Stop the job suckage

Okay, so—you hate your job. Your job sucks. You want to stop the job suckage.

This is a really normal thing when people ask themselves how to live a more courageous life, by the way: they look at the work they do for 8 or so hours each day and realize that if they didn’t spend 8 or so hours hating what they did each day, they might live a more courageous life.

So here’s how I would approach that if I was working with a one-on-one client:

1.) I’d encourage the client to write out their ideal day, from start to finish. I might encourage them to use the Shift Plan (free for you as part of the Your Courageous Life library)

2.) I’d ask them to then look at what they wrote, and identify the most important feelings of that ideal day. The most important feelings of the day are how you want to feel.

3.) I’d ask them to undertake this exercise: Brainstorm at least 3 different ways that each feeling could some how be incorporated into your current job situation. Brainstorm solutions even if you think that they aren’t likely to happen.

For instance, if you’re thinking, “I’d like to feel free, and commuting 2 hours to work makes me feel anything but free, and I have to commute to work” just try, “My boss lets me remote work and I no longer have the 2 hours commute” even if you don’t think there’s a way your boss would allow such a thing).

Or, perhaps you work for a large corporate entity and you have identified that “creativity” is a feeling quality to bring into your ideal day. Perhaps you are a receptionist, and the idea that you will ever be able to fulfill your longing to become a mixed-media artist while somehow sitting at that desk seems like it’s a total pipe dream. The goal with this exercise is to bring the feeling of creativity into your current workspace, because bringing the feelings that are important to you into your current job will make the job seem just a smidge better.

It empowers you to get just a smidge closer to creating the life you want, with the circumstances you’ve got–and that is Powerful with a big, phat-ass “P.”

Here are some possible brainstorms for such a hypothetical situation:

1.) make art on my lunch break

2.) organize people from work into a monthly art group

3.) carry around art in my wallet/purse/briefcase and look at it often

4.) creatively answer the phone–make it a game to see how many creative ways I can think of to make everyone I talk to feel really great as a result of talking to me

5.) create a piece of artwork, scan it, set it as my desktop screensaver.

Those are just a few random ideas for one feeling–creativity. Brainstorm at least three ideas for each feeling you’d like to bring into your current job/workplace.

Small Actions Add Up

The value of how the small things add up is best explained in a quote I heard once. A CEO had turned around a failing company and people asked him how he did it. He replied, “It’s not that we did one thing, 100% better. We did 100 things, just 1% better.”

Lots of “1% betters” can add up to “100% better.”

Now why would you do this, if you know for absolute certain that you are in the WRONG JOB?

I encourage you to do this because this is the 100% fail-safe way to test out whether the jobby-job is the real issue or the scapegoat issue for why life is not working. Sometimes people think the job is the issue, when really the issue is something else entirely, like a bad manager—or that perhaps the issue is that they would feel unhappy no matter where they worked because mental health support is needed.

Nonetheless? It’s a powerful exercise because it’s always more powerful to make positive shifts even in situations you dislike than it is to wallow, and because if you’re still in the WRONG JOB for the next three months or year or whatever, why not make it a little more palatable?

Why not build some character?

Why wallow when there is possibility around every corner?

An exercise such as the above will help someone to feel a bit better even if their job isn’t changing any time soon.

Monitor Pessimism

When I started to do this work myself, I was all, “Are you kidding me?” It seemed like a colossal waste of time. I was very pessimistic. I now understand that pessimism is a common fear pattern (I talk about fear patterns in my book, The Courage Habit).

And now, on the other side of all of that, having taken these steps, I see how important it was that I acted with all of the integrity I could muster. I felt stronger and more powerful every time I made a choice to put my all into what I was doing. It was better to at least TRY something new, than to stick with what I knew wasn’t working. That’s how you stop the job suckage.

For someone having doubts, I’d ask–What would that feel like for you, to see things get even a smidge better?

Get started–no need to wait for the right time, the right MOOD, the right pencil, the right…just dive right in and brainstorm at least 3 solutions, small action steps, for each feeling that you identified in the previous exercise. 

If you are so inclined, after making your list take a photo of it and share it with me by tagging @katecourageous on Instagram.

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Lightening up

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Coming together