Thinking About A New Job

By Dr. Molly Barrow

Are you bored to distraction with your current career? One tip that may help you decide on a new direction for yourself is simply to walk around your home. Play detective and discover yourself. Are your paintings on the wall outdoor scenes of stallions or flying geese, yet you work in a health care facility with few windows. Are you surrounded with photos of your grandchildren but your job at the bank only gives you one week a year to visit the kids? Are you playing bolero music while you cook in a small apartment in Maine? Do you want to be an artist even though you have a student loan bigger than your house payment for your mathematics degree that you thought you wanted? Do you read about fashion and work in a library?

Everyday other people pack up their family and their belongings and move to new jobs in new locations. Many leave the countryside in search of the excitement of the city. Many leave the city for the tranquility of the countryside. Some make the change, are still dissatisfied and return to where they started. Nevertheless, they made the effort to find themselves.

After a break-up or a divorce, when the kids leave for school or if a parent or spouse passes away, people often want sudden change to help to alleviate their pain. Traumatic events can shake up the stability of a once happy, satisfying life. It is best not to make a big change if you are in the early stages of grief or experiencing depression. Most grief is manageable after six months to a year. That may be a better time to think more about change.

However, if you are in good shape emotionally and still hungry for more life than you are living, you can make changes to enhance your situation. Enhance may mean taking a pay cut, selling a mansion, or even working twice as hard in the new job that you love, instead of dread.

If you are longing for a different environment and a new way to spend your day, perhaps an adventure is just around the corner. If you are a highly qualified and experienced individual, you may be able to arrange a sabbatical from your position. A sabbatical could allow you to spend a year in Spain painting the ocean by day and serving food and drinks at night to pay the rent. Then you can return (if you still want to) to the old job. Could a complete shift in your world be the enrichment that would make your present career a stepping-stone instead of a terminal position? Can you imagine the kind of work that makes you jump out of bed eager to get started?

Look around your home to discover your secret desires and interests. Find the true you and make some simple changes or big ones. You begin by believing that you deserve to be happy while you work.

Read other articles and learn more about Dr. Molly Barrow.

[Contact the author for permission to republish or reuse this article.]