This time, next year

Are you back at work, after a summer break?

For many of you terrific folk, that’s absolutely fine – holidays and relaxing are fun but work is good too. You like what you do, the people around you are great, you’re paid well, you feel valued and you know you’re making a meaningful contribution.

But I know that for a fair few of you lovely people, work doesn’t feel anything like that. The dread of returning probably kicked in the day you went on holiday. You’ve most likely been hating it for years but for some reason you’re still there. Maybe you don’t know what else you could be doing. Or perhaps you know what, but you can’t figure out how. Or maybe you know what and how, but you’re struggling to find the confidence to make it happen.

I totally get it. And this is what I suggest:

If you’re feeling rotten about the work you’re returning to this year, please [please!] do something over the next twelve months, to make sure that you aren’t in the very same [soul-destroying] place, next year.

You might like to:

• Read a book or two
• Do a course – a short one or start a whole degree
• Get an ABN
• Start a side project
• Try a Life-Experiment, like this one
• Speak to people in areas that appeal
• Shadow someone in an interesting role
• Work with an evidence-based coach

Sitting there, hating where you are and feeling like there’s nothing you can do to change your circumstances feels AWFUL.

Just doing something, one small thing, can make such a difference. It reminds you that you do have agency, that you can shape your life and career. And that one, small thing will often lead to something else, which will likely reveal another unforeseen something, which might itself, then morph into an entirely unexpected and sparklingly welcome opportunity.

Tags: career-coaching, life-coaching, Melbourne