Now, you may think I’m writing this out of some need to get off my chest that I hate my job. I actually don’t at this point. I actually quite like my job. As far as jobs go, it challenges me, gets me in to an environment where I meet cool people and gets me out of bed in the morning (not that I’m one to not get out of bed in the morning; I currently work 50hrs a week, see clients, and am completing a great course on Wordweaving by Trevor Silvester which will make me even more awesome at hypnotherapy (hey, you gotta be confident about what you charge people for!)).
I do however, know very well what it feels like to be in a job you hate, a job that you think if you have to go to one more day it will kill your soul and your boss will find you crumpled in a heap of skin at your desk, devoid of all emotion and intelligence. I have worked in stressful jobs where no-one seems to give a crap about you and boring jobs where they could literally pay a monkey to do your job (and they’d probably do it better than you at this point).
The problem with a lot of these jobs is that, unfortunately, someone has to do them. It doesn’t have to be you, but more often than not, that’s just the way life goes isn’t it? If you look back and think about how you got your job, did you think it would be like it is now? Was it mis-sold or was it just supposed to be a stop gap which turned in to the rest of your life?
That my lovelies, is a sucky way to live. I am however, fully aware that it’s not always as easy as quitting to do something you love, so below are the things I learned along the way to make a sucky job infinitely better (and give you what you need to get out of said job and in to something better):
**DRUMROLL PLEASE**
You are your own worst enemy. How many times have I said that on this blog? Probably a couple of hundred – free glass of wine to the person who can tell me how many (in London, obviously…).
Anyhoo…more often than not, when something’s getting us down we focus on it more. We focus on the sucky parts, the difficult parts, the parts we don’t like and the parts that make us want to pick up our things and run off to the nearest bar and get drunk with a hot foreigner who’ll whisk us off to a beach somewhere.
We stop focusing on what we’re actually doing. We focus on the stress or the dullness or the amount of what we need to do and we stop focusing on the actual tasks. We stop saying good morning to our colleagues. We stop wanting to do a good job.
Let me share something very important with you. No-one ever got anywhere not giving a shit about the work they produced.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people do work that doesn’t necessarily tickle their pickle. There are ways around this and hundreds of blogs on the subject (I recommend Free Range Humans or The Middle Finger Project if you don’t know where to start). That’s not what I blog about here so I’ll continue to talk to you about how to hustle in a job you hate.
Just because you don’t like doing something or you work with people you don’t like, doesn’t mean you should see your day as a waste of time. Seriously, you spend the vast majority of your waking life working – do not waste this time. Start looking at work as a chance to develop skills and abilities to help you in your next job. How can you make what you do better? What do you do well already? How can you connect better with your colleagues?
In short, what do you need to do to really stand out? What can you get out of this job that you could put on a CV? It is not your boss’ job to find opportunities for you. Get off your ass and find them yourself. If there’s literally nothing else you could get out of your job then it’s time to move. Alternatively (I would argue to do this anyway in fact), do your work with mindfulness. Look at it as a form of meditation.
I often get customer service tips from waiting staff. They do a job I did when I was sixteen, but many do it a lot better than I ever did. To some it might be mundane but if you do it with passion and enthusiasm, and to the best of your ability, all of a sudden you’ve changed a customer’s mood and day. You’ve made someone smile. I don’t think you can put a price on that.
Focus on what you can change, forget what you can’t – Life is way too short!