How to make life bearable if you hate your job

If you wake up every morning with the thought “I hate my job” then life can be pretty miserable, especially as we spend a huge proportion of our life at work.  The obvious answer is to get another job but this isn’t always practical or possible in the short term especially in the current economic climate.

It is easy to blame your job for life’s ills and have unrealistic expectations about how great life would be if only you didn’t have to work but before taking the plunge to something else it can be a very useful exercise to analyse specifically what is making you unhappy about your current employment.  Do you hate what you do for a living?  Is there a specific person who is making your working day miserable? Would you be happy doing a similar occupation but in an organisation with a different working culture?  When you know the true nature of the problem, then you can start to take action that solves or mitigates the situation.

If you have an overwhelming feeling that you are in the wrong profession completely then you have three options. Option one is to take action and change to your chosen career.  If that isn’t possible, for example because there is very little chance you would make a living as a professional rock guitarist especially as you are 46 years old and you haven’t played guitar since you were a student, then option two is to think of ways that you can get a flavour of that of that chosen profession in a more realistic way.  To continue the rock guitarist example, you could carve out time at the weekend to play guitar, find some like-minded souls and form a band, determine to go to one live music gig a month or write a blog on rock music. All of these ideas are activities which you could easily do alongside your job and in making time to do something that you enjoy, you might find that your job becomes more bearable.  Option three, by the way, is to do nothing and stay miserable!

Another way to make life bearable is to get into a hobby. Very often when I coach someone who isn’t happy in their job but doesn’t know what they would rather be doing I ask them what they are passionate about.  They come back with a variety of answers such as cooking, horse-riding, the environment and then they very often add the sentiment “oh, but I haven’t done that for ages.” What is it that you enjoy doing but you haven’t done in a long time? Could you make some time to do that activity? Even if you are very busy could you ring-fence one Saturday morning a month to go windsurfing? Could you leave work on time just one night a week to go an evening class?  Could you find twenty minutes a day to play a musical instrument?

Doing a hobby can build your self-confidence, restore your motivation and give you something else in your life over and above the treadmill of work.  As well as being enjoyable, all of these benefits of doing a hobby can also spill over into your work life and may help you find a realistic way out of your current crisis.

If you know what you would rather be doing with your life, whether that is something completely different to your current occupation or a new role within your company or field, then think of some steps you can take now to start manoeuvring  yourself into that position.  I call this building ‘Plan B on the side’ and have found from personal experience that it massively reduces stress and anxiety from the day job. This is because you are taking constructive action to build an escape route and are therefore no longer stuck purely at the mercy of your job. Again, it will help your motivation and this will benefit your work life as well as your Plan B activities.

Finally, try to find some positives in your current situation. What value does your job give you? Your salary enables you to live, you may be learning useful skills and your colleagues form a great network which you may need to draw upon in the future. At the end of each day note down three positives and have gratitude for them. Over time this exercise will help you to change your mindset from one that is dominated by negativity and stress to a state where you can see an improvement in daily life and new possibilities for the future.