You’ve been working hard at your job for several years, ticking off milestones your younger self could have only dreamed of. Then one day you look around and wonder why you wanted this in the first place.
Or perhaps you pursued what you thought was your dream role, but you realize that there are a lot of things about it that you don’t like.
Many people spend a lot of their waking hours at work, so what you experience there will often spill into other parts of your life. And if a big chunk of that is unhappiness, discontent, or some other form of negative emotion, it can feel like the only way to improve your situation is to change jobs or careers altogether.
But changing jobs or careers isn’t always the fix-all solution, nor is it feasible for everyone. First of all, stable jobs aren’t in plentiful supply, thanks to a combination of economic shifts and technological advancements. There’s also (typically) a financial cost.
So how do you know whether you’ve truly outgrown your job and career, and need to make a drastic change? Or will you benefit from making small changes to your circumstances? Here’s how to tell.
1. Pay attention to your body
Your physical health and body can often be the first signal that something isn’t going right. This is what happened to Alexander Poulsen, a photographer based in Denmark and ambassador for photo-editing software Luminar. The 32-year-old started his career as a salesperson for a security systems company. He rose up the ranks quickly, earning a series of promotions.
Then Poulsen started having stomach pains. But multiple blood tests and doctor visits found nothing wrong with him physically. Then, during a three-week vacation, he had thoughts of self-harm and experienced a series of anxiety attacks.
It wasn’t until he was let go from his job and stumbled into photography that he experienced what it was like to enjoy making a living. “I actually was trying to get back in sales three times,” he said. Upon starting a new sales position, he immediately felt the same feelings that he felt at his last job. He quit two hours later. He started working with a psychologist and discovered that the physical symptoms were a manifestation of his stress, and he decided to pursue photography full time.
2. Notice what drains you and what gives you energy
Poulsen acknowledged that being a self-employed photographer comes with its own source of stress. However, what stood out to him was that his work environment didn’t create stress and anxiety the way his sales job did.
Vanessa Cornell had a high-flying corporate career as a Goldman Sachs executive and then in hotel development. Then she had her first child at 27 and ended up giving birth to five children in the span of six years. When she explored going back to work, she realized that she’d spent her life “meeting everyone’s expectations.” She continues, “I was burning myself out trying to basically be who everyone else wanted me to be.”
That was when she started the journey of experimenting with what she wanted to do. Today, Cornell runs two newsletters and digital communities—one around parenting, career, and midlife called Voicenotes From a Friend, and Vanessa’s Stitch Club, catered to crochet enthusiasts. Cornell spends a lot of hours on those projects, but it doesn’t drain her because it is something that she enjoys doing and is also deeply curious about.
“That energy is something that’s going to drive your productivity,” she says, as well as “your success and ultimately, your happiness.”
3. Look for micro-joys in your work, and elsewhere
Cornell says that many people see joy as the reward for hard work, when it would be much more effective to see it as a “guidepost.” She encourages people who are unhappy at work to try and see if they can find something about their circumstances that gives them joy, and lean into that. “Can you find micro-joys in your job? Maybe it’s the colleagues you work with. Maybe it’s one aspect of it. And can you give it a fighting chance?”
Looking for evidence of this, she says, will allow you to find things that you’re good at, and light you up. When you do this, she adds, “You’re really going to give yourself an opportunity to see: Can I make myself inside of where I am? Or do I feel like this is sucking the life out of me?”
4. Gain clarity on your likes, dislikes, and preferences
Cornell encourages people to dig deep into what they enjoy doing, both in work and outside of work. “A lot of people miss opportunities because they seem like they need to seem smart or prestigious,” she says. She cites her two businesses as an example, both of which have been “incredibly lucrative,” but weren’t something she ever considered when she started her career after graduating from Harvard.
When you find joy in the work that you do, she says, “you have the stamina to keep working hard.” After all, she says, “There’s no work in the world where you feel like every single day I’m doing something that I like. But there’s a really big difference between, ‘Oh, today I have to do this, or I feel like I’m abandoning myself.’ It’s a matter of that modulation,” she says.
5. Ask yourself what you want and what you need
Circumstances and realities play a big part in what kind of change you’re able to make. Poulsen, for example, was able to make his career transition while having access to Denmark’s sickness benefit. That meant that when he was let go from his sales job, he could take some time to improve his health and figure out what kind of changes he needed to make in his life. “You need to be able to take a leap from a place where you can provide for yourself,” Cornell says.
People often think, “I’m unhappy, and I have to change immediately to start to move towards what I want,” Cornell continues. However, if you do the work of figuring out what you want first without changing your external circumstances, the path can seem clear, she says. She cautions people against making drastic changes without considering their practical needs.
“If you’re saying, I’m going to give this up, and then I’m going to start the work of figuring out what I want, you can find yourself in a very scary place.”
