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On this episode of the podcast, we discuss how leaving a career is not an easy decision, but it's important to prioritize your happiness and well-being. You want to start looking at if there are more negatives than positives in your work, if you keep...
On this episode of the podcast, we discuss how leaving a career is not an easy decision, but it's important to prioritize your happiness and well-being. You want to start looking at if there are more negatives than positives in your work, if you keep saying to yourself, "it will get better," and listen to the signs your body might be giving you. It's important to take action and start exploring new opportunities, even if it's just researching online or talking to people in different fields. Never forget, you have the power to create the life and career you want.
What We Discuss:
Three Signs You Should Leave Your Career Now [00:00:26] Stu introduces the topic of the episode and shares that 41% of employees are thinking about resigning. He discusses the first sign, which is that the negatives outweigh the positives in your current job. He suggests making a list of pros and cons to evaluate this.
Negatives That May Pop Up [00:03:55] Stu provides examples of negatives that may appear on your list of cons, such as not being excited about your future or not feeling passionate about your work. He encourages listeners to consider whether they deserve a career that lights them up and challenges them to change their way of thinking.
Signs to leave your career [00:08:05] Three signs to leave your career: denying the fact that you are scared to look for something else, being honest with yourself, and your body giving you signs.
Making a decision [00:11:54] The first step to start the process of leaving your career is making a decision. The power of a decision is what will begin to change the quality of your life.
Episode Resources:
Stu’s IG - @stumassengill (Website)
Finding Direction Podcast IG (Website)
Speaker 0 (00:00:00) - What's up my friend? Welcome to the Finding Direction podcast. My name is Stu Massengill and I'm here every single week to bring you a passionate guest or message dedicated to helping you find your purpose so that you can live a life full of passion, fulfillment, and happiness from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for hanging out with me, and let's dive in.
Speaker 0 (00:00:26) - What's up, my friend? Welcome back to another episode here on Finding Direction. I hope as you are listening to my voice right now, that you are having, as always, the most incredible day. Whether it's been a rough start to your day or a great start to your day, I wanna say thank you for taking some time outta your life to join me for this week's episode as we're gonna be diving into three signs. You should leave your career N o w I'm talking about right now and start looking for new options. And the number one thing to start this process, I want you to make sure you stick around to the end to here, the number one thing you need to do to start this process, because this is by far the most powerful piece of all of this when it comes to finding the next thing in your life when it comes to leaving your career now.
Speaker 0 (00:01:17) - So stick around to that to the end. If you have not already, make sure you smash that subscribe button so you can join us every single week as we bring you valuable conversations and insights to help you create a life full of passion, fulfillment, and happiness. And so, as we dive into this week's episode, we want to talk about the three signs you should leave your career. Now, I'm not talking in a month, I'm not talking in a year, I'm not talking in five years, but I'm talking signs that you should leave your career now and really start looking for the next option. And before we get to the three signs that you should do that, I wanna share with you, I was reading about a study, and in this study they found out that 41% of employees said that they are thinking about resigning, right?
Speaker 0 (00:02:06) - Think about that massive number. 41% of employees are thinking about resigning right now. So what we wanna do in this podcast is if you are one of that 41%, a massive part of the population, we want to have an honest, a raw, a real conversation saying, well, if you're thinking about resigning, how do you know when it's actually the time? How do you know when you should plant a flag in the ground and say, you know what, no more, no longer, and start going to the next thing. All right, so let's talk about that. The first sign that you should leave your career now is that there are more negatives than positives, right? One exercise that you can go through for this first step, and this is, you know, back to, I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who would write PS and cons out, is get an actual piece of, of paper and really give yourself five minutes, 10 minutes, and on one side write pros, draw a line down the middle of the piece of paper, and on the other side of the paper, write cons.
Speaker 0 (00:03:09) - And you want to go through and write out what are all the pros, what are all the amazing things, the incredible things that your career gives you that it adds to your life, the value that it brings to you. And then what are all the cons? What are the negatives? And then what you want to do is look at that list and say, okay, are the pros so much more, and there's so many more good things, and it's actually that a negative is just that, you know, I don't like my boss, and, and that's just really the one negative. Or is it that you have one or two positives, right? Your positive is, okay, I get a paycheck. My other positive is, okay, well I have a job, right? I'm not unemployed. And then the negatives are just endless. And if that is the case, that's the scenario.
Speaker 0 (00:03:55) - That is a massive sign that you should leave right now, right? Some of the negatives that may pop up to give you a few ideas when you go through this process is maybe when you look at your future, it doesn't excite you. So when you look at the next month, the next three months, the next six months, the year next three years, it doesn't jazz you. It doesn't pump you or fire you up for your life. Uh, another negative could be that you are not excited to go to work, right? That when you wake up, you go, man, I gotta go do this thing and I really don't wanna do this. Right? And you dread and you drag and you just find yourself literally pulling yourself to work rather than getting outta bed and going, hell yeah, I get to go do this thing today.
Speaker 0 (00:04:40) - That's another negative. Another negative could be that you're not growing or you're not learning, right? You are not becoming better in some way, shape, or form. That's another negative. It could be, it could be also that you're not actually passionate about what you do. And just to go off on this part for just a second, I know there's a big debate of, oh, should you, you know, actually be passionate about what you do? Or is it just something that brings in money and it gives you, you know, a life that you create? And I would say that there are really two ways you can look at this. One, you have a career that supports your life. You go, you know what? I don't really care if I'm passionate and excited about this. I just wanna make a paycheck so that I can support other things that I like doing in my life.
Speaker 0 (00:05:25) - That's one option. The other option that I would really challenge and encourage you to look at your career through is the second option is that you go, okay, I can have a career that is passionate, that I'm excited about, that I really enjoy, and it also supports these other things that I like doing outside of my career, right? It's not that my career's my life, but it's that I still get to do something I'm passionate and I'm excited about that also supports other parts of my life. Because when you really think about it, and, and I want you to me, clearer than anything you've ever heard, is that the reality is there is someone in the world right now that is in a career that is doing something with their life professionally that would light you up more than you can even imagine. There's someone out there that is in the role that would light you up, that you would be passionate about, that you would wake up excited about, that you would wake up just talking about, right?
Speaker 0 (00:06:27) - Just being so overwhelmed and joyous that that's what you got to do with your life professionally as a career. And the question I want you to begin to ask yourself and think about is, well, if there's someone else out there that is living in a career that would light you up, that would just make you feel like you want to jump outta your socks, if there's someone else that has done it, isn't it possible that you can do it too? If there's someone else that has found that career, that lights them up, isn't it true that if you really put in the work, the time, the energy, that you could actually find that thing that lights your soul up? And if you are doing something right now that doesn't excite you, that you're not passionate about, I would challenge you to change your way of thinking to, to say, you know what?
Speaker 0 (00:07:18) - I'm doing this thing I'm not passionate about, excited about. I would challenge you to say, you know what? I deserve to have something that I do professionally that lights me up so, so, so powerfully. It is out there, my friend. You deserve it. And if you're not living it, that is another sign that you should leave your career now because there's something better. There was something so much more amazing. All right, so that is the first sign. I know it went off on a little tangent there, but the first sign is that the negatives outweigh the positives. So make a sheet, draw a line down the middle, pros on the left, cons on the right, and give yourself five or 10 minutes and write out what are the pros on the cons. And if the cons outweigh the pros in a big way, that is a sign that it is time to leave your career now and start looking for other options.
Speaker 0 (00:08:05) - All right? Now the second thing is, the second sign that you should leave your career now is if you keep saying to yourself or to your coworkers or to your friends or your family, that it will get better, right? That it will get better. If you find yourself saying 3, 4, 5, 6 times over and over and over, over the span of a few months or a few years, that, oh, you know what? It's gonna get better eventually. You know what? It's, they're gonna figure this thing out that that part's gonna get better. If you continue to say that over and over and over. Really what it is is it's you denying the fact that you are scared to look for something else. There's a saying, and it says that people would rather know the devil that they know than the devil they don't know. And what it means, essentially, is that people would rather sit and stay and just live in something that they really don't love and enjoy, because at least it's familiar rather than leaving to pursue something greater that's possibly out there.
Speaker 0 (00:09:20) - But it's an unknown, right? People would rather know and and live with the devil they know than the devil that they don't quite know, right? And so what you wanna start to do is if you keep saying it's always gonna get better, take a moment to get radically honest with yourself. From all the people that I've worked with, there is one massive starting point to creating a better quality of life and to having a breakthrough. And it is being radically honest with yourself. I want you to ask yourself, if you had a raw, a real, a just 120% honest conversation with yourself, what would it sound like? Would it sound like, yeah, I really believe that, that there's something greater here and that I could create a better life for myself in this career that I'm in? Or would the radical honest conversation say, you know what?
Speaker 0 (00:10:14) - I'm not happy here. I'm not enjoying this and I need to move on to the next thing, right? W would the radical honesty say, I'm miserable? Would the radical honesty say, I'm not happy here? Would the radical honesty say that this career, this job, this thing that I'm doing sucks the life outta me? Get raw, real, and honest with yourself? And if you are, what are some of the answers that come out? Another exercise you can do here is grab a journal and just write down the prompt. What does my truest self want to tell me right now? And allow yourself to go through that prompt and to be radically honest with yourself. And if you are camping and continuing to say it's gonna get better, it's gonna get better, maybe really that is just you masking the truth. All right? So that's the second sign.
Speaker 0 (00:11:08) - And then the third sign is that your body is giving you signs. All right? The third sign that you should leave your career now is that your body's giving you signs that when you wake up, you are exhausted. When you go to work, you are exhausted, you're tired, you're falling asleep throughout the day that when you get home you don't wanna do anything else. You just wanna sit on the couch, be a blob, because your body is so exhausted from exerting so much energy into something that you truly do not love. So listen to your body and ask yourself, is your body giving you signs that it is time to do something else? All right, that is the third sign. Now, the last thing that we wanna look at is I promised you in the beginning, right, we wanna look at three signs. You should leave your career now and start looking for new options.
Speaker 0 (00:11:54) - And the number one thing to start the process and the number one thing, if you listen to the first part of this episode, you go, you know what? These are some signs I match up with these signs. It's time for me to leave and I need to start looking for options. If that is you right now, and you maybe did the pros, cons exercise, you maybe wrote about that prompt, this is the first thing that you need to do to start this process. And it is three words, and it is making a decision, making a decision, right? The power of a decision is what will begin to change the quality of your life. If you've realized that this is not what you're supposed to do, there's something else out there for you. The first step to start this process is saying, you know what? I am gonna make a decision right now that I am not going to settle for less than this in my life.
Speaker 0 (00:12:49) - That I'm gonna find a way if, if there's a will, there's a way. And if you say, I'm gonna make a decision, that is when things will start to change in your life. I want you to think about anything that you've ever done in your life. Where does everything start? It starts with making a decision, right? Why did you graduate from school? Because you made the decision to commit to going through school. Why did you get into the relationship you're in? Because you made the decision to get into the relationship, right? Why does anything happen? It's because you first off, make a decision. They say decision means to cut off any other possibility. So if you are realizing it's time to leave, the first thing you have to do is make a decision that it is time to find something new. Yes, you will have to get resourceful.
Speaker 0 (00:13:37) - Yes, you will have to get creative, but once you make a decision, everything becomes easier. We have so many episodes on this podcast you can dive back into as well. One of 'em is episode 288, which is four steps for simple steps to Finding your next starting place. So if you wanna dive into that, I'd highly, highly encourage you to, because that will give you some actionable, tangible steps on once you've made the decision, well what then? What do you do? All right, so dive back into that episode if you'd like. But really the first piece I want you to hear it here is if you know it's time to leave your career now, I want you to make a decision right now. And the decision is one of two things. One is the decision that you are gonna stay in the career that you're in, and you're gonna find a way to make it better, not wish it was better.
Speaker 0 (00:14:22) - You are gonna find a way to make it better. Maybe that's hard conversations with your manager. Maybe that's difficult conversations with other people in your sector, or is the decision that this is not fulfilling me, this is not exciting me, this is not making me happy, I am not passionate about this, and I'm making a decision right now that I'm gonna find something better and that I deserve something better for my life. I want you to make that decision right now, and once you make that decision, things will begin to change. All right, my friend, thank you so much for hanging out with me on this week's episode. As always, it is a joy to have a conversation with you. It is a joy to have some time, uh, part of your day, a part of your life. If you enjoyed this episode, what I would ask you if you'd be so kind, is to go leave us to review an iTunes.
Speaker 0 (00:15:10) - This is how we get this show in front of more people, make more of an impact and continue to grow this show, this community that we've begun to build, which is so, so, so beautiful. And so if you would leave us a review, we'd be extremely grateful and forever grateful for you for leaving that. So thank you so much, my friend. If you want to continue to hang out, I have mother episode coming up right after this, or go check out 2 88, 4 simple steps to finding your next starting place. And other than that, my friend, I will see you on the podcast soon. Have a wonderful, amazing, incredible rest of your day, and I'll talk to you soon.
