it’s time for you to reconnect with the internal and change to something that’s more “you”.
I know what some of you are thinking and there’s not need to worry. You haven’t wasted your time, there will be plenty of benefits from the experience that you’ve gained and there’s no better time than now to start a plan of action for you to move from where you are now, not enjoying life, to something that’s more aligned with you, getting you excited to wake up every morning again.
It can be overwhelming, I know. Going from the familiar to the new and unknown. “Where do I even start?!”, I can hear you say.
That’s where this post comes in, as someone who’s done it already. I went from a solid career path that had many options and prospects for me in the future, spending over 11 years following that dream through college, university and nearly 7 years serving in the military to suddenly release that I wasn’t fulfilled. Yes, the money was good, there were aspects of the job that I enjoyed but ultimately, I wasn’t happy at all and needed to change.
After living it and feeling much better in myself since, I want to help and reassure others who are wanting to do the same with a helpful guide on them understanding why they feel like they do and what they can do to take the next step into a better, more satisfying life.
Why You Need To Leave
If you are in a financially secure situation and that’s been your main focus in life, you may be wondering why you would need to leave your job. Yes, you may dread every day, Monday is your most hated day of the week and you dream of doing so many other things. However, you’ve got the money to be able to survive and maybe somewhat live on the weekend. What more could you need?
Without sounding too much like Morpheus from The Matrix: What if I told you that there’s more to life and that you could have a vocation that truly got you excited to wake up in the morning for and gave you a daily thrill. Allowing you to come home satisfied that not only are you able to earn a living but enjoy everyday in the process.
Let me take you through some of the reasons that came up for me when it came to leaving my last career, inspiring me to realise that I needed to change what I was doing for something else. These are the reasons that came up for me but we are all individual. You could resonate with some of them or have additional ones of your own. If you can think of any other reasons, be sure to drop them in the comments for others to consider.
Fulfilment
The fulfilment that we get from the work that we do everyday is a massive driver of our happiness. Coming away from work wondering what you’ve actually done for either yourself or the community around you in a positive way can be demoralising. This is one of the things that Johann Hari talks about in his book Lost Connections being one of the pillars towards depression: lack of purpose and fulfilment in what we do. If you are not fulfilled in your job, you have to change! Not only are you not going to be putting your all into the job that you’re doing but for yourself and your sanity. What use is it to you that one of the things you spend most of your time each day doing it’s giving you a positive feeling back.
It’s time to change to something that’s aligned to you. You’ll feel so much better for it.
My experience of this lack of fulfilment hit me hard and out of the blue but it was a signal that I couldn’t ignore. I was sat in the office one evening doing paperwork and as writer’s block hit me, I sat back with my head against the chair and wonder “What am I actually achieving in life? What is this giving back to the world in the grand scheme things? Is what I’m doing a net positive or negative for myself and the world?”. When I couldn’t answer these questions positively and liked the answer, I knew this was the moment that the seed set in my head and needed to change the path that I was on.
Since then, I have done plenty of reflecting and soul searching to realise what gives me fulfilment in life. Everyone’s answer to this question is going to be different. We all have different personalities and skillsets to tap into, whether by nature or nurture. To give you some inspiration what my realisation came to be was that I feel my best and most fulfilled when I am helping others become the best version of themselves, whether this be in health or professionally. So instinctively, the sorts of things that come to mind that I could go into is coaching, physical training, motivational speaker, or healthcare.
Freedom In Life
The freedom that moving into something that you enjoy can come in a variety of aspects. Here are just a few “freedoms” that I can see making a step like this can afford you:
- Freedom to chase your dreams – Well, instead of you funding and assisting someone else’s dream, it’s time for you to follow your own. You guiding you, rather than someone else.
- Freedom to live life on your terms – Depending on what you want to go into, you may be able to afford flexibility into your life and schedule, allowing you to do more of the things that you love.
- Freedom to say and do what you want – When you’re working for someone else, you have to abide by their rules. A certain dress code, not being able to say or do things in life without fear of losing your job. Moving career may afford you this “luxury”, allowing you to not have to pent up what you want to say and expressing yourself freely.
- Freedom to travel – There are a lot of jobs and businesses that allow people to work from a laptop and with that, they are able to move where they want, when they want and still commit to their new vocation.
- Freedom to earn on your terms – Rather than trading in your time for someone else to pay you a set amount, based on what they value your time and knowledge, you can break out of this and potentially earn to a higher level by unlocking the true value of your time and knowledge elsewhere.
These are just a small selection of freedoms that I could come up with and resonated with me on my journey but if you can think of more, be sure to comment them down below or note them down yourself to remind you of what’s driving you towards this better life.
Moral Alignment
You may have ended up in an unfortunate situation whereby you never did or no longer support the job or industry that you are currently in. Everyday feels like you are directly working against something that you are passionate about and this conflict internally will be eating you alive. It’s not a health way of living. You. may argue in reply that living without an income may be unhealthier due to not being able to live with the life necessities, which I will give you. However, if there’s something out there that you can do and is in alignment with you morally, though there may be the initial spike in stress in you changing, the overall baseline for the long term will be lower. This is going to result in a happier and healthier you.
This was one of the leading factors for me when I left my last career. When I started out, I loved it and was very much on side with the overall direction and purpose of the enterprise that I was in. The thing to remember though was that it was 16 year old Reece that made this decision. As life went on, 25 year old Reece was becoming a very different person and with that, my alignment to that direction and purpose was deviating to the point whereby I felt I was making decisions that were actively against what I believed in. I knew this wasn’t sustainable and though, as I mentioned before, I could have easily progressed in the career and taken the financial incentives with that, I knew that I would come away regretting now leaving.
Since making that move, I can tell you that I am feeling a lot more at ease with myself. I acknowledge that the career was what I wanted at the time and now acknowledge that, I’m a changed person and with that, I have to change careers.
Growing Yourself
It is likely that one of the reasons that you are sticking around in a job that you are not enjoying is due to the fact that you are comfortable. You know when you earn money, you know what you’re needing to do each day and you know the people around you. It’s safe where you are now. Why would you want to make any changes to what you’re doing now? That’s scary and could go badly! Even if I’m not enjoying my day to day life.
This sort of mindset is one of the reasons you may need to leave the job that you are currently in. When you leave the comfort and the safety net of what you’re doing to follow that goal of yours. When you leave your comfort zone, you can start growing as a person in a way that you never anticipated. There are a plethora of ways that you could grow as person depending what route you take. This growth as a person, when successfully done, will give you fulfilment as a person outside of the job that you’re doing. Who doesn’t want extra fulfilment in their lives boosting their mood?!
Ultimately, Not Happy
The result of one or more of these things not being satisfied is ultimately going to lead you to being unhappy to varying degrees. Obviously, the more of these things that add up, the unhappier you are. Now, you may feel that you can just get by and find happiness in other things but this isn’t going to end well for you. Unhappiness is going to lead to negative health outcomes for yourself, which in the long run will take their toll on you and ultimately, shorten your life. Would you rather live a shorter, unhappier life or a longer, happier life? I know which one I would pick out of the two!
I hated the experience of living everyday unhappily doing something that wasn’t for me anymore, with each day feeling like a drag. If you feel the same, you are going to want to change that. Now that I have shown you why you should leave your job, you’ll be wondering exactly how to do it. Well, you’ll be glad to know if you read on, I’ll share with you how I did it so you can follow suit and start living the life that you should be.
How To Leave Your Job
Hopefully by now you understand why you need to leave the unfulfilling job that you’re in and what is waiting for you on the other side of this. One problem though. You’re not sure on how exactly to do it. Rest assured, I am someone that has gone through this process so let me tell you the steps that I took thus what you need to do yourself, to get to that new and correct path for you.
It can seem like a big task when you talk about going from A to B however, if you break it down into the smaller chunks that I have and then from there, even smaller again, it suddenly won’t seem such a large task for you. It’ll become a lot more manageable and doable, hopefully motivating you to do it even more so.
Find Your Passion
The first thing that you need to do is ensure that you are going into a job that aligns with you. The whole purpose of going through this process is to leave something that you’re not enjoying to gain the happiness and satisfaction of something that you do enjoy. For this to occur, you need to take the time to understand yourself, understand what drives you and gives joy in life, and then translating this into a vocation that you can create an earning from and be content with. For some, they may already know this and have just not had the opportunity nor bravery to take the plunge into the job that they want to. If that’s the case, they can go onto the next part of this blog.
However, for others, they may not know what that passion is nor know what they can do to find it. Well, fortunately for those reading this post, I wrote a separate blog about it, entitled Finding Your Purpose. This will allow and guide someone through being able to understand why they may not be aligned to their true purpose, what gets in the way but ultimately, giving a process to rediscover this purpose.
Once you have this, you’ll be able to carry on with what’s outlined in this blog.
Method
You done the work within yourself and you now know what you want to do in life that will bring you the contentment you’ve been looking for. However, you have no idea how to get from where you are now to where you want to be. It’s time for you to set out a masterplan for yourself with each task that you need to do step by step to get there. The amount of steps that it will actually take will come down to how ambitious you want to be. It may be a simple case of you moving from one job to another, which will have a few steps to it, or you may have to completely retrain in a new field, giving you an extra few layers.
This step may take a little research for you to do to find out what it is you need to do and the steps that you need to take to get where you want to go. This could be the qualifications you need to take, any other prerequisites for that job that are needed or building the evidence you require to apply for the role that you want. Knowing all these will allow you to map out your route to where you need to get, helping you stick to the path you’ve now taken and keep yourself motivated with target set out in front of you.
Using myself as an example, I was in the process of leaving my role and wanted to go into naturopathic and homeopathic medicine. I wasn’t able to study that whilst in the job that I was but at the same time, needed the finances to pay for my course and keep me afloat as a person. Thus I had to set out a plan of what role I would go into, that was more aligned to myself whilst I go through the training that I need to do. Admittedly, I am only part way through the plan that I set out and it has taken some turns that weren’t expected, I know exactly what I need to do to get to where I want to be in life.
Goal Setting & Timeline
One of the key things you need to do with this method that you now have is to attribute goals and milestones to various parts of the plan as you see fit and most importantly, give yourself a timeline. Yes, it’s great that you know what you need to do and what each stage of the plan is however, if you don’t set a timeline for these and hold yourself accountable, then you’re not going to get anywhere and will likely procrastinate. With all the things in front of you that you would need to do but no order to them, you may end up overwhelmed by them and become frozen into inaction. This is essential if you have to complete courses in a set order to progress towards the job that you want to. There’s no point for you applying for something without the right prerequisites.
Patience
With your new found purpose and hopefully motivation for you to change the course of your life for the better, it can be easy for you to get a little too over excited and want to have everything by yesterday. Unfortunately, to ensure that you get this right, you’re going to have to have some patience with yourself and what’s required. How much patience you need to have will depend on the size of the task at hand and what the method is. For somethings in life that we want to do, we will have to retrain for it, like myself. For example, I trained as an engineer in the military, taking me a total of around 5 years to complete my degree and go through all training that’s required. Now, I’m in the process of moving to naturopathic and homeopathic medicine, taking 2 and 3 years respectively to train in these fields.
It could be easy for me to become demoralised with that and impatient, wanting results now but I know that it will be worth it in the end, with this feeling being only emphasised by the experiences I have had so far in this field just from the training.
Leave Your Job!
You’ve done it! You’re fully trained, you’re at the end of the plan that you laid out and there’s only one thing left for you to do, as per your plan and timeline hopefully: leave your job and start your new venture! This is the day you’ve been dreaming of!
Of course, there are some factors to consider to this part of the process that can cast doubt into our mind and leave us hesitant to finally make the jump. Firstly, there’s the familiarity element. After potentially spending so long in a certain job, it can be hard to leave it. You have a routine, a habit, you know what to do day to day and have become accustomed to the salary. There’s also the factor of the social aspect that you may have built in that role that you really like.
All of a sudden, to rip that up and start again can be scary thing. Trust me, I know! It took me over a year to finally make the decision to leave my previous role after giving over a 11 years of my life to it
The key thing to remember here is that it doesn’t have to be in one sudden jump. As part of your plan, you can account for a transition period and plan that in, where you will take on various things in the background of your day to day job to build up the new vocation before make the full move. As part of this, you could allow yourself to go to part time with your day job to give you the time needed to make this transition. This may be easier said than done based on the job you are doing now and what you end up going into so don’t expect this to be perfect. However, let’s be positive and work on the possibility, plan it in and if you have doubts that it’s possible, put into place a plan B or even C.
Start Fresh
It’s at this point that you feel the weight of thing you weren’t enjoying before lift from you and become buoyed with the fact that you are now in something that’s going to align with you better. It may not be easy to start of with, it may daunting that you’re starting fresh and it may throw certain difficulties into your life to make it work but in the long run, it’ll be worth it. When I made the transition, I had it all planned out on how it was going to go for me and though it may not have all worked out exactly how I wanted it to, I feel so much better for being on a path that I’m enjoying and with that, been able to surround myself with more like minded individuals.
This is your chance for a fresh start and to start leading a life that you have always wanted to.
I genuinely hope that this blog, along with my accompanying piece on Finding Your Purpose, has been both inspiring for you to finally take the leap of faith to reconnect with who you are and given you a guide on how to do it. Since I came away from my military career, even though I set out thinking that was going to be me set for life, the new life that I am leading and taking on has been so much better for me mentally and physically. I am able to live life the way that I wish to more and has left me more fulfilled. Yes, I have another couple of years of training to complete at the point of writing this post but I’m very optimistic for the future.
Now it’s time for you to do the same and join me in living in alignment with yourself.
It’s worth it, trust me.
I know you can do.
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