Quitting a Bad Job Does Not Make You a Quitter

Changing a bad job for a better one is not quitting. It may be the only way to keep your sanity and stability in life.Imagine working hard and finally getting the job you always wanted. Imagine that, for a while, things are going great: your manager is happy; you ask many good questions and they want you to know the answers; you get very well acclimatized to the job. After a while, you continue to do well and everyone is happy.

You feel comfortable to venture suggesting new solutions to do things more efficiently or to improve the quality of the product or to market it in a more sophisticated way. You are excited and feel that they will readily embrace them. You see yourself leading a new department that implements these innovations. But in reality, all these ideas are received with doubt and suspicion by your superiors.
             
Meanwhile, you are giving the job 150% of yourself. The more new ideas you come up with, the more stifled you feel because upper management is not willing to listen, or the big boss has just been replaced and "now is not the time to come up with something new," or your direct boss is not in the mood to change anything because he is only two years from retirement and prefers to keep the status quo or simply because he/she likes the status quo and doesn't want to learn any new things.
           
Do some parts of this scenario sound familiar to you? "What can I do now?" you may ask. Many of my coaching clients come in asking themselves this question. They may be talented women who can't make it into the "boys' club" of upper management; they may be people who took a job hoping they will have room to grow and implement new ideas, only to realize that the company's structure is set in stone and no one is willing to consider any changes; or they may have worked for years in a company that is "changing direction" and they are treated like yesterday's news. No one is listening to the wealth of experience they have from working for that company for years.
           
Their situations may be different, but there is one thing they all have in common: they feel frustrated, humiliated, hopeless, used and discounted. Their creativity is suppressed, their confidence is declining and the feeling that they can do nothing good is slowly and surely settling in. This is usually the time when they start looking for help.

Often, because of working too many hours a day, all their friends are somewhat work related. They can't discuss their frustrations with them for fear of sounding a whiner and complainer. They don't want to alarm their families, who often depend on their income to maintain a certain lifestyle. Who else is there to talk to and help them find solutions? In modern western societies, this is more and more becoming the role of the career coach.
           
Unfortunately, by the time these disillusioned people call me for an appointment in my life coaching program, their hopelessness has become depression, their worries about work have translated into stubborn insomnia and overwhelming anxiety. They waited too long for help, and now the stress is taking a huge toll on their health and their lives.

They now have diminished abilities to handle the very problems that caused this distress. They have to heal from the anxiety and depression before they can even begin to consider career coaching. The longer they wait before deciding to make a change, the longer their journey to resolve their career problems becomes.
           
What could they have done differently? They needed to act much sooner. They waited too long before they decided to do whatever it takes, even a radical change, to address the problem.
Although it is ingrained in human nature to like stability and fear change, sometimes making a change is the only way to maintain a healthy stability.
           
Remember that a gradual, well-thought and well-planned change is much easier to manage than an emergency change. Making such decisions early can save you a lot more problems in the long run. Getting out of a toxic work environment is not quitting, as many of my clients in this situation fear. It is a conscious decision to protect your health and your capacity to work in the long term. It is an act of self-preservation. It is being smart and anticipating the disastrous consequences of working in a toxic or unrewarding environment and seeking a work place that will give you hope, confidence and a sense of well-being again.
           
Overcome the instinctive fear of change! Carefully analyze your situation. Try to do your best to solve it. And if that does not prove effective, think and plan a bigger change in direction. It may save your sanity-and even your life.