July 3, 2025 • 39 mins
Is your job making you feel drained, disconnected, or just deeply unfulfilled? In today’s episode, we unpack the five major signs that your career may not be the right fit — from emotional numbness and burnout, to identity disalignment and daydreaming about quitting more than staying. We explore:
- The importance of occupational identity
- Why boredom is a worse sign than anxiety at work
- How to find all 10 of your dream jobs
- The long term impact of hating your job
- Why starting over is always the right choice + so much more
Happy listening!
Listen to Mantra here: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Ckds0BoJDDpODInN9cWcc?si=949e13c52f194637
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we, of
course break down the psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Of our twenties.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
It has been a beautiful week for me. I am
back from my mother daughter trip to Fiji. I feel refreshed,
I feel really motivated.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I feel good.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
I literally had the best time with my mom. She
is so much fun. So I feel like I'm back
right in time to dive into wor like I had
enough time or way to feel excited about coming back.
And you know, speaking of work, work is actually the
subject of today's episode, specifically, the signs that you may
(01:15):
not be aware of, or may be ignoring that your
career is not right for you. Not just not right
for you, but deeply dissatisfying, deeply unfulfilling, deeply unrewarding, and
perhaps you just haven't even realized it yet. These are
specifically signs that I wish someone had told me when
(01:37):
I was feeling pretty low about my previous job and
I was trying so hard to make it work. And
now I can acknowledge that all those things I was
feeling were actually indicative that this career was just not
right for me. When I look back, you know, I
wish I had made a change earlier. I wish that
(01:58):
my decision paralys and fear of the unknown hadn't kept
me in unhappy places for longer than I needed to
be in them. And so I'm taking some of that wisdom,
some of the things that I learned, as well as
some of the tips and some of the psychology to
really help you guys figure out whether what you're experiencing
(02:21):
right now is just a bad week or a deeper
dissatisfaction with what you are doing, but more importantly, the
kind of warning signs that you are becoming stagnant or
stuck when you know that you are not happy. Basically,
how do we make a change in our career and
(02:42):
in our lives and have the bravery and the courage
to try something new before we feel further way down
by time and money and the education and the years
that we've invested into a job or a profession that
you know simply isn't right for us. Work is really important.
(03:02):
Doing something you care about doesn't have to be aspirational,
even in this current job market, and I want to
really share how you can choose something that feels more
aligned without feeling boxed in by this very notorious and
incorrect idea of a dream job. I also want to
talk about when you know it's really time to quit,
(03:25):
even if maybe you don't have anything else lined up,
and also some of the surprising ways that hating your
job shows up in all other dimensions of your life
that you may or may not be ignoring. So if
you have doubts lingering as to whether what you're doing
now is really what you want to do for the
(03:46):
rest of your life or something that you actually care about,
these five signs will definitely give you some clarity and
give you some of the answers that you are probably
looking for. So, without further ado, whether you're in your
twenties or maybe even beyond, let's get into the signs
that the career you're in right now is maybe not
(04:08):
the one for you.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Stay with us.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
If you have listened to the podcast for a while,
you will probably know this, but it is my deep
belief that when it comes to finding the right career,
the right pathway, the right job for you, there isn't one.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
There is not a perfect job.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
There is no such thing as a dream job that
comes with no flaws, no downsides, no bad days, no
occasional sense of emptiness. And that's coming from someone who,
for all intents and purposes, has the best job that
they could ask for in their life. Right now, there
are still things that I would change, and I know
(04:54):
that in ten twenty years I probably won't think the
same about my job that I do now. Because dream
jobs evolve, our purpose evolves, our idea of work life
balance is constantly being changed and being challenged. That doesn't
necessarily mean, though, that there isn't some careers out there
(05:15):
that simply fit better. But I do want to give
that caveat at the beginning that if you are here
to figure out what your dream job is, I'm sorry,
I don't even believe in that concept, but hopefully I
can bring you closer to finding a job that is
maybe almost there for you. Another thing I believe is
that it's never too late to change, to shift gears,
(05:35):
to essentially decide that you want something different, and at
the point that you realize that your major, your job,
your career isn't for you, no matter how far you
have gone down the wrong road, turn back. That is
a very famous Turkish proverb that I think more of
(05:56):
us ought to live by, not just in our professional lives,
but in relationships, in love, in anything, careers in particular.
Though you know a lot feels at stake for a
couple of reasons. There's a couple of reasons why we
know we're on the wrong path and we don't turn around.
The first one being that you know, our jobs they
allow us to live, and they allow us to exist
(06:19):
in a world that is ruled by currency and money.
Jobs pay out bills, So simply leaving without having anything
else lined up, I don't know about you. I've never
had that luxury. Secondly, you may have a lot of time, energy,
resources tied up in your career. Say you're becoming a
(06:40):
doctor or a psychologist or a trades person. That typically
means a lot of study, a lot of ours, learning
a skill, sometimes a lot of student loans, a lot
of money invested. You can really feel like you're not
going to get that time back, you're not going to
get that money back. You're letting yourself down, you're letting
(07:02):
your family down. And that's what causes us to stay
in places that we don't belong simply because of basically
the sunk cost effect. We also, of course, it's not
just an investment of time, energy, money, it's an investment
of our identity. What we choose to do for a living,
what we hope to do for a living, forms a
(07:25):
large and significant part of who we see ourselves as
you know, what's one of the first things that people
ask you, What do you do for work? What are
you studying? It just goes to show how much occupational
identity is one of the ways that we are really pigeonholed,
and that we pigeonhole ourselves. And you know, pigeonholes may
(07:45):
feel very small and restrictive, they can also feel very
safe and very comfortable. So deciding to walk away from
whatever you're studying, whatever you're doing, and explore other things,
especially if you do, I don't know what else you
want to try, it can feel like voluntarily choosing to
step off a ledge into a large bottomless pit. But
(08:09):
being in the wrong place, it doesn't get easier. Your
tolerance for it just improves, until you know, one day
you're in your sixties and you're looking back at your
life and you're realizing how truly young you were, how
much time you actually really did have ahead of you
if you'd just taken the risk and walked away a
(08:30):
little bit sooner from the thing that you knew deep
down you didn't love. So to avoid that regret, to
give ourselves that opportunity, let's discuss these five signs that
you are probably in the wrong career. Sign one, you
feel emotionally numb. You dread what you're doing, and it's
a feeling that goes way beyond boredom. If you dread
(08:53):
every Monday, you feel your mood completely shift. The moment
you walk into work. You completely detached. You don't care
if you're fired, you don't care if your work is good,
you don't care if the assignment is late. You just
have no desire to commit or succeed in what you're doing.
This is probably the wrong career for you. Yes, a
(09:14):
job isn't always going to put a fire in your
belly every single day, but if this is what you're
going to spend the large majority of your life doing
almost ninety thousand hours of your life according to some estimates.
You want to feel something, pride, accomplishment, that you're helping people,
whatever it is, even on hard days. You want to
(09:35):
feel something. You don't want to feel nothing, and you
most certainly don't want to feel just plain anxiety. The
Sunday scaries are another indicator of this. Sunday scaries it's
a common term. You've most likely heard of it, but
if not, it essentially refers to the anxiety or dread
that many people experience on a Sunday evening as the
(09:59):
weekend ends and the work week begins, and it has
a scientific explanation, Sunday scaries. It's essentially emotional forecasting or
anticipatory dread. You're looking at the weak ahead and almost
feeling empathy for your future self and what you'll know
they have to endure, and kind of almost borrowing their
(10:20):
unhappiness so that you feel terrible right now. And the
more you experience this and endure this, the more you
start to become quite numb. Once you get into work
or back to school or to your internship or whatever.
Instead of feeling all that anxiety you were feeling on Sunday,
you actually end up shutting off. You go through the motions.
(10:43):
All of this is a way to kind of mentally
compartmentalize rather than really acknowledging like, wow, I really hate this,
because realizing that you really hate this means that you
probably have to do something about it, and you just
might not feel ready for that. So this can also
be highly indicative of something else called emotional blunting, where
you basically become numb to what is going on around you.
(11:05):
It's typically associated with certain medications, such as antidepressants, but
it can also have an environmental origin, like a workplace
or a job that you really hate or you feel
absolutely nothing positive towards. Now.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
If this gets.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Worse, this can also develop into something that psychologists call
and herdonia, so a lack of interest, a lack of enjoyment,
a lack of pleasure in what you're experiencing, almost like
people describe it, like looking at your life and feeling
like there is a tinge of gray over everything, and
(11:41):
in this context the context of our jobs and our careers.
It often stems from being in an environment where your
core values and your interests are being forced to be
put away, and you may not even realize how emotionally
flat you've become until the weekend, or until you're on holiday,
(12:02):
or until you're working on a side project, and suddenly
you come alive again. It's like this is where you
really feel like yourself. This kind of chronic disconnection throughout
the work week, or whenever you're studying, or whenever you're
engaged in the thing that isn't right for you. This
is your mind and your body communicating and essentially saying,
(12:22):
this is not fitting the bill for what makes us happy,
and because we can't acknowledge how unhappy we are, we're
not going to feel anything. This is intrinsically linked to
the second sign that you are in the wrong career,
which is that your identity and what you are doing
for work feel entirely out of sync. A twenty sixteen
(12:45):
study from the Journal of Vocational Behavior, it essentially found
that career satisfaction is incredibly linked to something called identity alignment.
How much your job reflects who you are. The more
identity alignment you have, the happier you are going to
be doing what you're doing. There was a poll a
(13:07):
couple of years ago, maybe even like a decade ago,
that found almost fifty five percent of Americans derive a
really large part of their.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Identity from their job.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And I think as our time spent in the office
and working increases significantly year by year, I can only
imagine that that identity investment.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Has really increased.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
If you value helping others and your job is denying
insurance claims, you will experience deep cognitive dissonance because you
don't have identity alignment. If you love nature and you
love being outdoors and you work a desk job with
no windows, same issue. If you really value intellectualism and
(13:53):
being cognitively stimulated, but you work a job that is
very routine and process based with not much room for
create activity, again, you have a disalignment. A disalignment in
your identity is the same as a disalignment in your body.
It feels pretty terrible and you can tell that something
is wrong. This is very similar to a concept called
(14:17):
self concept clarity. So self concept clarity is basically our
ability to tell what's going to make us happy and
our ability to know what would make us satisfied. So
if you find yourself saying things like this just really
doesn't feel like me, Like I hate who this makes me.
I don't recognize who I am at work, I feel
(14:37):
like someone else. That's not trivial. That is indicative that
your self concept clarity is coming into play and is
communicating with you and telling you like, this isn't who
we are, This isn't who we want to be. If
you're not living your life in line with who you
think you are, you know who are you?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Then?
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Like, if our life and the kind of person we
are is defined by our actions, and our actions and
our time and where we work and all these other things,
is saying the opposite and representing the opposite of who
we are, we are going to be very unhappy, and
your body and the rest of your sense of self
will respond to that. We know through research that this
(15:18):
dissatisfaction becomes very tangible, It becomes very felt in your body,
in your mind, in your bones and your muscles.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
In order to.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Discover what the alternative would be, you know, what would
actually make us happier, What would my so called dream
job be?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
That isn't this?
Speaker 1 (15:35):
We really need to then focus on values, because if
we're living or having your career that is creating disalignment.
The only way to bring back alignment is to really
really reaffirm what we care about and then find ways
to seek that out through work. This question that someone
asked me once, I think is a really great way
(15:55):
to do that. If you're struggling with what you really
want to do in your life, you know, oh it's
not this. I think this question will help. Basically, if
your whole identity, all your memories, everything about your life
had been erased, about who you were as a person
had been erased, what are the five values that you
have right now that you would choose to come back first.
(16:18):
It's basically a different way of asking who do you
see yourself as like at your core? What are the
five things that you think represent you the most? And
is it that far fetch that you can't ask for
your work to reflect that. If that feels like a
stretch from where you are now, If those five things
are not reflected in your work at all, imagine then
(16:41):
going forward and living another thirty forty years where your
values un aligned. The reason I think this exercise works
so well for people who are like unsure of what
they want to do is. It's not asking you to
identify your dream job as an alternative. Like I was
having this discussion with my friend on a walk this morning,
and she was like, I don't know what my dream
(17:03):
job is, and I was like, well, you probably don't
have one. You probably will never figure out what it is.
If you search for that your entire life, you'll probably
be unhappy. But what you can do is figure out
a kind of broad range of things that you would
feel really fulfilled doing, you know, And that's what this
allows you to do. It's asking you to identify your values,
(17:23):
which can then be expressed in different ways through different careers,
not just one thing. For example, if one of the
values that you would want back is let's say vulnerability,
vulnerability is a core value, could mean that you could
be a counselor you could also be a matchmaker. You
could be a hospice nurse, you could be a rehab director.
Many options, not one dream job, but all rooted in
(17:47):
what you value. It's really really important you have that
in your work. It's worth mentioning as well what happens
when we derive too much identity from work, because that
can really result in in something equally kind of scary.
It's called enmeshment, where you and your job are just
never separate. Your success at work determines your worth everywhere else,
(18:10):
your interests or work. You can hear people getting sick
of you're talking about work, everything you think about work.
I will admit I fell into this trap when I
first started doing my podcast full time and then Mantra
as well. You know, I love both of those podcasts
so much, and it was they asked such a reflection
of who I am, and so much time goes into
(18:32):
making them good and successful. And when I first started,
there was so much at stake, like I'd quit my
full time job, Like there wasn't much room for me
to think about anything else. And also because this podcast,
the one you're listening to, Like this used to be
a hobby, right, and then this was the place I
went to kind of not think about work. And then
suddenly it was my job and nothing filled its place,
(18:53):
Like I didn't have any sense of balance in my life.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
My entire identity was this.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Oh my gosh, was I completely uninteresting especially to myself,
Like I was bored of myself.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
I was exhausted.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
All the small setbacks felt enormous because there was so
much being balanced on the back of my career. So
you can take it too far. I think it's our
reminder as well too. It's okay to want to be
your values to be reflected in work, but you also
have to be bigger than work. Me and my boyfriend
have this rule before we talk about work when we
(19:29):
get home, we have to talk about something else. A podcast,
the gym, a story we heard, something like, we're excited
about something in the news. It's really important for us
because both of us are deeply invested in what we
do for a living. I like to visualize it as
a five finger test for whether you have balance. If
(19:50):
you hold up five fingers, if work is one of
your fingers, you have to have four things to fill
the other fingers. You have to have a hobby, you
have to have an interest, you have to have friends.
We have to have four other things that you really
care about. And if you cannot assign each of your
fingers something else in your life that feels as important
as work, like that is a warning, and that is
(20:11):
a sign to rethink where your energy is being directed to.
Like your identity is a series of buckets. Work is
just one bucket. We want to have other things that
we value and other things that we care about, Like, literally,
do it right now, hold up five fingers. If work
is one, what are the others? What else might you
need in your life to feel like your identity is
(20:33):
reflected in what you do?
Speaker 2 (20:34):
But it's not everything.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So those are our first two signs. We're going to
take a short break here, but when we in return,
I have three final indicators that maybe what you're doing
right now is not exactly right for you. So stay
with us. Okay, are you ready for the third sign
(20:58):
that your career is.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Not right for you? Here?
Speaker 1 (21:00):
It is you think more about your quitting story than
your five year plan in this career, in this company,
in this industry. Everyone loves a good quitting story. I
remember when I worked at a stake restaurant back in Uni.
It was so horrific. Every single day I would walk
in to the start of my shift and I think,
(21:21):
this is this is the day I'm gonna do it,
Like I just need one reason to push me over
the edge and I will quit. I will do it
knowing that I wouldn't because I needed the job. And
then you know, COVID came along and stole my epic
quitting story for me. But the fact that I was
thinking about quitting constantly at work indicated a much deeper
(21:42):
unhappiness quitting. For you, it may be becoming a fixation,
an obsessive interest that you cannot stop circling and that
won't stop dominating the news cycle of your brain. You
fantasize about burning your life to the ground, crashing out, disappearing,
just not coming in one day, moving to Costa Rica,
whatever it is that is all you can think about.
(22:05):
It brings you joy to think about it. Being invested
in the fantasy more than reality is indicative that this
isn't right for you. You know, daydreaming it isn't always bad.
It can actually be a really creative coping mechanism. But
if you're constantly escaping into the idea of doing something else,
being someone else professionally, that's not just your imagination. That
(22:28):
is cognitive separation. That is escapism at work. It has
another name as well, maladaptive daydreaming. If you've listened to
the whole episode that we did on this you will
know what I'm talking about. But maladaptive daydreaming is essentially
where you feel detached from reality because you're spending too
much time in the fantasy of what could be, And
(22:49):
it does mean that you end up neglecting real life responsibilities,
real life relationships, work relationships, deadlines, all those kinds of things.
In those instances where you're obsessing over the idea of quitting,
I'm gonna be completely honest with you, It's probably not
going to get better. It's probably time to start searching
(23:10):
for a better job. It's like what they say about
a relationship, right like once you get once you have
seriously considered breaking up, or once you have gotten the
ick over somebody, like you're not there's you're not going
back from that. Like no matter how long you hold
on for afterwards, once you have seriously quit a relationship
or quit a job, in your mind, it's never going
(23:33):
to be the same. It might not be quitting your
imagining as well, like it might be something else like
fantasizing about a different job, fantasizing about your next holiday
the next time you switch off. That's going to become
unhealthy and it can actually end up you know, you
can end up sabotaging your current career and sabotaging where
(23:56):
you're currently at. The thing is, as much as you
hate your job right now, you do want to get
another one, and that means having good references and having
positive working relationships. It is something I wish I had
learned earlier in my twenties. Don't burn bridges based on
momentary feelings. You never know when you'll need that bridge
(24:19):
later on, So instead, try and keep at least one
foot in your day to day and maybe participate in
a little bit of quiet quitting. But think about the
future here. Don't just completely like neglect your job. Think
about it smart, and don't please don't just let yourself
(24:40):
think that this is how everyone feels about work.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
It's not.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
You don't have to feel this way. You know, the
best part of your day should not be the thirty
minutes at lunch where you fantasize about how nice it
would be to never go back in. You're allowed to
want more, you are allowed to seek more for yourself,
So use this fantasy as motivation so that you don't
find yourself stagnant. You don't find yourself thinking, well, everyone
(25:05):
feels this way, like I'll just put.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Up with it.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Speaking of everyone, here is the fourth sign, and I
rarely hear people talk about this when it comes to
knowing a career isn't right for you. Quite simply, if
there is no one that you admire in your industry,
this industry is not right for you. No role model,
no colleagues you want to be, no person you know
(25:30):
ten years down the line whose life you think looks
really great, no vision of a life you want that
contains your job, no examples of it. It's not right
for you. Not having this admiration is often indicative of
not having aspiration or inspiration for what you're doing, essentially
meaning that your heart isn't in it. It also means
(25:53):
you probably don't see yourself here long term enough to
think aspirationally about what your life could become and to
seek out those examples as blueprints and motivators. Because you
are motivated when you think about a good life, when
you think about a life that you want for yourself,
those dreams might not contain this career.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
What is that saying to you?
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Our brains are naturally drawn to admiration and sometimes jealousy
for those doing better than us in an area where
we ourselves want to thrive. Because a we are naturally
comparative creatures, and b comparison basically indicates desire, passion, and.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
What we want.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
It's why if you want to figure out what kind
of life you want to have, you have to ask
yourself who am I jealous of? It's very revealing and
if the answer is well, no one in the space
that I'm in, you should probably be in a different space.
And obviously I'm not condoning jealousy as a motivator. I'm
just saying that jealousy is a really because it is
(26:59):
such a deeply fel motion. It's quite revealing of what
you really want. Also, you know, we so often learn
and stay motivated through observation and modeling, but also through
vicarious victory and celebration, you know, seeing what others achieve
and feeling like we could do that ourselves. That's a
(27:19):
huge part of aspirational psychology, having role models, having someone
that you look up to, and if you don't have that,
like you're missing out on a big part of how
you stay motivated in a career, how you advance, how
you seek more for yourself. In this industry, Let's talk
(27:40):
about this dimension though, which is having someone you admire
in a space that you would never want to make
money from doing. So what if your heroes are I
don't know, like Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders and you know you're
never going to be a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. Like what
if your heroes are classically trained musicians and you've never
(28:01):
picked up an instrument in your life? What happens when
you admire someone as a hobbyist of the thing that
they have made a career as Does that make sense?
Like you view it as a hobby, they view it
as a career. What happens then? Well, that's complicated, But
I think I'm personally a firm believer that your job
(28:22):
doesn't have to be the thing that you love most
in the world. So just because you have a hero
in a certain field like a musician or an actor
or I don't know, a tech guru like that doesn't
mean that you need to suddenly quit your job and
pursue what they're doing, as long as you know that
you're going to be okay in the future with not
giving it a shot. If you are viewing this person
(28:43):
as a personal hero and as someone that you aspire
to be, are you going to regret not trying to
do something similar like that's a question you have to
answer for yourself. It is also completely okay to just
admire them and feel motivated by their character from afart,
(29:03):
as long as you are okay with that fact, and
you will be okay in the future with not giving
your passion a shot professionally, that's totally your prerogative. But again,
if you genuinely cannot think of one person in your
industry or in your profession that you think is cool,
there is probably something better out there. Maybe your hero
(29:25):
may not be an accountant, maybe they will not be
a professional pharmacist, but there should be at least one person,
a colleague, a professor, someone else. You're in college with,
someone you think has a cool life, a life that
you can see yourself emulating. So we are down to
our final sign a final one, and it's one you
(29:47):
may have already guessed. It's burnout. It's sickness, it's feeling
physically and mentally unwell. If your body is giving you
the signals. If your body is getting sicker, easier, burnt out, easier,
irritated more, this career is probably not in alignment with
who you are We often think that career decisions are
(30:11):
purely intellectual and rational. But your body keeps the score.
I feel like everyone's heard that phrase. Your body keeps
the score, and not just when it comes to trauma.
Chronic stomach aches, fatigue, headaches, Sunday scaries, you know, a
real use of your anxiety. These are not normal, These
should not be dismissed. These are not just parts of
(30:33):
being an adult. You also cannot just outthink them or
outwork them, or continue with this idea that it will
get better, it will get better, it will get better.
These symptoms are often rooted in very deep psychological occupational stress.
Your nervous system is probably in a prolonged state of
(30:55):
low level discomfort and distress, and this is ricochet into
all these other areas of your body, into hension, into
a suppressed immune system. Even if you're still, you know,
clocking in every morning, even if you feel like you
can get through it, if your body is telling you know,
(31:17):
listen to it. And also another reminder, you're not being dramatic.
Even if people have it tougher, even if people work
harder than you, even if you feel like you don't
deserve to be stressed, I'm gonna tell you that's actually
not your choice. I'm sorry, it's not your choice. Like
(31:39):
you can't think, you can't think in a way of
like I can escape this by telling myself that I
don't deserve to feel this way. Like your body is
not something that you can control with your mind, Like
you can't just tell it to be well if it's
in an environment that is making it sick. So it's
something you really need to pay attention to. Scientific studies
(32:03):
have shown us that occupational dissatisfaction takes a toll on
your body. For starters, one study found that you sleep less,
you get sick more often, you're more likely to report
chronic stress. One of the most shocking studies on this
was actually recent, and it analyzed data from over six
thousand participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and
(32:25):
found that job related dissatisfaction experienced in your twenties and
thirties can lead to overall health issues just ten to
twenty years down the line, with the real cumulative effect
of unhappiness in your job really starting to shop in
our health around forty The researchers they examined the participants'
(32:48):
job satisfaction from twenty five to thirty nine, and then
compared that with data around their health after they turned forty,
and what they discovered was that people who were unhappier
in their jobs early in their careers, we're more prone
to illnesses, particularly mental health problems, but also sleep problems
(33:09):
and excessive worry and excessive stress. And this was when
they were controlling for all these other variables, including income,
including education levels, including where someone lived. This isn't just
about your happiness. This is about your health. And that's
something that we don't value enough until we don't have it.
(33:31):
Trust me, like, then your entire perspective changes. This is
also about having a life and having experiences that don't
feel burdened by a job that you feel trapped by.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I want to.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Quickly play you guys this clip from my other podcast Mantra,
because I think I put it so well there, Like
I'm not even going to bother repeating myself. I think
I put it perfectly. This is from my episode on
I Make Rest a Priority in my life. I think
it really applies to this episode. I'm gonna play the
clip right now. There is nothing more valuable than just
(34:07):
getting to sit with your experiences sometimes and just allowing
yourself to have a freaking nap, like to have a nap,
to have some downtime, to take a day off, you know,
at the end of your life. I know it sounds
so cliche. Everyone says, you're gonna look back at your
life and what are you gonna remember. You're gonna remember
the times when you didn't take a day off, when
(34:29):
you work too hard, when you missed it important milestones,
important events. Or are you're gonna remember the day that
you played hooky and you know you want to got
ice cream with your parents, Or you're gonna remember the
days when you said, I'm not gonna let this stress
me out anymore and went to dinner with your friends
even though you know you didn't meet your deadline, or
even though you felt this like urge to keep working.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
That's a clip.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
From my full episode which is available on my other podcast, Mantra,
titled I Make rest a Priority in My lif life,
and on that we really talk about why worker is
more than just pushing yourself and it's more than just productivity.
In fact, life is more than just productivity. And I
think that's a real great place to finish, and a
real final reminder. If your entire life is dictated by
(35:18):
a job you hate and by a career you don't
see a future in such that it drowns out all
the other parts of your life, and it has you
ignoring small joys, and it has you just like sick
with worry and unable to do the fun things. That's
that's going to have an impact. And the sooner that
you can start searching for an alternative, start just questioning
(35:42):
if there is something else out there you would enjoy more,
the better like, the more your future self is going
to start thinking you sooner like, the better off you
will be. The time to change is now, and that's
at any age, by the way, whatever age you are,
it's still now. But speaking to all my twenty somethings,
you know, starting again, going back, saying this degree isn't
(36:05):
right for me, I don't want to do this anymore.
I'm going to choose to be a beginner that is
not shameful, that does not make me a failure. I
think that that is an incredible act of bravery, choosing
to start again, choosing to acknowledge that this wasn't right.
You didn't make a mistake. You just didn't have all
the information yet is so courageous, Like that makes you
(36:27):
a major success in my eyes. Like those are the
kinds of people I really admire and the stories I
really seek out, like those of people who are not
afraid to start over and who are not afraid of
being a beginner and saying I was wrong about what
I wanted and now I'm just going to see and
I'm going to explore. You have so much time, and
(36:49):
that time will be more valuable when you spend it
doing something aligned with what you care about, and when
you spend it doing something that really puts a fire
your belly, or that gives you a sense of being
or a mission or just a sense of accomplishment, whatever
name you want to give it. Having a job and
having a career that you feel proud to have is
(37:13):
really great for your mental health firstly. It's also really
great for your physical health, and it's really great for
the enjoyment that you want to get out of life.
So I hope that this episode has provided you with
some clarity and with some answers. If you have made
it this far, you guys, know that if you make
it to the end of the episode, you get a
secret message from me that I invite you to leave
(37:34):
a comment on. If you've made it this far, leave
a comment down below. What was your first job? My
first job was making smoothies at a place called boost Juice.
If you are Australian you will know the boost Juice law.
But speaking of careers, speaking of careers that maybe weren't
right for us, what was your first job? But anyways,
I hope that this has yeah again caused you to
(37:57):
a question, cause you to reflect, cause you just to
think about it. You don't have to make any choices now.
You don't have to go out and quit your job tomorrow.
This is just a nice way for you to consider
what else is out there for you and maybe confirm
some things you already know about a deeper dissatisfaction with
the career you've chosen. That doesn't make you a failure,
doesn't mean you've made a mistake, just means that now
(38:17):
you have more information to make a better choice for yourself.
So as we wrap up this episode, make sure that
you give that full episode on Mantra a listen. I'll
leave a link in the description. Make sure that you
are following me on Instagram at that Psychology podcast if
you want to share feedback, questions, episode suggestions. We're always
on the hunt, We're always on the lookout. Send me
(38:38):
a dam over there. Make sure you're following along so
that you always know when new episodes are coming out,
and leave us a five star review if you feel
called to do so. It doesn't really help the show grow.
And yeah, reach cool new people like yourselves, But until
next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself,
especially if you are dealing with some careers dissatisfaction.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
A lot of people, you.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Are not alone and we will talk very very soon.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Mhm
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we, of
course break down the psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Of our twenties.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
It has been a beautiful week for me. I am
back from my mother daughter trip to Fiji. I feel refreshed,
I feel really motivated.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I feel good.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
I literally had the best time with my mom. She
is so much fun. So I feel like I'm back
right in time to dive into wor like I had
enough time or way to feel excited about coming back.
And you know, speaking of work, work is actually the
subject of today's episode, specifically, the signs that you may
(01:15):
not be aware of, or may be ignoring that your
career is not right for you. Not just not right
for you, but deeply dissatisfying, deeply unfulfilling, deeply unrewarding, and
perhaps you just haven't even realized it yet. These are
specifically signs that I wish someone had told me when
(01:37):
I was feeling pretty low about my previous job and
I was trying so hard to make it work. And
now I can acknowledge that all those things I was
feeling were actually indicative that this career was just not
right for me. When I look back, you know, I
wish I had made a change earlier. I wish that
(01:58):
my decision paralys and fear of the unknown hadn't kept
me in unhappy places for longer than I needed to
be in them. And so I'm taking some of that wisdom,
some of the things that I learned, as well as
some of the tips and some of the psychology to
really help you guys figure out whether what you're experiencing
(02:21):
right now is just a bad week or a deeper
dissatisfaction with what you are doing, but more importantly, the
kind of warning signs that you are becoming stagnant or
stuck when you know that you are not happy. Basically,
how do we make a change in our career and
(02:42):
in our lives and have the bravery and the courage
to try something new before we feel further way down
by time and money and the education and the years
that we've invested into a job or a profession that
you know simply isn't right for us. Work is really important.
(03:02):
Doing something you care about doesn't have to be aspirational,
even in this current job market, and I want to
really share how you can choose something that feels more
aligned without feeling boxed in by this very notorious and
incorrect idea of a dream job. I also want to
talk about when you know it's really time to quit,
(03:25):
even if maybe you don't have anything else lined up,
and also some of the surprising ways that hating your
job shows up in all other dimensions of your life
that you may or may not be ignoring. So if
you have doubts lingering as to whether what you're doing
now is really what you want to do for the
(03:46):
rest of your life or something that you actually care about,
these five signs will definitely give you some clarity and
give you some of the answers that you are probably
looking for. So, without further ado, whether you're in your
twenties or maybe even beyond, let's get into the signs
that the career you're in right now is maybe not
(04:08):
the one for you.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Stay with us.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
If you have listened to the podcast for a while,
you will probably know this, but it is my deep
belief that when it comes to finding the right career,
the right pathway, the right job for you, there isn't one.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
There is not a perfect job.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
There is no such thing as a dream job that
comes with no flaws, no downsides, no bad days, no
occasional sense of emptiness. And that's coming from someone who,
for all intents and purposes, has the best job that
they could ask for in their life. Right now, there
are still things that I would change, and I know
(04:54):
that in ten twenty years I probably won't think the
same about my job that I do now. Because dream
jobs evolve, our purpose evolves, our idea of work life
balance is constantly being changed and being challenged. That doesn't
necessarily mean, though, that there isn't some careers out there
(05:15):
that simply fit better. But I do want to give
that caveat at the beginning that if you are here
to figure out what your dream job is, I'm sorry,
I don't even believe in that concept, but hopefully I
can bring you closer to finding a job that is
maybe almost there for you. Another thing I believe is
that it's never too late to change, to shift gears,
(05:35):
to essentially decide that you want something different, and at
the point that you realize that your major, your job,
your career isn't for you, no matter how far you
have gone down the wrong road, turn back. That is
a very famous Turkish proverb that I think more of
(05:56):
us ought to live by, not just in our professional lives,
but in relationships, in love, in anything, careers in particular.
Though you know a lot feels at stake for a
couple of reasons. There's a couple of reasons why we
know we're on the wrong path and we don't turn around.
The first one being that you know, our jobs they
allow us to live, and they allow us to exist
(06:19):
in a world that is ruled by currency and money.
Jobs pay out bills, So simply leaving without having anything
else lined up, I don't know about you. I've never
had that luxury. Secondly, you may have a lot of time, energy,
resources tied up in your career. Say you're becoming a
(06:40):
doctor or a psychologist or a trades person. That typically
means a lot of study, a lot of ours, learning
a skill, sometimes a lot of student loans, a lot
of money invested. You can really feel like you're not
going to get that time back, you're not going to
get that money back. You're letting yourself down, you're letting
(07:02):
your family down. And that's what causes us to stay
in places that we don't belong simply because of basically
the sunk cost effect. We also, of course, it's not
just an investment of time, energy, money, it's an investment
of our identity. What we choose to do for a living,
what we hope to do for a living, forms a
(07:25):
large and significant part of who we see ourselves as
you know, what's one of the first things that people
ask you, What do you do for work? What are
you studying? It just goes to show how much occupational
identity is one of the ways that we are really pigeonholed,
and that we pigeonhole ourselves. And you know, pigeonholes may
(07:45):
feel very small and restrictive, they can also feel very
safe and very comfortable. So deciding to walk away from
whatever you're studying, whatever you're doing, and explore other things,
especially if you do, I don't know what else you
want to try, it can feel like voluntarily choosing to
step off a ledge into a large bottomless pit. But
(08:09):
being in the wrong place, it doesn't get easier. Your
tolerance for it just improves, until you know, one day
you're in your sixties and you're looking back at your
life and you're realizing how truly young you were, how
much time you actually really did have ahead of you
if you'd just taken the risk and walked away a
(08:30):
little bit sooner from the thing that you knew deep
down you didn't love. So to avoid that regret, to
give ourselves that opportunity, let's discuss these five signs that
you are probably in the wrong career. Sign one, you
feel emotionally numb. You dread what you're doing, and it's
a feeling that goes way beyond boredom. If you dread
(08:53):
every Monday, you feel your mood completely shift. The moment
you walk into work. You completely detached. You don't care
if you're fired, you don't care if your work is good,
you don't care if the assignment is late. You just
have no desire to commit or succeed in what you're doing.
This is probably the wrong career for you. Yes, a
(09:14):
job isn't always going to put a fire in your
belly every single day, but if this is what you're
going to spend the large majority of your life doing
almost ninety thousand hours of your life according to some estimates.
You want to feel something, pride, accomplishment, that you're helping people,
whatever it is, even on hard days. You want to
(09:35):
feel something. You don't want to feel nothing, and you
most certainly don't want to feel just plain anxiety. The
Sunday scaries are another indicator of this. Sunday scaries it's
a common term. You've most likely heard of it, but
if not, it essentially refers to the anxiety or dread
that many people experience on a Sunday evening as the
(09:59):
weekend ends and the work week begins, and it has
a scientific explanation, Sunday scaries. It's essentially emotional forecasting or
anticipatory dread. You're looking at the weak ahead and almost
feeling empathy for your future self and what you'll know
they have to endure, and kind of almost borrowing their
(10:20):
unhappiness so that you feel terrible right now. And the
more you experience this and endure this, the more you
start to become quite numb. Once you get into work
or back to school or to your internship or whatever.
Instead of feeling all that anxiety you were feeling on Sunday,
you actually end up shutting off. You go through the motions.
(10:43):
All of this is a way to kind of mentally
compartmentalize rather than really acknowledging like, wow, I really hate this,
because realizing that you really hate this means that you
probably have to do something about it, and you just
might not feel ready for that. So this can also
be highly indicative of something else called emotional blunting, where
you basically become numb to what is going on around you.
(11:05):
It's typically associated with certain medications, such as antidepressants, but
it can also have an environmental origin, like a workplace
or a job that you really hate or you feel
absolutely nothing positive towards. Now.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
If this gets.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Worse, this can also develop into something that psychologists call
and herdonia, so a lack of interest, a lack of enjoyment,
a lack of pleasure in what you're experiencing, almost like
people describe it, like looking at your life and feeling
like there is a tinge of gray over everything, and
(11:41):
in this context the context of our jobs and our careers.
It often stems from being in an environment where your
core values and your interests are being forced to be
put away, and you may not even realize how emotionally
flat you've become until the weekend, or until you're on holiday,
(12:02):
or until you're working on a side project, and suddenly
you come alive again. It's like this is where you
really feel like yourself. This kind of chronic disconnection throughout
the work week, or whenever you're studying, or whenever you're
engaged in the thing that isn't right for you. This
is your mind and your body communicating and essentially saying,
(12:22):
this is not fitting the bill for what makes us happy,
and because we can't acknowledge how unhappy we are, we're
not going to feel anything. This is intrinsically linked to
the second sign that you are in the wrong career,
which is that your identity and what you are doing
for work feel entirely out of sync. A twenty sixteen
(12:45):
study from the Journal of Vocational Behavior, it essentially found
that career satisfaction is incredibly linked to something called identity alignment.
How much your job reflects who you are. The more
identity alignment you have, the happier you are going to
be doing what you're doing. There was a poll a
(13:07):
couple of years ago, maybe even like a decade ago,
that found almost fifty five percent of Americans derive a
really large part of their.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Identity from their job.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And I think as our time spent in the office
and working increases significantly year by year, I can only
imagine that that identity investment.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Has really increased.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
If you value helping others and your job is denying
insurance claims, you will experience deep cognitive dissonance because you
don't have identity alignment. If you love nature and you
love being outdoors and you work a desk job with
no windows, same issue. If you really value intellectualism and
(13:53):
being cognitively stimulated, but you work a job that is
very routine and process based with not much room for
create activity, again, you have a disalignment. A disalignment in
your identity is the same as a disalignment in your body.
It feels pretty terrible and you can tell that something
is wrong. This is very similar to a concept called
(14:17):
self concept clarity. So self concept clarity is basically our
ability to tell what's going to make us happy and
our ability to know what would make us satisfied. So
if you find yourself saying things like this just really
doesn't feel like me, Like I hate who this makes me.
I don't recognize who I am at work, I feel
(14:37):
like someone else. That's not trivial. That is indicative that
your self concept clarity is coming into play and is
communicating with you and telling you like, this isn't who
we are, This isn't who we want to be. If
you're not living your life in line with who you
think you are, you know who are you?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Then?
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Like, if our life and the kind of person we
are is defined by our actions, and our actions and
our time and where we work and all these other things,
is saying the opposite and representing the opposite of who
we are, we are going to be very unhappy, and
your body and the rest of your sense of self
will respond to that. We know through research that this
(15:18):
dissatisfaction becomes very tangible, It becomes very felt in your body,
in your mind, in your bones and your muscles.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
In order to.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Discover what the alternative would be, you know, what would
actually make us happier, What would my so called dream
job be?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
That isn't this?
Speaker 1 (15:35):
We really need to then focus on values, because if
we're living or having your career that is creating disalignment.
The only way to bring back alignment is to really
really reaffirm what we care about and then find ways
to seek that out through work. This question that someone
asked me once, I think is a really great way
(15:55):
to do that. If you're struggling with what you really
want to do in your life, you know, oh it's
not this. I think this question will help. Basically, if
your whole identity, all your memories, everything about your life
had been erased, about who you were as a person
had been erased, what are the five values that you
have right now that you would choose to come back first.
(16:18):
It's basically a different way of asking who do you
see yourself as like at your core? What are the
five things that you think represent you the most? And
is it that far fetch that you can't ask for
your work to reflect that. If that feels like a
stretch from where you are now, If those five things
are not reflected in your work at all, imagine then
(16:41):
going forward and living another thirty forty years where your
values un aligned. The reason I think this exercise works
so well for people who are like unsure of what
they want to do is. It's not asking you to
identify your dream job as an alternative. Like I was
having this discussion with my friend on a walk this morning,
and she was like, I don't know what my dream
(17:03):
job is, and I was like, well, you probably don't
have one. You probably will never figure out what it is.
If you search for that your entire life, you'll probably
be unhappy. But what you can do is figure out
a kind of broad range of things that you would
feel really fulfilled doing, you know, And that's what this
allows you to do. It's asking you to identify your values,
(17:23):
which can then be expressed in different ways through different careers,
not just one thing. For example, if one of the
values that you would want back is let's say vulnerability,
vulnerability is a core value, could mean that you could
be a counselor you could also be a matchmaker. You
could be a hospice nurse, you could be a rehab director.
Many options, not one dream job, but all rooted in
(17:47):
what you value. It's really really important you have that
in your work. It's worth mentioning as well what happens
when we derive too much identity from work, because that
can really result in in something equally kind of scary.
It's called enmeshment, where you and your job are just
never separate. Your success at work determines your worth everywhere else,
(18:10):
your interests or work. You can hear people getting sick
of you're talking about work, everything you think about work.
I will admit I fell into this trap when I
first started doing my podcast full time and then Mantra
as well. You know, I love both of those podcasts
so much, and it was they asked such a reflection
of who I am, and so much time goes into
(18:32):
making them good and successful. And when I first started,
there was so much at stake, like I'd quit my
full time job, Like there wasn't much room for me
to think about anything else. And also because this podcast,
the one you're listening to, Like this used to be
a hobby, right, and then this was the place I
went to kind of not think about work. And then
suddenly it was my job and nothing filled its place,
(18:53):
Like I didn't have any sense of balance in my life.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
My entire identity was this.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Oh my gosh, was I completely uninteresting especially to myself,
Like I was bored of myself.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
I was exhausted.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
All the small setbacks felt enormous because there was so
much being balanced on the back of my career. So
you can take it too far. I think it's our
reminder as well too. It's okay to want to be
your values to be reflected in work, but you also
have to be bigger than work. Me and my boyfriend
have this rule before we talk about work when we
(19:29):
get home, we have to talk about something else. A podcast,
the gym, a story we heard, something like, we're excited
about something in the news. It's really important for us
because both of us are deeply invested in what we
do for a living. I like to visualize it as
a five finger test for whether you have balance. If
(19:50):
you hold up five fingers, if work is one of
your fingers, you have to have four things to fill
the other fingers. You have to have a hobby, you
have to have an interest, you have to have friends.
We have to have four other things that you really
care about. And if you cannot assign each of your
fingers something else in your life that feels as important
as work, like that is a warning, and that is
(20:11):
a sign to rethink where your energy is being directed to.
Like your identity is a series of buckets. Work is
just one bucket. We want to have other things that
we value and other things that we care about, Like, literally,
do it right now, hold up five fingers. If work
is one, what are the others? What else might you
need in your life to feel like your identity is
(20:33):
reflected in what you do?
Speaker 2 (20:34):
But it's not everything.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So those are our first two signs. We're going to
take a short break here, but when we in return,
I have three final indicators that maybe what you're doing
right now is not exactly right for you. So stay
with us. Okay, are you ready for the third sign
(20:58):
that your career is.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Not right for you? Here?
Speaker 1 (21:00):
It is you think more about your quitting story than
your five year plan in this career, in this company,
in this industry. Everyone loves a good quitting story. I
remember when I worked at a stake restaurant back in Uni.
It was so horrific. Every single day I would walk
in to the start of my shift and I think,
(21:21):
this is this is the day I'm gonna do it,
Like I just need one reason to push me over
the edge and I will quit. I will do it
knowing that I wouldn't because I needed the job. And
then you know, COVID came along and stole my epic
quitting story for me. But the fact that I was
thinking about quitting constantly at work indicated a much deeper
(21:42):
unhappiness quitting. For you, it may be becoming a fixation,
an obsessive interest that you cannot stop circling and that
won't stop dominating the news cycle of your brain. You
fantasize about burning your life to the ground, crashing out, disappearing,
just not coming in one day, moving to Costa Rica,
whatever it is that is all you can think about.
(22:05):
It brings you joy to think about it. Being invested
in the fantasy more than reality is indicative that this
isn't right for you. You know, daydreaming it isn't always bad.
It can actually be a really creative coping mechanism. But
if you're constantly escaping into the idea of doing something else,
being someone else professionally, that's not just your imagination. That
(22:28):
is cognitive separation. That is escapism at work. It has
another name as well, maladaptive daydreaming. If you've listened to
the whole episode that we did on this you will
know what I'm talking about. But maladaptive daydreaming is essentially
where you feel detached from reality because you're spending too
much time in the fantasy of what could be, And
(22:49):
it does mean that you end up neglecting real life responsibilities,
real life relationships, work relationships, deadlines, all those kinds of things.
In those instances where you're obsessing over the idea of quitting,
I'm gonna be completely honest with you, It's probably not
going to get better. It's probably time to start searching
(23:10):
for a better job. It's like what they say about
a relationship, right like once you get once you have
seriously considered breaking up, or once you have gotten the
ick over somebody, like you're not there's you're not going
back from that. Like no matter how long you hold
on for afterwards, once you have seriously quit a relationship
or quit a job, in your mind, it's never going
(23:33):
to be the same. It might not be quitting your
imagining as well, like it might be something else like
fantasizing about a different job, fantasizing about your next holiday
the next time you switch off. That's going to become
unhealthy and it can actually end up you know, you
can end up sabotaging your current career and sabotaging where
(23:56):
you're currently at. The thing is, as much as you
hate your job right now, you do want to get
another one, and that means having good references and having
positive working relationships. It is something I wish I had
learned earlier in my twenties. Don't burn bridges based on
momentary feelings. You never know when you'll need that bridge
(24:19):
later on, So instead, try and keep at least one
foot in your day to day and maybe participate in
a little bit of quiet quitting. But think about the
future here. Don't just completely like neglect your job. Think
about it smart, and don't please don't just let yourself
(24:40):
think that this is how everyone feels about work.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
It's not.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
You don't have to feel this way. You know, the
best part of your day should not be the thirty
minutes at lunch where you fantasize about how nice it
would be to never go back in. You're allowed to
want more, you are allowed to seek more for yourself,
So use this fantasy as motivation so that you don't
find yourself stagnant. You don't find yourself thinking, well, everyone
(25:05):
feels this way, like I'll just put.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Up with it.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Speaking of everyone, here is the fourth sign, and I
rarely hear people talk about this when it comes to
knowing a career isn't right for you. Quite simply, if
there is no one that you admire in your industry,
this industry is not right for you. No role model,
no colleagues you want to be, no person you know
(25:30):
ten years down the line whose life you think looks
really great, no vision of a life you want that
contains your job, no examples of it. It's not right
for you. Not having this admiration is often indicative of
not having aspiration or inspiration for what you're doing, essentially
meaning that your heart isn't in it. It also means
(25:53):
you probably don't see yourself here long term enough to
think aspirationally about what your life could become and to
seek out those examples as blueprints and motivators. Because you
are motivated when you think about a good life, when
you think about a life that you want for yourself,
those dreams might not contain this career.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
What is that saying to you?
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Our brains are naturally drawn to admiration and sometimes jealousy
for those doing better than us in an area where
we ourselves want to thrive. Because a we are naturally
comparative creatures, and b comparison basically indicates desire, passion, and.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
What we want.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
It's why if you want to figure out what kind
of life you want to have, you have to ask
yourself who am I jealous of? It's very revealing and
if the answer is well, no one in the space
that I'm in, you should probably be in a different space.
And obviously I'm not condoning jealousy as a motivator. I'm
just saying that jealousy is a really because it is
(26:59):
such a deeply fel motion. It's quite revealing of what
you really want. Also, you know, we so often learn
and stay motivated through observation and modeling, but also through
vicarious victory and celebration, you know, seeing what others achieve
and feeling like we could do that ourselves. That's a
(27:19):
huge part of aspirational psychology, having role models, having someone
that you look up to, and if you don't have that,
like you're missing out on a big part of how
you stay motivated in a career, how you advance, how
you seek more for yourself. In this industry, Let's talk
(27:40):
about this dimension though, which is having someone you admire
in a space that you would never want to make
money from doing. So what if your heroes are I
don't know, like Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders and you know you're
never going to be a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. Like what
if your heroes are classically trained musicians and you've never
(28:01):
picked up an instrument in your life? What happens when
you admire someone as a hobbyist of the thing that
they have made a career as Does that make sense?
Like you view it as a hobby, they view it
as a career. What happens then? Well, that's complicated, But
I think I'm personally a firm believer that your job
(28:22):
doesn't have to be the thing that you love most
in the world. So just because you have a hero
in a certain field like a musician or an actor
or I don't know, a tech guru like that doesn't
mean that you need to suddenly quit your job and
pursue what they're doing, as long as you know that
you're going to be okay in the future with not
giving it a shot. If you are viewing this person
(28:43):
as a personal hero and as someone that you aspire
to be, are you going to regret not trying to
do something similar like that's a question you have to
answer for yourself. It is also completely okay to just
admire them and feel motivated by their character from afart,
(29:03):
as long as you are okay with that fact, and
you will be okay in the future with not giving
your passion a shot professionally, that's totally your prerogative. But again,
if you genuinely cannot think of one person in your
industry or in your profession that you think is cool,
there is probably something better out there. Maybe your hero
(29:25):
may not be an accountant, maybe they will not be
a professional pharmacist, but there should be at least one person,
a colleague, a professor, someone else. You're in college with,
someone you think has a cool life, a life that
you can see yourself emulating. So we are down to
our final sign a final one, and it's one you
(29:47):
may have already guessed. It's burnout. It's sickness, it's feeling
physically and mentally unwell. If your body is giving you
the signals. If your body is getting sicker, easier, burnt out, easier,
irritated more, this career is probably not in alignment with
who you are We often think that career decisions are
(30:11):
purely intellectual and rational. But your body keeps the score.
I feel like everyone's heard that phrase. Your body keeps
the score, and not just when it comes to trauma.
Chronic stomach aches, fatigue, headaches, Sunday scaries, you know, a
real use of your anxiety. These are not normal, These
should not be dismissed. These are not just parts of
(30:33):
being an adult. You also cannot just outthink them or
outwork them, or continue with this idea that it will
get better, it will get better, it will get better.
These symptoms are often rooted in very deep psychological occupational stress.
Your nervous system is probably in a prolonged state of
(30:55):
low level discomfort and distress, and this is ricochet into
all these other areas of your body, into hension, into
a suppressed immune system. Even if you're still, you know,
clocking in every morning, even if you feel like you
can get through it, if your body is telling you know,
(31:17):
listen to it. And also another reminder, you're not being dramatic.
Even if people have it tougher, even if people work
harder than you, even if you feel like you don't
deserve to be stressed, I'm gonna tell you that's actually
not your choice. I'm sorry, it's not your choice. Like
(31:39):
you can't think, you can't think in a way of
like I can escape this by telling myself that I
don't deserve to feel this way. Like your body is
not something that you can control with your mind, Like
you can't just tell it to be well if it's
in an environment that is making it sick. So it's
something you really need to pay attention to. Scientific studies
(32:03):
have shown us that occupational dissatisfaction takes a toll on
your body. For starters, one study found that you sleep less,
you get sick more often, you're more likely to report
chronic stress. One of the most shocking studies on this
was actually recent, and it analyzed data from over six
thousand participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and
(32:25):
found that job related dissatisfaction experienced in your twenties and
thirties can lead to overall health issues just ten to
twenty years down the line, with the real cumulative effect
of unhappiness in your job really starting to shop in
our health around forty The researchers they examined the participants'
(32:48):
job satisfaction from twenty five to thirty nine, and then
compared that with data around their health after they turned forty,
and what they discovered was that people who were unhappier
in their jobs early in their careers, we're more prone
to illnesses, particularly mental health problems, but also sleep problems
(33:09):
and excessive worry and excessive stress. And this was when
they were controlling for all these other variables, including income,
including education levels, including where someone lived. This isn't just
about your happiness. This is about your health. And that's
something that we don't value enough until we don't have it.
(33:31):
Trust me, like, then your entire perspective changes. This is
also about having a life and having experiences that don't
feel burdened by a job that you feel trapped by.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I want to.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Quickly play you guys this clip from my other podcast Mantra,
because I think I put it so well there, Like
I'm not even going to bother repeating myself. I think
I put it perfectly. This is from my episode on
I Make Rest a Priority in my life. I think
it really applies to this episode. I'm gonna play the
clip right now. There is nothing more valuable than just
(34:07):
getting to sit with your experiences sometimes and just allowing
yourself to have a freaking nap, like to have a nap,
to have some downtime, to take a day off, you know,
at the end of your life. I know it sounds
so cliche. Everyone says, you're gonna look back at your
life and what are you gonna remember. You're gonna remember
the times when you didn't take a day off, when
(34:29):
you work too hard, when you missed it important milestones,
important events. Or are you're gonna remember the day that
you played hooky and you know you want to got
ice cream with your parents, Or you're gonna remember the
days when you said, I'm not gonna let this stress
me out anymore and went to dinner with your friends
even though you know you didn't meet your deadline, or
even though you felt this like urge to keep working.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
That's a clip.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
From my full episode which is available on my other podcast, Mantra,
titled I Make rest a Priority in My lif life,
and on that we really talk about why worker is
more than just pushing yourself and it's more than just productivity.
In fact, life is more than just productivity. And I
think that's a real great place to finish, and a
real final reminder. If your entire life is dictated by
(35:18):
a job you hate and by a career you don't
see a future in such that it drowns out all
the other parts of your life, and it has you
ignoring small joys, and it has you just like sick
with worry and unable to do the fun things. That's
that's going to have an impact. And the sooner that
you can start searching for an alternative, start just questioning
(35:42):
if there is something else out there you would enjoy more,
the better like, the more your future self is going
to start thinking you sooner like, the better off you
will be. The time to change is now, and that's
at any age, by the way, whatever age you are,
it's still now. But speaking to all my twenty somethings,
you know, starting again, going back, saying this degree isn't
(36:05):
right for me, I don't want to do this anymore.
I'm going to choose to be a beginner that is
not shameful, that does not make me a failure. I
think that that is an incredible act of bravery, choosing
to start again, choosing to acknowledge that this wasn't right.
You didn't make a mistake. You just didn't have all
the information yet is so courageous, Like that makes you
(36:27):
a major success in my eyes. Like those are the
kinds of people I really admire and the stories I
really seek out, like those of people who are not
afraid to start over and who are not afraid of
being a beginner and saying I was wrong about what
I wanted and now I'm just going to see and
I'm going to explore. You have so much time, and
(36:49):
that time will be more valuable when you spend it
doing something aligned with what you care about, and when
you spend it doing something that really puts a fire
your belly, or that gives you a sense of being
or a mission or just a sense of accomplishment, whatever
name you want to give it. Having a job and
having a career that you feel proud to have is
(37:13):
really great for your mental health firstly. It's also really
great for your physical health, and it's really great for
the enjoyment that you want to get out of life.
So I hope that this episode has provided you with
some clarity and with some answers. If you have made
it this far, you guys, know that if you make
it to the end of the episode, you get a
secret message from me that I invite you to leave
(37:34):
a comment on. If you've made it this far, leave
a comment down below. What was your first job? My
first job was making smoothies at a place called boost Juice.
If you are Australian you will know the boost Juice law.
But speaking of careers, speaking of careers that maybe weren't
right for us, what was your first job? But anyways,
I hope that this has yeah again caused you to
(37:57):
a question, cause you to reflect, cause you just to
think about it. You don't have to make any choices now.
You don't have to go out and quit your job tomorrow.
This is just a nice way for you to consider
what else is out there for you and maybe confirm
some things you already know about a deeper dissatisfaction with
the career you've chosen. That doesn't make you a failure,
doesn't mean you've made a mistake, just means that now
(38:17):
you have more information to make a better choice for yourself.
So as we wrap up this episode, make sure that
you give that full episode on Mantra a listen. I'll
leave a link in the description. Make sure that you
are following me on Instagram at that Psychology podcast if
you want to share feedback, questions, episode suggestions. We're always
on the hunt, We're always on the lookout. Send me
(38:38):
a dam over there. Make sure you're following along so
that you always know when new episodes are coming out,
and leave us a five star review if you feel
called to do so. It doesn't really help the show grow.
And yeah, reach cool new people like yourselves, But until
next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself,
especially if you are dealing with some careers dissatisfaction.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
A lot of people, you.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Are not alone and we will talk very very soon.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Mhm
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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