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There were so many times during my career in medicine, where I wanted to quit. I wanted to just walk away.
I dreamed about running away. I fantasized about driving off with my dog into the deserts of Utah and getting a job working at one of the National Parks.
But I felt like I couldn’t just up and leave. Essentially, I felt stuck.
I was up to my eyeballs in student loans and had no idea how I could pay those off without a doctors salary.
It didn’t seem like quitting was a real option. I figured I had already made the huge mistake of going into medicine and now I was forced to live with the consequences. I just had to suck it up, power through and make it until retirement and that was all there was to it.
I had chosen my lot in life and now I was destined to live it out forever.
Talk about dramatic!?
Accept it or change it
Thankfully during my residency, I was also having a bit of a spiritual awakening. I read the book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and he dropped some pretty serious truth bombs on me.
One of the sections of the book Tolle asks “Do you resent what you are doing? It may be your job, or you may have agreed to do something and are doing it, but part of you resists or resents it….What thoughts is your mind creating about the situation?”
Resentment was one of the main emotions I was feeling around my career in medicine. So this really hit home with me. I realized I was feeling resentful because my mind had a story that I was stuck in this situation. That there was no way out and I was doomed to misery.
In the book, he continues to talk about how futile negativity is. He says that for any situation where you feel negativity you can either accept the situation or change it, “all else is madness”.
For some reason, boiling it down into these blunt terms, either accept the situation or change it, finally made me realize I did have options.
I could accept the fact that I was pursuing a career in medicine.
Or, change it by leaving my career in medicine.
Once that glimmer of possibility and hope started to open up for me, it was a game changer.
Because here is the thing: you are not stuck.
You have options. At the very least you have the options to accept where you are or change where you are.
Many times the things keeping us stuck are just the stories in our head about why we can’t do the thing on our hearts.
5 Beliefs Keeping You Stuck
Through reflecting back on my own story and my work with clients, I’ve realized there are 5 major stories, or beliefs, that keep us stuck in unfulfilling jobs.
And one of the best ways I know of to start disproving your limiting beliefs is to start to poke holes in them by providing counter examples.
So let’s talk through the 5 beliefs keeping you stuck with my best hole poking attempts.
#1 Nobody actually likes their job
This is one I hear alllll the time. The idea that work is supposed to be hard because that’s the defintion of work. If we enjoyed it, it wouldn’t really be a job.
It is such a massive part of the culture to be unenthused with our jobs. It many ways it’s actually expected. Wanting to love our work is equivalent to being ungrateful for the work you do have or being unrealistic about what it means to be an adult.
But this is all just BS. A limiting belief coming from the ego. One clear way to tell is by the use of the “all or nothing” language nobody.
And to disprove it we need to look for counterexamples.
Do you know anyone who enjoys their job? Even if it’s just a teensy bit? Seriously, have you ever come across one person, deriving even the tiniest pleasure from the work they are doing?
What about Rachel Hollis? She certainly seems to love the work she is doing empowering women from the stage and writing NYT Best Sellers.
What about Michelle Obama? She seemed to be passionate about all of her efforts to end childhood obesity.
What about JK Rowling? She seems to be lit up by writing. Even though she has made plenty of money from the Harry Potter series to never work again, she continues to write and publish books.
If you can think of just one example, then it’s automatically not true that “nobody likes their jobs”.
So how would it feel to try on the new belief…. “it’s possible to like your job.”
#2 My job will be better when….
I start making more money.
I get promoted.
I retire…?
This is the classic case of delayed gratification which I know all too well. Maybe you feel miserable now, but are able to rationalize it away through the promise of a better future.
“Yes, I am unhappy now, but that’s because I am new to the field and I have to put in the work. My job will be better once I get promoted (once I’m the boss, once I start moving further up the ladder or further along in my training)”.
To start with, I firmly believe the teachings of Abraham Hicks which says there is no happy end to an unhappy journey. If you are miserable all throughout the process, how in the world are you going to be happy at the destination? What even is the destination?
Secondly, let’s check out the facts. If you are advancing along any kind of corporate or professional ladder the good news is there are people further along than you. When you look at those people… are they really happier?
Before you put all your happiness off into the future, do some reality checking. Take a closer look at the people ahead of you to get idea of what your future will look like.
And then ask yourself, when you get the external result you are after, what would actually be different at that point to make you happier?
Usually promotions come with more stress, more responsibilities and sometimes even longer hours. Just having more money isn’t automatically going to make you happier, especially if you have no time to enjoy it.
And speaking of money…..
#3 I can’t quit my job because I need the money
Have you ever worried about this? Have you ever thought it would be financially irresponsible to quit your job? Or wondered how on earth you would make money without your current steady paycheck?
Inherent in this belief is a distrust in yourself and a lack of resourcefulness.
Yes, in this capitalist society we absolutely need money to survive. No one is going to argue with that. I am not going to try and convince you to start bartering with sea-sells and walking around barefoot.
Yes, I agree it would be financially irresponsible to quit your job, with no other source of income, no sugar daddy, or without a substantial cushion of savings. Totally agreed.
But that’s not what you have to do.
When you use money as an excuse to stay stuck in an unfulfilling job, what you are really saying is that you don’t trust yourself to be resourceful. You don’t believe in your ability to find another way to make money besides this job that is draining your vital life energy.
The question is: why do you think this one job you are currently in is the only way to make money? Is that true that if you quit this one job you are doomed to be impoverished for the rest of my life?
You can absolutely find another way to earn money.
How do I know that? Because you have done it before.
What did you do BEFORE you started working at your current job? You figured out a way to get hired so you could start making money.
You are resourceful, you can figure this out.
#4 If I give up this safe job, I may regret it.
This is a big one. The fear of regret and inherent in this is the fear of the unknown.
We worry that if we leave the safety net of our current job to venture into the unknown, we may regret it.
Why would we give up this known, comfortable, albeit mediocre job for some unknown thing that could be better, but could also be worse. We don’t want to risk it, so we end up staying exactly where we are.
I believe, that when you aren’t taking any risks, you automatically lose. A risk free life, is essentially a loser life.
Because think about it, what are the moment’s you’ve actually regretted in your lifetime? Have you ever truly regretted taking a risk? Even if it ended in a flop or a failure? Aren’t you always at least glad that you put yourself out there? That you tried?
For me, the moments I’ve most regretted, are the times where I played small. The times when I didn’t sing at open mic night. When I was too scared to go to a meet up sober. When I flaked out on a date and passed up the chance to meet a potential soul mate.
Those are the times I’ve truly regreted.
So put yourself 10 years into the future. What are you really going to regret more…. following your heart into the unknown? Or fearfully sticking to the safe path?
#5 It’s too late to try something new
I already invested so much time into this job. I already got my degree, my masters, my doctorate in this field. I’m just stuck. It’s too late to try something new. If I leave now it would be a waste of all this time I’ve already spent.
The sunk costs argument. I wrote a whole post about this.
But to summarize: no it wouldn’t be a waste and no it’s not too late to start over.
Because think about it, isn’t it a bigger waste of time to continue to show up at a job every Monday that is slowly sucking out your soul, dementor style? Isn’t it a bigger waste to not experience the joy and fulfillment that comes from doing meaningful work?
Because if you are breathing today, it is not too late to try something new. None of it is wasted time, you were just figuring out what you didn’t want. And to paraphrase Maya Angelou, now that you know better you must do better.
Which one of these beliefs resonated the most with you?
Comment below and share.
The only way to get unstuck is to start to challenge these stories and the ways we are currently limiting ourselves.
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