Think before you switch jobs
Copied and Pasted from:
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/05/07/five-reasons-not-to-change-careers/
Five situations when you shouldn’t change careers
In
many respects, changing careers is like dumping your significant other.
It’s a lot easier to do than solving the problems you’re facing. But in
so many cases, hard work and self-knowledge could solve most of the
problems. And I have found — in both careers and relationships — that
if I get through a tough spot, I learn way more about myself and the
world than if I had left and started over. I already know the starting
over routine very well. But I don’t know so much about the sticking
with it routine.
Each of us is probably better at one or the other. If you are great
at starting over, but not so great at sticking with it, I can’t help
you with your significant other, but I can help you with your career.
Here are five situations when you should not change careers.
1. You hate your boss. This is not a problem with your career. Change jobs instead of changing careers. Or, get better at managing your boss to get the treatment you want.
2. You want more prestige. Get a therapist - you’re
having a confidence crisis, not a career crisis. Prestige is a hollow
goal when it comes to careers. The quest for interesting, fun,
rewarding work is one thing, but the quest for fame is, in fact, bad for you emotionally.
3. You want to meet new people. Try going to a bar,
or Club Med. Is the problem that you are not able to make friends in
your industry? It would have to be a pretty small industry for this to
not be your own, social problem as opposed to an industry-wide problem.
Be honest with yourself: Maybe what you really want is to get a life.
Pick up a hobby.
4. You want more meaning in life. A job does not give life meaning.
And anyway, people have been searching for the meaning of life forever.
It’s a highly disputed topic, and probably too charged an issue to lay
on your career.
5. You want more happiness. I have said many times that your job does not control your happiness, your mind does. Here’s good news, though: You can give your mind a happier disposition by meditating. I like that there is science behind this (thanks, Dylan). But I was a meditation convert as a volleyball player, before I knew the science.
One of the best ways to teach your body how to do something, by the
way, is to watch yourself doing it perfectly, in your mind. I taught
myself to jump serve by imagining the serve in my head. I divided the
serve into twenty motions. And I imagined them all. Thousands of times.
(Wait, look: I am so pleased to have found this video of jump serving.)
But you can’t jump serve if you’re tense. So I had to learn to calm
my body through meditation while I imagined the jump serves. Each night
I meditated, and instead of focusing on the traditional “om” chant, I
focused on the ball.
That was my favorite part of my whole volleyball career. This is how
I know that you can make yourself like your career better — any career – by meditating: another reason you don’t have to change careers.
