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Change your life: Part 1

Changing jobs

Housework!

Are you living the life you really want to live or thought you would be living 1, 3, 5, 10 years ago? Maybe it’s time to look at your life and take stock and get rid of the debris.

Have you ever let the house cleaning pile up so much it gets you down for a few weeks? the washing has not been done, the ironing needs done, the skirting boards need dusting, the garage needs cleaned out, your wardrobes
are full of crap, your kitchen drawers are housing letters, book, pills, toys and other rubbish. I’ve done this in the past and felt like shit every time I went home. Then it reaches saturation point, you get up on a Saturday morning early and decide that’s it the house is getting cleaned from top to bottom. I would spend all day cleaning out the drawers, the wardrobes every single thing that I had been neglecting the previous weeks.

 

Come 8pm you’ve done it. How did you feel? my guess is you felt great, you spirit was lifted, your mind felt lighter and you had a little more energy even though you had just spend 5-8 hours cleaning. This is your spirit lifting and your perspective changing. Your house was tidy so new possibilities could happen in your life. You could invite people up for dinner
because you’re not ashamed of the mess, you could feel good giving some clothes to charity, you felt a weight lifted as you’d dealt with all the letters that you had been meaning to deal with but put them in the drawer for later, in the clear up you managed to find your phone so you returned your phone calls so you felt you weren’t neglecting your friends and family. There are scores of reasons you felt better about cleaning the house.

Well it might be time to clean out your life!

Do you feel a bit low, feel lethargic, feelings of despair, hopelessness and your life is lacking direction? You need to look at your life and what you are doing that makes you feel like this. In the first in a series of articles looking at your life and how to change it we are look at your job.

Your job

Are you doing the job you are meant to be doing? If you work full time you spend most of your waking day working. If you hate your job you hate 8-12 hours of your day. If you are doing this every day it adds up to a lot of unhappiness. Change it! I can already hear you thinking ‘yeah right, it’s not that easy’ why is it not that easy? The money is too good, I don’t have any other skills, I’ve been doing it for 30 years there’s nothing else, and I’m too old.

Okay I hear all the reasons for not doing it. Answer me this question: If your son, daughter, niece or nephew came to you one day and said they were feeling really shit and it was because of their job at the restaurant, they didn’t like it and it was getting them down. After listening to them you would more than likely advise them to change jobs. Now, you may say that’s different as they are young, it’s easy to find a different job, however in their mind it is no different from your situation. With their limited knowledge and experience of the world their perspective on life is the same as yours. I other words giving up their crappy job is no less different than you giving up your job and starting something else.

I can hear lots of ‘yeah but I……………………’ what it comes down to having the balls to step up to the plate and change your future happiness and your family’s.

Grab your balls!

I worked at BT for 10 years answering the phones to unhappy customers and some happy customers. I got paid well, would get a great pension, health benefits the works. However, I was unhappy. I resented the fact that I had to get up every morning and go to work at a place I didn’t like. I was out of sync and it showed. My wife knew I was unhappy. I wanted to help people in some way, work in the social care sector, so I applied for a few jobs and couldn’t get in. I started looking around for voluntary work. Then when the chance of voluntary redundancy came up I thought about it and dismissed it many times, I would only get £11,000. I had a wedding to pay for, 2 children, a big house. When I discussed my plans for a new business selling Signed 1st edition books and worked out the finances and after discussing it with my wife I went for it. I grabbed my balls and left the company.

The first year was great and I had an annual turnover of £40,000, but I did work around 12 hours a day, however it was from home. After a year or so the business decreased dramatically for various reasons and I could no longer get the money I was getting before. So I folded the business and went back to BT on a temporary contract working with the people I had worked with before. I noticed how unhappy most of them were and they were getting paid a hell of a lot more than me. I was grateful to my friend and manager for giving the chance to earn a bit until I re-evaluated my life.

Again I turned to the social care sector and the same things happened as before, I had no experience. So again I looked at voluntary work, but managed to get a job as a support worker helping the homeless and that is where I am today. I am not totally in sync but I am a lot closer than I was before and I am happier for it.

My wife is now in the same situation. She has grabbed her balls and gone to university full time to study for a degree, she left a job paying nearly double what I earn just now. It’s a bit scary but we KNOW it will work out and we have made moderate adjustments to our lives to help her dream.

7 tips

1. Do you need to change your job or do you need to change the way you do your job?

Write down all the things you don’t like about your job No write down all the things you do like

It maybe you don’t need to change your job it could be your working practice or the people you work with. Some people have left jobs and later found out it wasn’t the actual job itself they didn’t like it was an aspect of the workplace they didn’t like. You need to know this first before you do anything else.

2. Do you know what you really want to do?

Most people don’t know what they really want to do with their working life. Try the following exercise:

Write down 7 things you love to do
Write down your 7 best talents (be honest and don’t be shy)
Write down 7 jobs you’d love to do
Write down 7 things other people say you’re good at
Write down 7 courses you would take at university if you had the chance

After you have down this look at all the things you’ve written and try and find a common theme. It might be teaching, it might be learning, it might be driving just try and find the theme.

3. If someone gave me a million pounds

If someone gave you a million pounds to change careers what career would you choose? Whatever you answer will give you an insight into the type of job you really want and for some the type of person you really are.

4. Build a bridge to a new career

If you can invest the time and money you might still be able to work and learn a new career at the same time therefore giving you the chance to move one foot out of the door of your current job and one foot into a new job.

5. Be willing to learn

What keeps young people young is their enthusiasm for learning. As we get older we tend to think we are too old to learn something new. The more we learn the healthier our brains are. It has been shown that if we keep our minds active our brain can regenerate and build more synapses and keep us youthful in mind and spirit. It is a myth that you cannot teach old dogs new tricks. Get this out of your thinking pattern and you can change your life.

Be willing to take courses or go to university or college or back to take some exams, what is holding you back.

6. Change your thinking

A lot of people have gotton into such a rut about their jobs that they believe it will be impossible to leave their job without getting the sack or being made redundant or retiring. A lot of people also believe that they are being selfish if they think about leaving. If you feel you are being disloyal to your employer, don’t. You really are only a number and you can be replaced. This might be hard to swallow but it’s the truth.

You have to start thinking about what you want and need. Speak it over with your partner; get them on your side. Do the figures and the training and everything else, but look after you and you will be better equipped to look after other people e.g. your family.

7. Grab your balls

You’ve figured out what you want to do, you’ve done some training, you’ve done the figures, spoke it over with friends and family, you’ve done everything. Now grab your balls and jump.

 

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