This question has crossed your mind at some point. You’re probably even asking yourself right now!
Our professional life is the area to which we assign more time and energy and through which we earn our living. Hence, when we feel frustrated, we can be mentally, emotionally, and even physically affected, with repercussions to other areas of our lives.
When we are frustrated, we feel an enormous turmoil and go through different stages: anger at finding ourselves in this situation, resistance, or even devaluing the issue because, after all, we do have a job, and that should be enough. Sometimes, we are in denial and try to pretend it’s not happening. Until mental breakdown and negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, and anguish take over. It is only in a state of considerable discomfort, that we begin to consider the possibility of change.
You don’t have to reach this point to realise it’s time to change.
We need to pay attention to some signals that show us we are in that specific moment. And if so, we should act as quickly as possible. We often deal with situations for too long and what could be simple can become difficult.
To recognise those signals, I would like to share the three fundamental principles for a rewarding professional life:
- Act on your interests, on the subjects that arouse your curiosity,
- Being aligned with the organisation or clients you work with,
- Feeling that you have the natural characteristics and skills needed to do your job.
When these three principles are respected, we are fulfilled. We act on topics that stimulate us, we enjoy what we do, and we apply skills where we are valued and recognized.
When one or more of these principles are weakened, dissatisfaction arises. Depending on which principle is affected, certain signs will appear. That’s why it’s important to know what to look for in each case.
1. When you cannot enjoy your interests
In this case you may experience feelings of apathy, monotony and even weariness. If you are not curious about what you do, you will become a robot in your work, and it is an enormous effort on your side. Certainly, you will also feel that you don’t like what you do. If you insist on staying on this path without changing anything, you’ll be fuelling a self-sacrifice that isn’t sustainable in the long run.
It happened to me. I graduated in Chemistry and worked in that field for a few years. It was a huge effort to go to work, day after day. I often wondered if there was more to life than that! However, I insisted on this choice for a long time, because of financial sustainability and so as not to disappoint the expectations of others. As a result, I experienced emotional and mental breakdowns.
The lack of interest in what we do, should lead us to change our careers. In my case, I moved from a technical role in Quality Control and Assurance to work in Leadership and Team Management. As it happened, I took on this type of role and realised that this was the only part of my job that excited me. But I wanted to work exclusively in that area and leave the technical side of chemistry and quality behind. It was my first career change.
It’s important to note which topics you want to learn more. There are various ways of finding out, such as realising what podcasts you listen to, what books you read, what courses you take, what you lose track of when you talk to others around you. The clues are all there and it’s in this direction that you should consider steering your career.
Start gaining this awareness so that you can gradually take solid steps that bring you closer to a destination that is more in line with you.
2.You like what you do, but you feel uncomfortable with the context.
In this case, you work on something that interests you, and you carry out activities that you enjoy, but there are various factors in the context in which you work that make you feel uncomfortable, such as:
- Misalignment of values with the organisation’s modus operandi,
- Conflicts or lack of trust with your manager, peers, or even clients,
- What they ask of you threatens aspects that are crucial to you, such as work/life balance,
- Lack of new challenges and investment in your training,
- No prospects for career progression,
- Misalignment with the team you work with,
- Salary conditions and benefits below what you consider appropriate.
If this is the case, you should leave this context. It may involve changing jobs or teams, depending on the factors which you feel misaligned.
However, you should avoid switching to the first thing that comes along and supposedly saves you from the situation you’re in. You will collect even more factors that you dislike. You’ll be adding to the list of things you know you don’t want! Instead, you should know what to expect from your future professional relationship and be intentional about looking for it. What I often say is that we should recruit and not just be recruited. This saves us a lot of disappointment and prevents us from creating a reputation as ‘puddle jumpers’ where we can’t seem to stay anywhere for long!
3.You’re interested in what you’re doing, you like the context, but you feel you’re not up to scratch.
In this situation, we feel like real imposters. We’re acting on our interests, in an organisation or project that we value, but we feel we don’t have what it takes to do a good job. Worse, we believe that we have fallen short of the expected performance!
Once again, I’ll give my example. When I changed my career, as I described above, I went to work as a Leadership and Team Management trainer. I was training managers of large companies in projects considered strategic for the clients I was supporting. You can’t imagine my panic with each new project! I thought I didn’t have the necessary experience and preparation, even though I had the confidence of the company that had hired me.
It is not an easy experience. We feel inadequate and insecure. We’re struggling. But it’s a different effort to the one in the scenario in point 1 because we want to do our best, but we’re afraid we won’t be up to it.
In this situation, the key is to ask for support to overcome the imposter syndrome. We can do training courses and request coaches and mentors to help us to develop the aspects in which we feel the weakest and respond better to the demands of the job.
To summarise:
It’s essential to learn from the frustration we feel at work, rather than resisting and devaluing it. Insisting on a situation that doesn’t suit you makes the problem unnecessarily worse.
Now that you know that 3 principles contribute to your fulfilment at work, you can make a self-diagnosis and define the change you need depending on which of these 3 principles you are most weakened by:
- If you have no interest in your work, look at what arouses your curiosity and consider redirecting your career toward these themes,
- If you don’t like the context, avoid going into escape mode and identify your expectations in the professional relationship. Try to switch to contexts that are in line with these,
- If you work on subjects you like in a context you enjoy and you feel like an imposter, seek support to overcome your difficulties.
It sounds simple.
It really is!
What makes it difficult for us to deal with career changes are the obstacles we put in our way, such as our resistance to accepting what we feel and insisting on staying in a situation that doesn’t suit us.
