Ask the question: Is it the type of work or is it me?

If you’ve realised ‘hey, something isn’t feeling quite right at work’ that’s a great first step! We can get so caught up with being ‘busy’ and rolling through the day-to-day that we don’t take the time to unpack what we’re not enjoying.

Janey’s tip is to break this feeling down and unpack where it stems from.

Is it the job or career path itself? Is it the work environment? Or is there something going on outside of work that is impacting the way you are feeling? 

Whatever it may be, it’s important to take some time to work through what is triggering the feeling. Once you have worked through why you aren’t enjoying your role, you will then be able to make a decision on how best to address this moving forward.

If it’s your work, how you can get the most out of your role?

This was one of my FAVE points from Janey. Similar to relationships, jobs aren’t going to be 100% perfect and that is very normal. 

Janey mentions the 80/20 rule. In any relationship, you’ll never be 100% happy with all points of your relationship and that’s okay (and very normal). But overall, if you feel good when you’re with that person, you love them, and you are your best self when you’re with them, that’s all you can ask.  The same can apply for your job – you may not love 100% of it, but it’s important to remember the parts you do love.

So what’s Janey’s advice? Take control of your career. This is in how you show up at work, your dedication and your overall attitude.

Think about whether there might be any gaps in this role or the company that you could work towards filling to keep you feeling happy and excited. 

If there is, be proactive about how you plan to fill these gaps as a way to contribute to your own development and the company (this is a win-win and I know I love it when team members do this!). If you’re not sure how to fill these gaps, find someone in your organisation or network who does this role and ask them about how they approached learning these skills (they might even offer to help you!).

Once you’ve worked through this, sit down with the relevant person in your team (likely your manager) and work with them on your plan and goals you have set for yourself. Don’t wait for a review process, just get in there! You’ve got this!

If you are rethinking your career path, here's how you can work out what you want to do.

Sometimes our career path isn’t always right and that is a-ok! I know I changed directions many times before landing where I am now. Nothing is permanent and change in the pursuit of joy is ok! 

If you’ve made the decision to make a change, you might ask yourself “what do I actually want to do?” Janey’s advice on this is to work through a few questions. 

When you were younger, what did you love doing? What brought you joy and what were you good at? We often form our passions at a young age and sometimes we move away from these based on external pressures. Check in with yourself and explore if you can bring these passions into a potential new role or if not, how you can incorporate them into other aspects of your life.

Another question to consider is “what are you doing when you’re the most productive, feel the best and where time just passes by?” Janey calls this flow. We enter a flow state when we are doing work that aligns with our strengths and is aligned to our passions. Pay attention to this the next time you are doing a piece of work, it might just tell you something important!

Finally, feel free to ask some people you trust (who are objective), what they think your superpowers are. You might be surprised with what they come back with. Sometimes we look at our strengths as things that everyone can do and that is not the case. We are all unique and have different abilities (which is amazing!), so being told by those who know you the best what your strengths are can be an eye opening experience and can really help in reshaping what you want to focus on.