If you are unhappy at work and want to do something about it but don’t know where to start, read on because this message is for you.
I constantly get approached by women who are unhappy or fed up at work who realise that they need to do something about it but they don’t know where to start. We spend around 45 years of our lives at work, so why spend that time doing something you do not enjoy. I am sure that you would not even spend a quarter of that time in a relationship with someone you didn’t love, so why stay in a job you hate?
The long term consequences of being unhappy or fed up at work can lead to low motivation; low self esteem; low self confidence; poor performance; even depression. It can also impact on your personal relationships outside of work. Is this what you want for yourself? How long are you going to remain in a job that you are so unhappy with?
In my research of women in their mid to late careers, not only were the women who were unhappy at work suffering with issues of low confidence and fear, they were also suffering the physiological symptoms of stress.
If you are unhappy at work or fed up with what you do, you owe it to yourself to do something about it as we all deserve to enjoy our work. Would you not rather love what you do and enjoy leaping out of bed on a Monday morning as opposed to pulling the covers back over your head, dreading the day ahead of you.
If you are unhappy at work or fed up with your job and want to do something about it but don’t know where to start, the first place to start is with an examination of you.
Explore the reasons for your unhappiness
What is it about what you do that makes you so miserable? Is it the environment? Is it the people you work with? Or is it that you have achieved all that you can achieve in your current role and need to seek a new challenge.
What changes can you make within your current role in order to get more enjoyment from your job? If you enjoy the environment and don’t want to move from it, look at ways that you can make what you do more satisfying and set yourself new challenges. This could be anything from starting new projects or setting up a staff group.
Once you have identified the source of your unhappiness, take action and do something about it.
What is important to you?
As you go through life, what you want from a career changes and you will have different priorities at different stages of your life. What was a priority for you in your 20s will not necessary be the same in your 30s and 40s. What were the reasons for you entering your current career? Was this what you really wanted? Or did you go into this particular field because it was expected of you?
How does the work that you do align with who you are now? Does it align with your values? Do you even know what your values are? Your values go to the core of who you are and if the work you do does not align with your values, it is not aligning with you.
If you are not sure of what really matters to you or are not sure of what your values are, you can download a free values elicitation exercise here.
Once you are clear about what really matters to you and what doesn’t, you will be in a better position to identify what it is that you need to do in order to take action and find something that you love.
If you are unhappy at work, fed up and miserable in your job, the first place to start with is you.
Author Bio:
Carol Stewart, The London Career Designer, is a Personal Development, Career & Business Coach and founder of Abounding Solutions. She works with women in their forties who are unhappy at work but are too scared to do anything about it. She helps them to develop the confidence to make a career move and find something that they love. This could be a complete career change or it could even be exiting the corporate environment and setting up their own business.
Carol herself made a significant career change in 2011 when at the age of 44 she left the organisation she had worked in for 28 years, went back to university and set up her own business.
She is also a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management and a Member of the Association for Coaching.
