Why quit your job?

Quitting your job on social media has become a competition. Everyone’s out there to tell you why you should quit your job and most people giving that advice have never done it.

Quitting your job normally comes down to one thing:

“You want to spend more time doing something you love and less time doing crap you hate”

In my case, I don’t mind working in finance, but it doesn’t exactly wake me up in the morning and give me morning glory.

Quitting your job is normally associated with the following:

1. You hate what you’re currently doing
2. You hate the people you work with
3. You hate the company, what they stand for and their BS values
4. You need a change
5. You need to be challenged

Quitting your job is harder than you think.

Quitting your job can feel like killing your newborn baby.

Often you’ve become comfortable, know where the kitchen is and know most people in the business. The people you work with can feel like family even if your career has nothing to do with anything you enjoy doing.

Much of the advice on the internet suggests you can just quit your job, pitch a tent and ‘you’ll be right mate.’

But we all have bills to pay and commitments.

“It’s not as easy as quitting your job and walking into your dream career after popping a bottle of Yarra Valley Chardonnay and some nicely aged cottage cheese”

The process of quitting your job looks more like this:

1. Realizing your way too comfortable
2. Slapping yourself over the head a few times and screaming “WAKE UP!”
3. Going through months of rejection, “Fuck off,” and “Who are you again?”
4. Complaining to your significant other that it will never happen
5. Facing your fears and feeling like your whole world could end
6. Trying to figure out what the heck you actually love doing

The process of quitting your job is a grueling one. It will take every ounce of energy, enthusiasm and resilience you have. Someone asked me yesterday what it was like to quit my job. My reply was this:

“Quitting your job feels like ripping off a band-aid and watching blood piss everywhere because the scab hasn’t quite healed.”

The finding what you love part.

I’ve hinted through my sometimes interesting approach already that quitting your job requires you to know what you love.

This advice sounds rosy and gorgeous like a Santa Monica sunset, but it’s total bullshit unless I explain how to do that.

Here’s how to find what you love:

1. What does your internet browser history look like?
2. Where do you spend most of your time in the bookstore?
3. If I wrote down everything you did outside of work, where would most of that time be invested?
4. At a BBQ, what do you talk about the most?

In one of these four questions is what you love. That’s what you should eventually quit your job for.

Quitting your job is hard until it’s not.

In the weeks leading up to by big resignation, I was crippled by fear and I almost didn’t go through with it.

I was going to take another job in the same company I worked for, for the last seven years because it would help me lie to myself and think I was brave enough to do what I was afraid of.

The process of quitting your job is hard until you come to terms with the idea that there is no right decision.

Quitting your job could be the best thing you’ll ever do or a freaking disaster that will make you want to fire off an email to me condemning me to hell for the rest of my life.

“What I do know is this: if you never make a tough decision like quitting your job then you’ll always live with regret for the rest of your life about what could have happened”

Regret will kill your dreams more than quitting your job ever will.

Final thought.

I can’t tell you all to improve if I don’t. This very thought nudged me over the line. It was this idea that woke me up and got me standing straight again.

I can’t be blogging on the internet and telling people to face their fears or quit their job unless I’m prepared to do the same. That would be incongruent and my conscience would eventually reveal this truth to me.

Quitting your job is a tough decision and so is living with regret.

Think about that if you’re on the cusp or quitting and can’t rustle up the courage to do it.