I had a call with a prospective client a few weeks ago and she shared a really interesting situation she finds herself in. The company she was working for was acquired, but several months prior to that she had signed a 3-year contract with them. After the acquisition, the new company eliminated her position but because of her contract, she'll get 2.5 more years of her salary.

When I heard that, I immediately thought…

When I was working at Google and struggling to figure out why I was so unhappy and didn't feel like I fit, I remember my best friend and I booked a conference room, lay on the floor (yep, that happened), and had some real talk. I was so frustrated about why I was unhappy and my complaining went something like this:

"ughhhhhh, but Google is the best place to work in the world, everyone else seems to be happy, why can't I just be happy not really enjoying my job? Why do I care so much, can't I just care less?"

Thank goodness for good friends who call us out because she asked me, a version of "I'm sorry, is our goal to care less in this world? Is complacency what we're after?" It has stuck with me for years - and I even wrote it at the top of a career manifesto I wrote that day…

I've had a podcast episode I've been meaning to listen for months now (I'm the WORST about listening to podcasts) and I finally made it happen.

The episode is called "Obstacle Thoughts" and it's part of The Life Coach series with Brooke Castillo. Yes, it's technically geared towards coaches and yes, she says she hopes this isn't your first podcast of hers you're listening to because they all build on each other, but here we are.

I often speak with clients about how worries and hesitations about changes we make in our jobs can be turned into design inputs.

"If I take this new role, I'm worried I'll be lonelier because my team is remote." Turns out that's super useful information because now you get to be intentional about designing for that outcome. Knowing that you may feel lonelier on a remote team, how do you want to design the experience to make sure that doesn't happen?

Brooke Castillo talks about this in the context of goal setting and refers to them as obstacle thoughts…

The noise and distraction of the open-plan office. The lack of growth and challenge. The long commute. 

It is remarkably easy to become hyper-focused on the negative aspects of your job. They can consume your thoughts and make you dread showing up to work. Quitting can start to feel like the only option you have. 

While quitting is sometimes the right answer, I want you to know that it’s most likely not your only option. 

The key is to first understand what’s causing you to want to quit your job. From there you can explore solutions to help you meet that specific need. Once you understand why you’re feeling unfulfilled, it may be easier to see your job in a more balanced way or make small changes that will have a big impact. 

I’ve been working with clients who have been aimless and unfulfilled by their jobs for a few years now. I’m continually surprised by how few people end up quitting their job so I recently crunched the numbers. Here’s the rough breakdown I typically see during my 3-month program…

When you start to look at what’s important to you in a career, one little thought can stop you dead in your tracks. It can pop up in response to any answer you come up with -- “but isn’t that what everyone wants in a job?”

Doesn’t everyone want to feel challenged? Doesn’t everyone want to feel appreciated? Doesn’t everyone value financial security? Everything you uncover can feel so generic and useless to help you figure out what’s right for you. 

I do an exercise with my clients where we uncover their "Strength Statement" (a great exercise I learned at Google). We create a sentence or two that describes when they feel most energized or at their best. When they come up with their sentence, it can often trigger the “but isn’t that what everyone wants in a job?” sentiment but I get to see the incredible variety between clients. 

There are lots of nuances about what makes people feel energized and fulfilled at work. Here's a selection of statements from a variety of clients…

I did not expect to be saying this but… in November 2018 I applied for a job. (wait, what?)

I absolutely love my business and it’s not going anywhere but a job with an irresistible set of characteristics caught my eye and I decided it wasn’t 100% crazy to throw my hat in the ring.

(What in the world could be an irresistible set of characteristics that would have this business owner apply for a job, you say? Customer service - one of my FAVORITE things in this world, getting to support business owners, and something that is both part-time and short-term because I’m not looking for a full-time job)

Despite being a bit of a scary experience (it’s been 8 years since I formally applied for a job!) it was also incredibly empowering implement so much of the wisdom I’ve gained from working with clients over the past few years.

Here are 3 topics I talk to clients about almost every day that I got to experience first-hand as I applied for this job…

One of my absolute favorite books is Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less because it is filled with terrifying truths about how much we let other people dictate our time and energy. The author writes that “when we surrender our ability to choose [our priorities], something or someone else will step in to choose for us. […] We can either make the hard choices for ourselves or allow others—whether our colleagues, our boss, or our customers—to decide for us.”

Of course work will choose our priorities if we let it, of course other peoples’ requests will choose our priorities if we let them, of course personal life responsibilities will choose our priorities if we let them.

So the challenge is to start being intentional about what we say yes to and what we prioritize.

(I make no apologies for the volume of photos of delicious baked goods in this post)

If you ask my neighbors about the best part of living near me, you’ll get the same response - the volume of baked goods that comes from my place.

The most recent birthday cake I made for my husband.

I love baking. A lot.

When I was doing my coaching certificate, we had a homework assignment to plan a full day of something we loved and I chose to spend 14 hours making homemade croissants. (I’m also a bit insane.)

I love making birthday cakes, desserts when we have people over for dinner, sourdough bread, fiddly pastries, and everything in between.

To me, baking = engineering.

We're terrified to leave a seemingly perfect job for fear of what other people will think.

“You’re crazy to be giving this up.”

“Why would you ever leave this job, it’s the best there is!”

“People would kill to be at this company.”

I've had so many conversations recently with people who have fancy jobs that look incredible on paper, have a great salary, don't even ask them to work too hard in some cases, and look like success to the outside world... but aren't what the person wants.

Something is missing, whether it's purpose, contribution, flexibility to focus less of their life on work, or something they can't put their finger on yet.

They've all known that it's not the right fit but they worry that they'll appear ungrateful if they leave the job. That they’ll crumble under the backlash they get from other people questioning their decision.

And then the inner voices kick in.

Several months ago I participated in a fantastic leadership course where I did one of the most confronting yet rewarding tasks in recent memory - make a list of all the areas in my life where I've been "tolerating incompletion" and get them completed.

(If you're cringing right now just reading that suggestion, you know exactly how I felt.)

This could be chores, hobbies, things we told other people we'd do, etc, and from that list, we then had the challenge to complete five of the items by the end of the weekend.

I made a list of 5 things (which was uncomfortably easy to do) by walking around my house and seeing unfinished projects, unused cooking gadgets, household chores and more. Starting the list initially filled me with shame but by the end of the list I was filled with a new sense of freedom and determination. By acknowledging the things that I had been tolerating I could actually choose to do something about them.

But there was one item that I was horrified by how long I had left it incomplete.

The most embarrassing thing that I had been tolerating was... a jar of cooking grease.

A few weeks ago my husband and I had dinner with another couple and the conversation turned to risk tolerance.

Our friends said they're solidly in the risk-averse category and my husband and I agreed that we are too - we're savers, we're not incredibly spontaneous and we love a good plan. 

It took our friend a minute, but it was clear that our answer wasn't fully computing. He looked at me and said "but clearly you're a risk-taker because you started your own business".

This was a really interesting point and I had to think about it for a minute.

The first answer that popped into my head was "it didn't feel like a risk".

When you’re crushed by an ill-fitting job, it can be hard to talk to your friends for fear of burdening them with your career problems.

But today, I actually want to talk to the people who know someone who is crushed and are watching the struggle without knowing how to support the person they care about. That can also be a really tough position to find yourself in.

What can you do to support someone who is crushed by their job?

Your friend/family member/colleague is clearly struggling. They don’t want to burden you with their challenge and yet you would do absolutely anything to support them. The question is what can you do?

I want to help relieve you of your feelings of helplessness with a couple resources and steps you can take…

I recently read a fantastic book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, and I was really struck by an interesting framework they shared that is used by Solutions-Focused Therapists. They use the Miracle Question and the Evidence Question to help patients resolve a particular problem they’re experiencing.

The therapist first poses The Miracle Question:

"Something must have happened! I look different!"

“Suppose that you go to bed tonight and sleep well. Sometime, in the middle of the night, while you are sleeping, a miracle happens and all the troubles that brought you here are resolved. When you wake up in the morning, what’s the first small sign you’d see that would make you think, ‘Well, something must have happened—the problem is gone!’?”

The book points out that the question “doesn’t ask you to describe the miracle itself but to identify the tangible signs that the miracle happened.”

I started thinking about this in the context of being crushed by your job.

It’s OK to have a boring job.

(Am I even allowed to say that?)

I don’t think anyone ever tells us that it’s OK to have a boring job. It definitely doesn’t work for everyone. And it definitely does work for some people.

I only just recently noticed how revolutionary this message seems to be. I’ve been sharing it more and more often, the most recent time was at a workshop I co-hosted a few weeks ago. Participants kept coming up to me afterward saying how grateful they were to hear someone say that it was OK to have a boring job.

So now I’m on a mission to tell people that it’s OK to have a boring job if it works for them.