There are many reasons not to like your job. The top reasons relate to poor recognition, interpersonal conflict, and a lack of growth opportunities. How you handle yourself will depend on the company environment, your personal situation, and relationships with your boss and colleagues.
Happiness at work comes from a genuine and sustained enjoyment of daily activities, fueled by passion for a meaningful purpose, a hopeful vision of the future, and true friendships. Happy people perform better than their unhappy peers. Rather than becoming successful to be happy, instead flip your mindset that to become successful you should work on being happy. On the other hand, respect is like air. When it’s there it’s easily taken for granted, but if somebody takes it away it’s all people can think about. To approach the problem of not liking your job anymore, we need to look at the positive motivators and the negative detractors.
Are there opportunities for growth in your company?
Workers are more likely to feel committed to a job that enables them to thrive and advance in their careers. Missing a component of autonomy in our work, continued improvement in our skillset, a sense of belonging within a team, and commitment to a higher purpose, will likely result in burnout.
Burnout happens when the reward for work isn’t commensurate with the effort being put in. It may be linked to feeling overloaded with work, but many people put in long, dedicated hours and describe it as passion instead of overwhelm. Finding the work rewarding is what makes the difference between your job adding to your sense of self, or detracting from it. The components of thriving in our job include being given stretch projects where we have the tools and decision-making power to complete our own work, and forming part of a supportive team with a shared and meaningful goal.
Stress can be good if it is framed constructively. Reframing a negative situation to look at the opportunity in it keeps energy levels high and positive even in a seemingly hostile environment. The key components to maintaining an opportunity-seeking outlook are compassion for yourself and others, and alignment of goals and activities with a personal sense of purpose.
A goal is just a desired future state. A goal with a ‘because’ is a higher level priority because it sits as a part of something overarching in the hierarchy. Give yourself permission to disengage from activities that are not serving higher level goals. Focus on ‘what really matters’.
A mistake many people make in the workplace is in waiting for opportunities to be given to them. Along with developing a positive stress approach through compassionate reframing and alignment with your purpose, look for problems in your company that you can help to solve. Put plans in place to solve the problem and recruit others to help. Be the project manager of your own career development. Most employers don’t give opportunities to people who haven’t already proven they have what it takes to take full advantage of them, whether it be project work or promotions.
If you are struggling with bringing your best self to work to be able to capture opportunities for learning and growth, you may need to dive deeper.
Is Your Job Turning You Into Someone You Don’t Want To Be?
Have you ever left a meeting and thought, ‘I don’t like the person I was in there,’ or ‘I don’t care what they are saying. I’ll just do whatever it takes to get them to leave me alone,’ or something more like ‘I know I can do better than that, but I just couldn’t get it together.’ All of those lines of thinking could be a sign that your job isn’t bringing out the best in you.
The main indicators that your job isn’t rewarding enough are irritability, cynicism, depersonalization, erosion of engagement; emotional and physical exhaustion; and a feeling of inefficacy or incompetence in your work. These symptoms culminate in burnout when resentment for the job starts and a person no longer feels like him/herself. When we behave badly; we are irritable, resentful, disengaged and frequently make silly mistakes, it’s near impossible to feel proud of the version of ourselves we are exhibiting to the world. It might even be said that being burnt out can make a person feel ashamed of themself.
Behaving better when burnt out isn’t just a matter of having better self-control. To bring about an improvement, the source of the problem needs to be addressed since our ability to manage the symptoms of burnout has been biologically reduced by changes in the physiology of the brain.
The effects of burnout are clear in brain scans. Chronic stress as a result of burnout has been shown to cause an enlarged amygdala, the part of the brain that regulates emotion. Negative stress increases the number of neural connections and amount of activity in the brain’s fear center and deteriorates the level of connections in the hippocampus. Burnout has a dampening effect on the limbic system and shrinks the size of the prefrontal cortex over time, the part of the brain that processes higher-level cognitive functions like social connections, decision-making, strategic thinking and concentration. The effect of cortisol from stress can cause a prolonged reduction in the number of synaptic connections as fewer new brain cells are formed alongside the loss of existing brain function, especially in the prefrontal cortex.
These changes validate that you’re not just ‘being emotional’ when you are experiencing a burnout, but your capacity to regulate your emotions has actually been biologically impaired. Difficulty controlling and maintaining emotions are telltale signs that your mind is already crying out for help.
What To Do In A Bad Job | Building Resilience Vs Burnout
If a person feels disconnected from their value, getting a better job won’t necessarily help. Some of burnout is from low levels of resilience, either from resilience being worn down, or from not being familiar with or employing tools to build resilience.
While putting the onus completely on the employee to manage their own work-related mental health fails to fully address the problem, the reality is that many managers and employers are not equipped to improve the conditions resulting in workplace burnout. Resilience is a critical life skill that every person should look to develop. Research shows that people who report higher resilience are physically healthier, more productive, happier, and have closer relationships. Resilience is the ability to withstand, bounce back, and grow. There are steps that everyone can take to improve resilience, some of which do not even require any extra time in the day.
- Understand what’s happening psychologically and physiologically when experiencing burnout.
Exhaustion: The nervous system gets locked into active mode from constant stress. This constant stress response even affects people while they are asleep, reducing the ability to achieve restorative sleep.
Depersonalization: The ego wants to maintain an ideal self-image. As a result, the ego doesn’t acknowledge that the person is becoming exhausted and overwhelmed, they develop a biased perception of themself and the growing tension between ego and self causes the person to check out. The ego disassociates from the self, trapping the person in the distorted ego.
Emotional Regulation: The ability to regulate emotions is lost and the person gets stuck in a loop of negative emotions.
- Complete the stress response.
Life is full of stressors. They are impossible to avoid. Expect to have a stress response and resulting emotions, then to manage the stress responses better.
Dealing with the stressor isn’t the same as dealing with the stress. The stress can be dealt with while the stressor is still in place. To deal with the stress, the stress response cycle must be completed. Completing the stress response signals to your body that the fight, flight or freeze response is no longer needed, and your nervous system can cycle back to relaxed mode. When completing the stress response, the body communicates to the systems that it is now in a safe environment.Telling the body to relax without letting it go through the stress response cycle is difficult. This is why the advice to ‘relax’ is ineffective when undergoing a period of high stress.
Things to do to complete the stress cycle:
- Move – exercise including things like stomping your feet and punching your pillow or a punching bag. If exercise is not an option, tighten all the muscles in your body for 10 slow counts and then relax them. Repeat if needed.
- 20 second hug and/or other physical affection.
- Good night’s sleep.
- Creativity – make something that gives you a sense of accomplishment.
- Laugh, especially with someone else.
- Cry without shame.
- Deep breathing – breathe in for 5 seconds, hold for 5, out for 10.
- Re-bond to rebound.
Burnout is like being held hostage. Being in a state of burnout holds a person hostage to the nervous system locked into active mode, to the distorted ego, and to a negative emotional state. Physiology under constant stress means you have taken yourself hostage, which is why you can’t get out of burnout on your own. Create safe and secure bonds with other people that you have not been able to create within yourself. Find a safe place in your relationships with other people that allows you to come back to center, complete the stress response, and cultivate a balanced perspective.
- Put preventative measures in place for the future.
Remember that the brain is part of the body. To continue to function as it should, the brain needs blood flow from regular exercise, time to clear debris build-up and reset through sleep, and proper fuel through diet and nutrition including vitamins like B-12, a lack of which has been linked to depression and dementia, symptoms which also coincide with burnout.
Self-care goes beyond cherishing your sleep, eating well, and exercise, however. It is also about letting up on self-criticism to be able to connect with a core purpose. Practising self-compassion also enhances a person’s capacity to be empathetic with others.
Compassion for oneself and others helps a person to be able to set more realistic expectations. A more balanced outlook on reality contributes to a happier overall sentiment and better positions people to confront ongoing challenges. For example, practising compassion could change a person’s perspective from ‘My boss is a bad person with malicious intent,’ to ‘My boss is a flawed human being with his/her own struggles.’
This compassionate and empathetic approach is also the foundation for a growth mindset. As such, people who are compassionate tend to learn skills better and become more competent. A growth mindset helps a person to focus on how to improve, rather than get stuck in a feeling of failure, keeping the focus on a positive vision for the future with a practical sense of the current reality.
Keeping an eye on the horizon is also important for focusing on purpose over productivity. Ensuring actions are led by a strong sense of purpose, while maintaining autonomy and control over one’s life and agency to make decisions, will drive engagement and motivation. Re-calibrating efforts to emphasise meaning can help combat cognitive overload by aligning the effort to reward ratio a person feels they achieve through their work. This re-direction may mean letting go of the goals and dreams that a past self had and using experience to free oneself of the obligation or loyalty felt to that desire once had.
Acknowledge that it’s hard to have a top level goal and not be able to work through it and there will inevitably be bumps in the road. Have clarity on the abstract goal and be flexible on how else it can be applied. In metals, flexibility is a measure of tensile strength. Flexibility in how to reach your purpose gives a person’s resilience more strength.
The best environments for cultivating resilience are both demanding and supportive. Pushing your limits encourages growth and builds confidence in your abilities. The people most willing to push themselves out of their comfort zones are those with a growth mindset. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck defines a growth mindset as a belief that abilities can be developed through hard work and feedback, and that major challenges and setbacks provide an opportunity to learn. Adopting and strengthening a growth mindset, with a strong focus on purpose and meaning is fundamental to improving resilience.
What To Consider Before Leaving Your Job Due To Burnout
There may come a time when leaving your job or organization is the best possible course of action in response to burnout. If that’s the case, consider focusing your new job search on companies with a track record of high employee engagement.
Employee engagement results can be found in annual reports and through agencies that specialise in employee survey rankings. Employees in high engagement firms are paid 15-20% more than those in companies with lower engagement scores. Companies’ ability to out-pay their competitors is due to the increased productivity and innovation associated with better engagement and job satisfaction among employees. Not only would you be paid more, employees in these companies also experience 40% less burnout and inversely, have a 40% higher sense of accomplishment for their work.
Choosing an organisation based on a healthy company culture is good for your wallet, your health, and your sense of self.
Pro Tip: Lay the groundwork once you’ve decided to make your move. Put aside extra savings toward your Freedom Fund, update your résumé, reach out to network contacts, spread the word that you’d like a new job, get a coach, or sign up for an online course.
Ask yourself – Is there anything that could keep me here at this company? Have I tried to change the situation? For example, ask for a raise, request to change teams, etc.
Responding To Burnout When You Can’t Take Your Job
If you feel stressed, unreasonably angry, or unmotivated you may be experiencing workplace burnout. Self-care won’t cure burnout but there are steps you can take to improve resilience to stress. Completing the stress response and compassion for yourself and from others is the cure for burnout.
Changing how you feel comes down to changing your daily habits. Prioritise training yourself into new mindsets and skills through using a consistent system. Reconnect with the connections and resources of a normal, happy life.
To motivate yourself, don’t chase success or enjoyment, but rather meaning. On a daily basis, keep in touch with your personal sense of purpose and ensure your activities match your higher level objectives. Ensure you are committed to things in the long run and to work toward them. But remember, if it is the long run there has to be balance and compassion. It’s not about punishing yourself, but rather cultivating a growth mindset.
Accept that it’s still a job. It’s not always going to be enjoyable and it will at times be stress inducing. Revel in the challenges and self-improvement you can find in those challenges. Constantly check in with yourself to figure out what is fulfilling to you and confirm that you feel an alignment of reward and effort. Accept that finding fulfilment is likely to be a moving target.