Stop the Job Suckage: Day One

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Stop the Job Suckage: Day One of Ten

* This ten-day series is designed to help you kickstart a new way of approaching your job or career. Over ten days, we’ll explore how to look objectively at the job/career situation you’re in, and clarify where to go next. For some, that might mean not leaving a job but drastically improving it in some meaningful way. For others, this series will provide some help with clarifying your next career move or pave the way to a transition. You’re strongly encouraged to complete all ten steps, in order, to see what answers you arrive at.

So, perhaps you have already decided that Your Job Sucks. As a human species, when we think something sucks, we tend to start noticing more and more of the suckage and less and less of what is actually working in our lives. To be fair, the suckage can feel like exactly that–something sucking the life out of you, slowly, via office politics, uninspiring work, threats of downsizing, budget cuts, an impossible workload.

So here’s where we’ll start with day one–what does a complete, whole, 100% fully alive day look like for you? When do you wake up? Where are you living? Who is living with you? What do you have for breakfast? How do you organize your time? How much time do you spend watching television or checking the internet? How much time do you spend with your kids, friends, partner? How do you feel when you wake up in the morning? What practices do you use to keep yourself grounded? At what time do you start and stop work each day? When are you eating meals? What does your house look like? Are you working from an outside office or an office in your home or for a local company or do you have no office at all–are you completely outdoors? How do you spend your leisure time in the evenings?

Exercise: Write down your ideal day, from start to finish. This would encompass a typical day of you living your ideal life with your ideal career and your ideal control over time and money. In particular, be sure to write not just what you DO with your day, but add in how you FEEL as you’re doing it. Are you feeling….alert, awake, peaceful, calm, inspired, overjoyed, passionate, excited, light, free, connected, authentic, joyful, creative…?

Don’t worry–I’m not going to ask you to burn sage and chant with this writing, but you will want to complete it before we get into Day Two!

P.S. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar. Keep your hand moving. Don’t worry about forming a perfect composition. Don’t wait for the right time, the right writing notebook, the right pen, the right computer. Hop in and see what happens.