I’d like to share an extreme example (please know that I am using a very negative story only to make the point clearly) of someone who hates her current job. We’ll call her Kate.
Kate goes to work day in and day out even though she hates it. She comes home complaining about the people, the bosses, the idiots she had to deal with on the phone all day, and how much work sucks.
Every day is a repeat, and Kate has very few good days. She can’t wait to leave work each day and other people notice – but she doesn’t care. She just hates her job too much to care.
If someone were to ask Kate why she doesn’t make a change, she’d come up with a variety of excuses:
- I don’t know what else I’d do to earn this kind of money
- I’m too old to make a change
- I’m really good at what I do
- I don’t want to have to learn something new just to do something else
- There aren’t any jobs out there
- I can’t afford to make a change
- It’s not like anyone really loves their job, right? Why not stick with the crap I know instead of doing a bunch of work just to realize that the next job is just as bad.
People like Kate build a ‘story’ about their lives, and they become the lead character in their own story
What I’ve described above is a story that people actually repeat to themselves. And the result of repeating this story is always the same — they don’t do anything because they feel ‘trapped’ by circumstances over which they have absolutely no control.
Their anger turns into hate for their job because they feel trapped – and the longer they’re trapped, the more angry and bitter they become.
The problem with this storyline is that it will infect the rest of their life, too. All of that negativity and hate will seep into every aspect of life. It will influence their relationships with people and the life they live beyond their job.
For people like Kate, it’s like they live with a perpetual dust cloud around them.
Their constant negativity will attract others into their lives who are equally negative and equally victimized by the circumstances of their lives. Together, they perpetuate helplessness and a bad attitude.
And they create all sorts of limitation attached to the stories they’re telling themselves.
Now maybe you don’t hate your job quite as much as Kate, and maybe that discomfort isn’t spilling into the rest of your life. But if you really don’t like what you’re doing, it’s time to make a change.
If you work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year…you’re spending almost a quarter of each year at your job. If you add all of the 8-hour days together, it equals 91 days.
You’ll never get those 91 days from last year back, but you can do something to make next year better. You can change the story you tell yourself, give yourself the freedom and the power to love what you do, and the good results can spill into the rest of your life, too.
If you need some help with a basic direction to get you started, contact me at heather@mindfulchange.com or call me at 613.601.1083, and we’ll set up a 30-minute discovery session to help you figure it out.
I can help you through a process to change your story to one that has a different and happier outcome.
If you didn’t relate to anything in this post, please share it with someone that you think might benefit. And if you did, I encourage you to start rewriting your story.
Now, I promised you a couple weeks ago that I’d come back and talk more about love, and we’ll do that next week. We’ll also look at what successful couples do to keep the love alive. If your significant other talks love but acts like you come last in life, you’ll definitely want to tune in!
For your reading pleasure, here’s the quote of the week:
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
~Albert Einstein
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