Are you faced with this weekly dilemma in your job?

Jul 16, 2019

It's Sunday evening.  

You've had a weekend catching up on the house chores, spending time with loved ones and set the preparations in place for the coming week.  You sit down on the sofa and note the time like you do every Sunday evening.  It's 8pm.

You become greatly aware of that feeling in the pit of your stomach that no TV programme or film will take away for you.

That tight feeling of knots in your belly at the thought of going into work tomorrow.  It slowly creeps up your body into your throat as you clench at the thought of getting up and doing that commute.  Then thinking about what your work day and week ahead will entail.  Being in that environment that just feels miserable, that feeling of being unfulfilled or doing something you just don't believe in anymore, or having to face someone who really gets your hackles up.

Do you question that it's wrong to feel this way?

After all, too much depends on you being in this job right?  It's a regular income, with security and a pension now in place.  The company you work for has a good maternity/paternity package and the amount of holiday leave you have is not bad either. 

You convince yourself that these little extras make it all worthwhile, and you'll just have to grin and bear it until something else comes along, or you have 3 weeks until you're off for a week on holiday, you'll focus on that for now and deal with it once you come back to work.

Time and time again we tell ourselves these things.  Not to feel bad about going into our workplace to do something that doesn't spark any fulfilment or joy for us.  It's just a case of going through the motions to possibly reap the small rewards that might, just might come our way.

But what if that job that you don't enjoy or that you made feel sick with dread on a Sunday night suddenly changed?  

What if you went into work the next day to be told... we are letting you go.  I'm sorry it's just we've got to make cutbacks and your name was on the list as one of those cutbacks.

Just take a moment to picture that.  

How would you feel?  Relieved, peaceful, worried, scared, sad?

It would probably be a mixture of emotions - the worry of finances and how you're going to look after and support your family, along with the feeling of relief that you'd be out and not have to endure that ickiness feeling of going in to a place you don't enjoy, and doing something you don't feel passionate about or believe in.

You see this scenario demonstrates that you have a choice.

There's always a choice.  It might be a choice that may seem a little more challenging, but there is always an alternative option available to you.

British workers will spend on average 3,515 full days at work in their lifetime. With the average person working 204 days of overtime during their professional life.  The average human life is 28,000 days long - based on an assumption that the average human life span is 75 years of age.  

With our instinctive fear of change, us humans generally tend to stick at a job because we're fearful of what might happen if we step away, especially if it's something we've been involved in for a fair amount of our adult lifetime.

If today, you're reading this and you're in that place with your job right now take a moment to think about your situation.

Ask yourself these three questions...

  1. If you could do anything as a job, what would it be?
  2. What's holding you back from taking the step forward to this job?
  3. What action could you take to make it happen?

Our time here is both precious and limited.  

You're precious. 

Don't wait for something to happen to change, be the change and take control of where you want to be and what you want to do.  

Your future self will thank you for it.

Josie Copsey

Life Change Expert, Author, Mentor, Josie Copsey Ltd

An expert in helping women to create a healthier and happier work life doing a job they love and pretty much on a mission to spread joy wherever I go! Ambitious, driven and focused I built a very successful change and training career in the corporate world that spanned over two decades. I helped leadership teams of large companies to transform their business. Today, I serve women who want to change their job, discover their perfect career and who want to have a better work life balance. We all deserve to be doing a job we love, we have a purpose in this life and it’s not being stuck in a job doing something that we dread or makes us feel ill. I’m super passionate about changing the dynamics of the working world. Creating more awareness of our wellbeing, supporting the growth and confidence of women who want to achieve their career aspirations and not by compromising our health or future for the job.

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