You hate your job. You’re afraid to leave. You say it’s the money, you know it’s the security. The familiar unsatisfying, sometimes toxic environment. Not your life purpose. Soul-less and soul-killing.
There is another way. With meaning and fulfillment. Now. During and after the golden handcuff years.
Please know that you are not alone in sticking with a job that isn’t you and doesn’t feed you.
Please know that it’s understandable that money and security keep you there.
Please also know that you can take better care of yourself than you are now. And you can do so right now. This moment. Without a cost to your pension. With a benefit to your spirit, your soul, your well-being and your future career possibilities.
Please find a window somewhere in that soul-less company. Walk over to it and look outside. As you look, remember that your life extends beyond those walls and beyond the scenery in front of you. You are not your job. You are not that company. You are not its structures, rules, beams and boards.
You can be a person who looks outward and beyond.
Your new job, starting right now, is committing to getting outside. Extending, expansiveness, reaching, stretching, stepping out, moving forward.
Right now, put “outside” on your “to do” list. Set a timer and brainstorm what outside can be. A class or workshop, a graduate degree, learning to use a lathe, cutting gems, taking a business class, talking to former colleagues, scanning your FB friends for someone long, lost and inspiring, talking to a coach or a career counselor or a therapist or a personal trainer. But outside. Creating new structures and stimulating new brain cells. Outside the walls and the norms and the culture and the terminology and the rules and the mindset of your handcuffed self.
You do not have a life sentence. You will be granted parole, if you want it. You need only to choose to live on the outside, and take steps to get to know what is out there for you.