What You Need to Know When You Hate Your Job

When you hate your job, it definitely affects how you see yourself and the world. Believe me, that’s exactly how I felt in my corporate career in the fashion industry.

I spent 40+ hours a week feeling miserable almost 100% of the time. All those hours took a toll on the rest of my free time, too. It was like I was either at work hating work or at home, hating that I still had to go to work.

I gotta say, spending that much time hating something is totally exhausting. If you’re in the same spot, this episode is for you because we’re talking about what you need to know when you hate your job.

What we’ll cover in today’s episode will make you feel invigorated because you’re going to see all the options you DO have even when you hate your job. You’ll also start to see your current corporate career as something rigged in your favor instead of a prison sentence. Seeing this will allow you to find fulfillment NOW instead of waiting for your circumstances to change.

Let’s start with where you are right now.

If you hate your job, then it's probably affecting every area of your life, right? Today on the podcast, we're talking about what you need to know when you hate your job, and what you can do NOW to help you create happiness and change the way you feel. Click through to read the post or listen to the podcast episode.

| job satisfaction | fulfilling career | career advice | mindset tips

Enjoy where you are now (even when you hate your job)

Telling yourself that you’ll be “happy when” means you’re power over your life to outside circumstances. So, when you hate your job, and you’re letting everything/everyone else dictate your emotions other than you.

It’s inevitably going to affect all areas of your life. If you’re there 40+ hours a week and only awake 105-ish hours in the week, that’s a pretty decent amount of time. And when you hate your job, it’s going to be easy to spend the rest of your remaining waking hours dreading when you have to go back to work.

If you’re used to telling yourself, “I’ll be happy when…..” you’ll keep finding new “happy whens.” Why? Because you’ve been so focused on all the things outside of you that you think will make you happy that when your “happy when” actually happens, you’ll hardly notice. You’ll start looking for the next thing.

This is because you realized it wasn’t the thing that makes you happy; it’s you. However, most people don’t understand how to manage their minds or work on creating happiness, so they revert to their default way of thinking happiness is somewhere over there.

If you get into the habit of deciding that you’re responsible for how you feel, it’ll be even sweeter when you do get to quit your career. I once heard someone say, “It’s not your job’s job to make you happy; that’s your job,” and I’ve carried that quote with me ever since.

The real reason you’re miserable at work

It’s easy to blame the job for the way you feel. You’re thinking about all the times your boss was a jerk, demands of customers, or how incompetent your coworkers are. But none of those things are what’s causing you misery when you hate your job.

The intensity of your misery at work is directly related to how long you think you’re stuck there with no options. For example, your demanding boss doesn’t seem like such an intense factor in your happiness if you could get rid of them the next day, right?

That doesn’t stop them from being a jerk, but it does change how you feel about them. In this example, you thought you had the option to change the circumstance that is making you feel bad.

Obviously, you don’t have that type of control over who you work with or your work circumstances. If you did, you probably wouldn’t be reading this. But that doesn’t mean that you’re stuck in your misery.

You just have to create options that will help change the way you feel.

It could be as simple as deciding, “I have the option to let my boss get to me today, and I’m choosing to let them be them. How they act defines who they are more than it does me.“

It seems subtle, but making this decision shifts you out of being a victim of your job and into empowering yourself not to wait to feel better.

What real fulfillment is and how to get it when you hate your job.

Spoiler Alert: It’s not the most working at the most highly rated career on Glassdoor or a gig at Google.

Fulfillment is important because being satisfied with your job has a LOT to do with being satisfied with your life. Most people don’t feel like their life is fulfilling because they don’t have as much money as they want, travel as much as they want, or have as much access as they want. And logic says that if you have more money, you have more options and can do fulfilling things and that your career gives you the money to do that.

It’s like a cycle that keeps you juuuuust out of reach of a satisfying and fulfilling life. If you keep telling yourself that it’s outside your means and resources, it will continue to be.

So, we need to make the definition of “fulfillment” actually help you RIGHT NOW instead of maybe someday when things change.

To me, fulfillment means “actively looking for ways to live in line with the version of you that you love and not needing anything to change to do so.”

What would be a definition that gets you inspired about today instead of wishing upon a star for things to change in life?

Try these when you hate your job and feel stuck.

Define your core values and find ways to take action at work when you hate your job. I bet when you find more ways to infuse your core values (aka the personality traits that you admire about yourself), you’ll start to hate it less.
Find all the things/people you’re delegating your power over your emotions. Maybe it’s your coworkers, boss, your to-do list, or your calendar. What are all the things that you say “____ makes me hate my job” Then practice deciding how you’re going to feel about them today.

The next step is to schedule a free call with me to see how and where to start implementing this. I know it’s hard to see where you can add these into your current situation, and if you’re trying to DIY this, you might hit a wall. A fresh perspective will be incredibly eye-opening.

You absolutely can change the quality of your life now that doesn’t involve waiting for other people to change or your workload to lighten. The only thing you need is to powerfully decide that it’s YOU that decides how you feel, not if your boss happens to be nice that day.

How empowering is it to think of the version of you that gets to feel how she wants to when she wants to instead of thinking that she needs to wait for someone to allow her to?

So, why wait? You’ve got this.

xo,

Monica