Working Wounded: Seven Signs It’s Time For A Career Change – Part 1

Not only are we busier than we have ever been, but we have come to see this as the natural state of affairs. Furthermore, when we do suffer because of our work habits, we tend to assume that it is a personal failing or weakness on our part. Rarely do we consider there might be a problem with our work.

Our working lives are structured around the work week and each day of that week tends to bring with it some typical feelings and challenges. In the following post (presented in two parts), I examine several common experiences that may indicate the need for a career change as seen through the days of the week. 

While the experiences themselves may not always occur on the particular day in question, that does not necessarily preclude some quality of them from being present in some way in a person's life.

 

Thoreau's quote, of course, comes from a time before inclusive language and women in the workplace. He means all of us, men and women, and especially all of us who "labor under a mistake."

That mistake is to think of our work as only a financial concern and not as a source of meaning, as well.

Recent studies have shown that 65% of Americans are unhappy at work. That is a lot of unhappy Mondays. Far too many. 

One man I worked with described to me his habit of hitting the snooze button on his alarm 8 or 9 times every morning until his time eventually ran out and he had no choice but to get up and face the day at work. Mondays were the hardest because he had the whole week ahead of him still to face. 

After going through a career exploration process with me, he was able to identify a new direction for himself and returned to school to study the field of sports medicine.

On the morning he was to register by phone for his new program, he was so excited that he leaped out of bed, showered and dressed, and was waiting by his phone to begin the registration process--all before the first alarm of his clock sounded. No more quiet desperation.

"Monday Mourning" is that feeling of depression and desperation that can hit after the weekend, after vacation, or after any time away from work. If even the thought of work makes you feel like you don't want to get out of bed, that's a pretty strong indicator a career change might be needed.

Thoreau's answer to a life of desperation was to "live deliberately." He wrote:

To live deliberately. To live deep. To refuse to settle or "practise resignation." These are stirring ideas. When we allow work to be as much a calling as an occupation, it can elevate our days to reflect these enlivening ideals.

During the "terrible twos" children learn to say the word 'no.' This is a time that children begin to play with their identities as people separate from their parents. Saying 'no' creates a firm boundary between themselves and others and helps them to get a better sense of themselves as individuals.

Unfortunately, the 'no' that we speak during our "Terrible Tuesdays" is a very different kind of no. Instead of expressing identity, this no expresses the loss of identity. It is the no that comes of no longer feeling connected to our own interests and desires. It is the no of boredom and disinterest. It is the no of life drying up, as Joseph Campbell puts it.

On Terrible Tuesdays, conversations tend to look something like this:

"Do you want to go to a movie?"

"Nah."

"Well, then what do you want to do?"

"I don't know. Nothing I guess."

"You never want to do anything, anymore!"

Doing work that makes you unhappy is like training yourself to be disappointed. Boredom, under these circumstances, becomes a kind of defense against further disappointment. If you don't know what you want, goes the thinking, you won't be disappointed when you don't get it. The cost, of course, is a loss of energy and interest in life, what we have come to identify as depression.

"The crucial thing to live for," teaches Campbell, "is the sense of life in what you are doing." And when people reconnect to that, the dried up life can flow again.

Have you ever found yourself immobilized at work? There is a task to do, but you just can't find the will or the energy inside to get it done. Instead, you stare out the window or reach one more time for the smartphone to check your Twitter feed. Wednesday is known as 'hump day," but some days even the smallest tasks become enormous humps that you just can't get over.

If there is no intrinsic meaning in the work you do, then nothing really flows of itself. All the necessary energy to do your work requires a conscious effort to summon and direct it. The result is a kind of energetic paralysis that the psychologist Carl Jung called a "loss of soul." He described the condition this way:

Sound familiar?

We are, Jung said, modern men and women "in search of a soul." We work to make a "disposable income," but can lose "disposable energy" in the process. In our narrow focus on the economic values of work, we have lost the more human values of meaning and connection. It is these values that give us motivation and energy for our work.

The good news is that we don't have to choose between meaning and money. We just have to get our priorities straight. The field of positive psychology has shown that it is not success that leads to happiness. Rather, it is being happy creates the conditions that lead to success. 

If you cannot find the will to work, stop beating yourself up for being "lazy" and consider whether a career change may be needed to get you moving again.