My Tips to Stop Being Miserable at Your Day Job

Monica Frederick (00:00):
Well. Hey there friend and welcome to this episode of Monica Chats. If we haven’t met before then my name is Monica Frederick and I am a life coach and I help women discover who they are and discover their passions and I help them find happiness where they are right now and be able to set goals and take action on those goals for their future. And today I’m excited that you’re listening to this one, especially because this one’s all about finding happiness where you currently are right now. So it’s really easy to be able to look to the future and look to all these big beautiful goals that we have and think about how glorious and awesome it’ll be whenever we accomplish the goals that we do have for the future. But then we look back at where we currently are right now and start to poke holes in everything, like start to think about how this part of our life sucks and how we’re not there, where we want to be and how old we are compared to where we should have been by this age.
Monica Frederick (00:58):
I mean, I could literally go on and on and on and I don’t think enough of us talk about where we currently are and finding happiness and contentment in where we are now. If you’ve been following me at all for a while, then you know that I am a girl that loves to talk about goals. I love to talk about taking action on goals and I will never stop talking about that until the end of my time on this planet of earth, right? But I am also going to be able to talk a lot more about being happy where you currently are and finding ways to be content where you are while reaching those big goals. Because if you’re not happy where you currently are and you don’t find satisfaction in what you currently have right now, then you won’t find satisfaction even when you do accomplish those big goals that you have for yourself.
Monica Frederick (01:47):
And today is definitely all about that because it is all about how to stop being miserable in your day job. So no matter if this is something that comes up for you because you’re in a day job while you bring to life your business, or maybe you are just in a job that you hate while you search for another career or somewhere in between there. This episode is for you if you are in any where on that spectrum. So if you just hate your job at all and you want to feel less miserable while you’re in it, this one’s for you too. So this episode is actually really inspired by a recent session that I had with a coaching client of mine. And she’s somebody that wants to become an author and she wants to start her own business. But right now she is in a day job where it’s currently paying for the bills and paying for her to learn how to start her own business.
Monica Frederick (02:45):
But the thing is is that she’s absolutely hates this job and the way that she feels about this job is affecting every other area of her life, including being able to take actions on those big dreams that she wants to like being an author or starting her own business, things like that. And this conversation that I had with her really inspired me because I know she is not the only one who has gone through this. I myself have definitely gone through this where I mean like I talk about almost in every episode my own past about how I had a career that I absolutely hated. So this is something that I definitely know all about and I know that almost everybody out there, it goes through something like this as well. I want to start off saying that if we don’t find something to find joy in our job, like let’s say that you do have a day job and you’re trying to be able to quit the day job in order to start your own business or do your own thing or whatever it is, we’ve got to be able to at least find a way to be grateful for the job and to not be miserable in it because if we let that seep into every other area of our life, it’s going to affect how much effort and energy we put into the big goals that we currently have.
Monica Frederick (04:05):
So there’s two different things that I really want to focus in on on on this episode. And that is the first one is to redirect negative thoughts and self-talk. So there’s two different areas that I want to go into with this and the first to to remind yourself of the power that you do have. So we don’t have power over our circumstances. We don’t have power over the culture of our world. We don’t have power over anybody else. That is not us. We even if they are super close to us, they’re our family or friends or whatever. We don’t have the power to change their mind or their actions. The only two things that you really have power over is how you want to feel and how you react and the power that you have over your current moment. And so I know that sounds really limiting, but actually I really believe that this is very empowering and I’ll explain why, but I’ll give you an example of both.
Monica Frederick (05:07):
So as far as having power over your moment, start to ask yourself things like, how do I want to spend this moment? Do I want to spend this moment feeling this way? And also ask yourself and just declare, I choose to feel differently. So you can apply this to almost any area, not almost, you can apply this to any area of your life, but especially when it comes to how to stop being miserable at work. If you master these two things out of even anything else that I talk about in this episode of the podcast, then you will start to see really huge shifts in your mindset. But I wanna spend a little bit of time honing in on these two things right here because you could think about in a limiting way you could think, cool, Monica, thanks for depressing me about how little I have control over or you can think about it in this way.
Monica Frederick (06:07):
Recognizing that you don’t have control over your circumstances and other people is actually a really freeing thought because if you are in the mindset of you can control other people or you can control outside circumstances, then you’re going to be spending a lot of energy focusing in on how to fix other people, how to fix your circumstance or how to fix other things. It’s a lot of energy. It’s a lot of calories burned in your brain thinking about how to control things that you ultimately really can’t, right? But if you just focus in on what you do have control over, then the possibilities of what you do with that are really truly endless. And so how this ties into how to stop being miserable at work is in the fact that if you notice yourself becoming upset at work or if you spend a lot of time wishing that you didn’t have to go to work or spending all of the time that you have at home or outside of work thinking about how miserable you’re going to be at work, I have a little bit of tough love for you.
Monica Frederick (07:17):
You’re choosing to feel that way and now I hope you don’t get mad at me and turn off the podcast right away and just think that I don’t understand where you’re coming from. I hope you stick with me here because if you start to think about how you can be responsible for the way you feel about something, especially when it comes to how to stop being miserable at work, then you will start to realize that you have more control over how you feel about anything at all. So if you’re still with me here, then I’m glad you’re hanging on because I want to revisit what you can ask yourself and what you can declare. So I said it earlier and I want to repeat it again. So when you feel like you are slipping into being miserable about your day job and you are thinking things like, I wish I wasn’t here, how did I get myself here?
Monica Frederick (08:08):
How can I get out of this job? How can I get quit my job quicker? Things like that. If you kind of feel yourself going into the spiral of what that looks like, then I have two things for you to remind yourself what to do. You know, I love taking action. So here are your two action items when this happens. So in order to remember, you have the power over your moment and your mindset. I would first ask yourself, do I want to spend this moment feeling this way or something along the lines of do I want to spend this moment being miserable in my day job? Do I want to do that? And if the answer is no, then move onto saying something like, I choose to feel differently. I choose to be grateful for the day job I have. I choose to think about how it affords me the option to be able to work on my passions and my dreams, things like that.
Monica Frederick (09:09):
You see how I’m redirecting that negative kind of miserable thought about the day job and turning it into a more powerful and empowering thought. This takes practice, but the more and more you do that, the more and more you start to see that you actually do have control over how you feel about anything and especially about your day job. So you may be thinking like, well, I don’t really have thoughts like that. It’s more like questioning myself. It’s more like, how did I get myself here? Or why didn’t I quit this job when I had the chance? Or how did I end up in this situation? I mean things like this, if you, if you hear yourself asking questions that don’t really have answers to or the answers are something that are going to be putting you in a worse mood than this section is for you because there are these ideas about high grade questions and low grade questions and I want to get into that here.
Monica Frederick (10:13):
So in this idea we want to make sure that you’re asking yourself high grade questions. This is something that I went into a conversation with a client recently and spent a lot of time in, but I think by the end she really saw that she had the power to ask herself questions that put her into inspired action and put her into motion on her goals instead of looking the opposite way and thinking about how miserable she was in the day job. And so I hope this is the same for you as well. So I really want to dig into this here. So a high grade question, actually you know what? Let’s start with a low grade question first because that’s where we naturally go. That’s where our mindset kind of naturally goes at. It asks questions that don’t really help us. So a low grade question would be something that would yield a low quality answer.
Monica Frederick (11:07):
So these are questions that basically make you continue to feel like shit. I mean, I’m going to be real. It’s going to make you continue to be miserable at your day job or whatever it is you’re questioning yourself. So these are low grade questions. Basically they yield answers that only make you feel worse about yourself and your situation. Or they may not even have a real answers at all. But that silence that you feel afterwards will continue to make you feel bad about where you are. So we want to change these questions. We want to be able to recognize when we have these questions that we ask ourselves, usually in a source of a sarcastic tone, right? But we ask ourself these and we know that there’s not a good answer to them. We just, we’re doing it because it’s easy for us to hate on ourself when we feel like we made a mistake or we took a path in life that didn’t yield us the results fast enough.
Monica Frederick (12:10):
We do this because it’s easier than to recognize that we can actually do something about this. So the idea here is we want to change these questions into high grade questions that will yield high grade answers, right? So these answers that you will have to these high grade questions, these are going to help you take inspired action. So really when we asked the question, the high grade question and then we answer it with a high grade answer, these answers are going to help remind you of how much power you have and how much power you have over the right. Now let’s say that you’re asking yourself, why am I even in this job? How did I get this myself to this point? Yada, yada, yada, right? Something like that. So you would recognize when you are asking a low grade question like that, that is going to yield a low quality result or low quality answer.
Monica Frederick (13:11):
And then you can decide right in that moment, do I want to leave it like that or do I want to ask myself a high grade question? And so we could change that question into something along the lines of how is this job helping me to create what I want to? How is this job going to help me bring my passions to life? These are the types of questions that will yield a high quality answer because not only will you actually be able to answer that, but the answers that you give will most likely get you into action towards creating that passion or creating that service or whatever it is that you feel really strongly about. All right, so we’re going to move right along to the second half of this episode, and that is how to stop being miserable at your day job is to stop letting it waste your time.
Monica Frederick (14:11):
Essentially. Don’t waste time by hating what you have, but instead take action on what you want. So there’s a really great quote by Tony Robbins, and it’s going to be one that you might hate me for saying out loud. I might get some flack for it, but that is okay. Hopefully you’ll stick around after the end of that and stick with me for the rest of this episode because if you take this on and you start to believe it, then your mindset and your life will honestly change. So the quote that I love is, the reason you’re suffering is because you’re focused on yourself. And again, I can’t say that’s mine, that’s Tony Robbins. But I love this quote and I love it because it’s 100% true. Even if we want to say that, it’s not like we want to say, well I’m suffering because of X or I’m suffering because of my circumstances or how somebody is treating me or whatever the situation is.
Monica Frederick (15:14):
But if we can take responsibility for the way that we feel and we take responsibility for the fact that we are suffering, then at that point we can recognize that we have the power to change that. Cause remember what I talked about earlier, how you have power over how you react and how you feel and you have power over that moment. So if you think to yourself that you can change the fact that you’re suffering. If you focus on something other than yourself, that’s a game changer, my friend. And so when you are sitting there and you are being miserable thinking about your day job or anything like that, then it’s time to think bigger than where you are right now. It’s time to think bigger than the thing that’s making you feel miserable, right? We need to focus in on your purpose. So take time to actually think about what your true purpose and what your passion truly is.
Monica Frederick (16:15):
So if you are in a day job because you want to bring something else to life, then that thing that you want to bring to life, whether it’s a business, whether it’s a book, maybe it’s just a creative project, maybe you want to volunteer more. I don’t care what it is, but most likely if you want to bring something like that to life, it’s because you want to help people in any sort of way. It could be a small way. It doesn’t mean that you know, your dream is to go out and cure cancer. I mean if it is, then that’s awesome. Please do that. But what I’m saying is is that your passions can be something along the lines of like you want to be in your day job so you can make jewelry and maybe you’re thinking, well Monica, like my passion is making jewelry so I don’t really see how that’s helping people.
Monica Frederick (17:06):
Well, I would disagree with that because you know, you’re helping them find pieces that make them confident in themselves or maybe that piece, that necklace that you’re making is something that they are going to wear to their engagement photo shoot because they just got engaged. I dunno, you could see where I’m going with this though. There’s emotional value tied into that even though it’s a material item. So if you’re sitting there and you’re thinking, yeah, the thing that I want to do is not something that’s going to help other people, then I would like to disagree with you. I bet what you want to do is something that will improve the life of somebody else. Even if it’s a luxury thing, it’s making them feel better about where they currently are. Right? So your true passion and your purpose is bigger than your day job.
Monica Frederick (17:54):
It’s bigger than the fact that yes, right now you have to stay in your day job in order to pay your bills. So if you continue to focus in on that, rather than the fact that you are in a day job, you will start to feel less miserable that you’re in it again. So we can go back to those high grade and low grade questions. When you ask yourself, how is this job helping me bring my purpose and passion to life? You could talk about how it’s funding your initial investment in order to buy the materials to make the jewelry. If you’re a jewelry designer or whatever, but you can apply that to any area or passion that you have, right? Whether you’re an author, whether you want to start volunteering, whatever it is, you can apply that same idea here. And so I want to kind of talk about how you can take the same amount of energy that you’re pouring into being miserable at your day job.
Monica Frederick (18:49):
And you can take that and make it useful energy by viewing your passions, by feeling your desires, whatever that is, right? I mean you’re literally burning the same amount of calories, right? Your brain takes calories in order to work. And so if you’re burning all of those calories, thinking about how miserable in your you are in your day job, you can take those same amount of calories and flip it around and think one 80 and think about how you can bring your passions and your purpose to life, right? So it’s all about just deciding where your focus is. Are you going to continue to focus in on how miserable you are at your day job? Or are you going to focus in on what can I do right now to be able to bring my dreams to life so that way I don’t have to stay in my day job and I can help somebody else.
Monica Frederick (19:38):
Because when you start thinking about more than just yourself, then your day job starts to become just this distant memory. Even if you are going to it every day, it starts to become less and less important and less and less impactful because the idea of bringing something to life that will help somebody else far outweighs what you’re currently dealing with in your data. How you can do this is by reminding yourself why your passion is your passion. You know, why do you want to do this? Like who is this helping? Yes, you may want to do this because you want financial freedom or you want freedom over your schedule or anything else. Like those are great motivators and they’re important obviously, but they’re very self centered, which is fine. We all deserve to be thinking of a about ourselves and our own needs. But ultimately what you’re probably doing is something bigger than just that, right?
Monica Frederick (20:37):
Because if it was all about the money for you, then you would just go out and find a get rich quick scheme. I cannot say that, but you would find something like that. Right. So you’re probably focusing in on a passion that will be able to help you financially, help your schedule, but also positively impact other people and that’s where we really want to focus in on is that really fulfilling part because being financially stable and having an open and flexible schedule is great, but that’s not what’s going to be fulfilling in your life, right? It’s how you help other people is what’s going to help you feel fulfilled and that is going to be the part that takes you away from feeling miserable about your day job and keeping you small. Thinking only about the here and now and only thinking about the bad parts of here and now, but it’s going to help you realize all of your true potential and help you divert that attention that you used to spend on being miserable in your day job, into bringing your passions and purpose to life.
Monica Frederick (21:44):
I could feel myself getting heated. I’m wearing a sweater right now and I’m sitting here sweating in it. I have my heat off in my house and it’s about 40 degrees in my house, but I’m getting so riled up about this that I can feel the sweat dripping down my back. I know that might be a little bit too much information, but I’m just letting you know. That’s why I’m getting a little fired up right now. So I hope that you’re getting just as fired up as I am thinking about all of these things and about how much power you actually do have. Even if you are stuck in a shitty, crappy day job, you have so much power and you can be able to bring whatever it is to life as long as you continue to focus in on that and not your own suffering via being miserable in your day job.
Monica Frederick (22:29):
Okay, so I know I got a little bit crazy there at the end. I hope that I didn’t lose you after saying that you are responsible for your own suffering. I know that’s a hard one to hear. I hate like when I first heard that, I was like, are you freaking kidding me? No. How can you, how dare you say something to me like that. So if this is your first time hearing it and you’re mad at me, then I accept that. But hopefully you will continue to ponder on it and think about it because if you accept that, then you will have so much more freedom later on. I am telling you I cannot I cannot go into that enough. I just love thinking about that like that because it really does give me that freedom to focus in on what’s important to me.
Monica Frederick (23:11):
So you know me and you know that I love to take action and I love to hold you accountable to taking action as well. So I would love to know which one of these two really resonated with you. So whether it’s redirecting your negative thoughts or thinking about high grade vet questions versus low grade questions or whether it be not wasting any more time thinking about being miserable in your day job. I would love to hear about it actually over in our action takers lounge Facebook group. So if you, for those of you that do not know, I do have a Facebook group that is all about taking action and accountability and just focusing in not only on being happy where you are and who you are in this moment, but also being able to take action on those big goals that you have. So I will link that in the description wherever you are listening to this episode here along with the show notes for this episode as well so you can get a deeper dive into what I’m talking about here.
Monica Frederick (24:11):
And last but not least, if you hear me talking about passions and purpose and bringing that to life and you’re like, Monica, that sounds great, but I’m in this job that I thought I would be in for the rest of my life and retire in and I thought this was my purpose and passion and I have no freaking idea what my purpose or passion is. Then head on over to the show notes, a link it in the description here below as well, but I have a freaking fantastic free guide that goes all over how to figure out what your passion is, what your purpose is and the next steps in order to bring that to life. Because when you know what that is and you start to get fired up about that, literally nothing can get in your way. Yes, there may be some times where you question yourself, you have doubts, you have bad days.
Monica Frederick (24:59):
Once you know what your passion is and how that helps other people and how fulfilling that will really be, you’ll start to get really fired up about that. So I, I invite you to download that if you don’t have that already. And so that is it for this episode guys. But next week we are going into episode number 50 which is crazy to me like that. I’ve done 50 of these types of episodes here, but next week we’re going to start talking about once you define what your passion is, how to not get caught up in the small busy work. And actually how to take action on your goals to start making the pendulum swing, or to really have some needle moving actions that you can take and not getting caught up in the busy-ness in the busy work and things like that. So I cannot wait to see you in that next episode, and I will talk to you later.