How many people can’t stand their jobs or place of work or the people they work with/for. How many of us wish we just stick it to our boss. How many wish they can hand in their letter of resignation tomorrow, better yet; yesterday if we could. Who wants out? Who wants to feel free from this stress that is weighing you down and making you miserable all the time to the point that either you get sick or take it out on the people you love? Who is living everyday without meaning or purpose, feeling lost and stuck? Do you feel useless sometimes or bored from doing the same thing day in – day out? Do you fit in any of those descriptions. Do you feel any of those emotions just mentioned.  Don’t worry, if you said yes, you are not the only one. But I am here to tell you, don’t hate your job. Let me tell you why.

I start by saying: some of us made their own choice in the career path we took and for some; life took us there without any planning. We may have started in one direction and ended up on another side doing something you never expected to do or thought you would enjoy doing. It all started when you decided for your major in college or university. We may not have known then, at the age of 18/19, what is best for us. But something pushed us towards a certain interest. Some of us had dreams to become like someone we looked up to. Some of us wanted to follow in our parents footsteps. Some of us admired a certain job since we were kids and it grew with us all the way to adulthood. Whether you studied to be a lawyer, a doctor, a business administrator, a policeman, a firefighter, a teacher or a builder. We had a choice and we ran with it, not knowing where it will take us. Some decided not to continue their higher education and some simply wish they could but did not afford it. And so each person took a path whether by choice or not, whether it was your decision or your parents made it for you.

Eventually, we apply for jobs and we get hired and we are excited at the start, then shit hits the fan. Real life begins. Going to school and studying is one thing, applying it in real life is another. Again we are faced to make a choice, we can change careers and start all over if we really cannot stand it, we can change companies if we like our career but do not fit in the organization or if we are just being treated horribly. We can, with certain careers; change direction within the field. The point I am trying to make here is no one is forcing you to stay right where you are and be miserable, especially if you are being abused by management. It’s time to go my dear. When things get so bad that you hate waking up to go to work, it’s time to get out of there – not tomorrow – not next month – not next year ….. NOW. Your health and your sanity is on the line. You can push yourself to the limit if you wish to find out. However you are taking a risk with your well-being. Ask yourself, is it really worth it? Life will take you in another direction, that’s all.

On another note, if your case is not the case of a career and you are just trying to find a job that pays you well so you can live and pay the bills like everyone else, then understand one thing, the grass is not always greener on the other side. Having said that, sometimes it is necessary to make the change.  If you are unhappy: because you are treated unfairly at work, or because there are all those stupid rules that don’t make any sense, or because your boss is bitchy and/or a slave driver.  Maybe you don’t think you are getting the proper compensation for the amount of work you do, or you got fooled by the company benefits promised to you; that changed later. Maybe you feel unappreciated and you are subjected to constant stress from upper management, possibly even bullied. Have you just had it with your so-called ‘friends’ at work who back stab you any chance they get for whatever reason. Many reasons, many more situations, I can go on and on. But these are some of which affect us all.

We are bound to experience some of these things or all of them at some point. And we don’t know what to do with our lives. Everything seems to get complicated. Our life depends on our jobs. Our jobs pay us to live. We have responsibilities and obligations. We get in a cycle of debt and buying this and that.  Our Credit Card is maxed to the limit and we keep on transferring the balance from one card to the next in order to benefit from the low-interest rate. The rent keeps getting higher, the taxes are increasing, the cost of living is getting higher while our salaries don’t seem to catch up to the cost increase in our life. We need a roof over our head, clothes on our back and food on our table. We have responsibilities towards our families whether single or married with our own little family. Our decisions and thought process is constantly influenced by those factors. We end up accepting abuse at the work place because we are afraid of loosing our source of income. We shut our mouths and deal with getting harassed on many levels because we are afraid to speak up, because we know we will end up ‘victims’ all the way to the end. We are the underdogs after all. We do not finish first; they do. Who are they anyway? What gives them the right to use you and abuse you and treat you like slaves and animals?  When will it ever be the right time to put those people in their place and fight for your right as a human being?? How do you expect to be a role model for your children, teach them to stand up for themselves, when you are not doing the same thing you are lecturing. Why you live in fear? Why you think you are not good enough to search for another job or go back to school and improve your skills? Why you accept defeat and throw in the towel before you even start the battle?  Why you hate your job but still go to work everyday?

Yes – it is not easy. Yes – we all have bills to pay. Yes – the economy is in crisis. Yes. Yes. Yes. To every reason/ excuse/ explanation. Yes life is not perfect. Yes we do not always get everything we want. But at least we can understand what is happening in our lives so we can find some peace. We all complain, do we all act on it?  We say: I don’t like – have we tried to change it?  We talk and we discuss, what is the end result?  If we reach to the conclusion after assessing the big picture that we choose not to leave our job, then find the strength somehow to go to work everyday knowing that you are in the best situation you can be in for now. Think of all the benefits and less focus on the negatives. Make your own goals and get out of this job whatever you need out of it, whether it be work experience, learning new skills that will better you for a future opportunity or if it is to reach a certain financial goal. And stick to your goal and don’t get sucked in where you do not belong.  Find ways to deal with what is making you miserable at work. Some things you can change, some things you cannot. Know the difference between the two. Some things all you need to do is change your outlook on them. Some things you just accept that no matter where you work, these things are bound to occur, simply because that is the reality of the society and the era we live in. Stop comparing your situation to others in better position. They do not have it all either, believe me.

On a general note, we must realize that our world today is much worse than it was yesterday. The meaning of life has altered somehow. People have changed dramatically; their needs, their wants, what makes them happy – it all changed.  Greed has taken over the minds. The hunger for power, the hunger for money, the hunger for winning and being the best has become the new motto of life. Whether you are working for someone in a chain of command or you are your own boss, everyone answers to someone else. When you think about that, you will realize, no one really has it good. No one is really winning. No one really has any power. It is all an illusion. When you have your own little business, you have your employees and you have your customers, without any of them, there is no business. As an employee, you have a chain of command from top to bottom to report to. You may hate your boss because he is breathing down your neck and making your life a living-hell; we call it. But your boss answers to his boss and that one answers to another, and so forth. Everyone wants to keep their job, so they do what they are told to do, even be cruel and inhuman sometimes. People forget where they came from. People that get to management levels forget where they once were and what they once felt or maybe they look at it as: “it’s my time now”. But they are revenging from innocent people who had nothing to do with what was done in the past.

In the end, all it takes is one person in the chain of command to have the ‘tyrant’ attitude, the ‘greed’, the ‘power-trip’; for everything to get complicated and messed up. The result you have unhappy employees, overworked, underpaid, full of rage, and in turn you will get unhappy customers and unsatisfied business owners. The cycle continues, people resign, management changes, things get better, then back to bad, more people join, and more resign and the cycle goes on. Life goes on whether you work at that company or not, the business continues, someone else will replace you and do what you did and live what you lived until one day they decide to leave or things miraculously change around.  You may move on and get another job replacing another person that left that company for whatever reason. And so we are all playing ‘musical chairs’, from one job to another. It may not be all that bad though to move around and get experience in different organizations or even different industries. We get a lot of knowledge, experience in life. We meet different people. We learn about ourselves and the world around us. We are forced to get educated, the real education this time; not reading books, but living life as it is.

In conclusion, I want to say that no job is perfect, no workplace is, no manager is. As a matter of fact even if you are doing what you always dreamt of and love so much, you will still find something about it you do not like. We are humans, we are never totally satisfied anyway. There is always a ‘but’ in the sentence.  You just need to find the right fit for yourself. Don’t settle, don’t accept, don’t second guess, don’t undermine yourself and your capabilities. Don’t listen to haters and people who put fear in your head to stay where you are because that’s the best you are gonna get. If you believe there is a better place, a better job for you, then go for it. If you want to change careers and go back to school, find ways to do it even with all the responsibilities and obstacles you may have. Don’t limit yourself. You are always your own worst enemy. Believe and you will achieve. Think and plan and don’t let anyone or anything hold you back. You CAN!!!

These are not just motivational words I repeat. Look around you and hear the stories of people who succeeded from nothing. If someone else can do it, what makes you think you cannot. Get rid of all those nonsense excuses you repeat. Do you listen to yourself sometimes? But please, by all means, don’t sit and complain everyday about what you don’t  like and yet you don’t have the courage to change it. Either accept it and find a way to live with it or change it. The in-between state gets you nowhere except stress yourself and make yourself sick. That’s all you are going to get out of it. Take action today. Take those risks – only if you are ready to deal with whatever the consequences are. You make a decision, be ready for things to go either way. Prepare for the worst and wish for the best. But please, don’t hate your job and stay in it until it kills you.