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Career Advice from a Professional Dreamer

You're tired, you're bored, and you're miserable. And it's all your own fault. The bullsh*t excuses that are holding you back.

By Lisa WatsonPublished 6 years ago 5 min read
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So it's Sunday evening, the family roast dinner has been demolished, and all that remains is the mountainous pile of washing up that no one wants to mention.

You're 'enjoying' the obligatory Sunday TV viewing and your thoughts take a drastic U-turn...'Tomorrow is Monday'. Your heart sinks; the weekend is almost over, and you're already dreading the emails from Karen that will have arrived in your inbox at 8:23 (who even gets to work that early? Don't you have anything better to do, Karen?).

You slump in to bed, turn the alarm back on and kiss goodbye to the weekend, dreaming of a new job and not dreading Mondays. We can all hope, right?

Wrong. You dont have to hope, you hold all the power to create a life that you love, not just Saturday-Sunday. Only your own bullsh*t is standing in the way.

You tell yourself: 'I'm not good enough.'

And this is the biggie. You ARE enough. You ARE capable. Chances are you're working a job you hate, for a company that doesn't respect you. Your ideas are ignored so you don't even bother voicing them any more. You play small, to fit in. You get your head down, do your job, collect your pay packet at the end of the month and live for the weekends and the scraps of annual leave you can get your hands on (forget long weekends over the bank holiday, Karen already booked them last year).

You've spent so long being downtrodden and overlooked, that you've started to believe that you don't deserve more. Your 15-year-old self would be pretty disappointed, huh?

It's time to stop the self doubt. You CAN change your life. You DO deserve to be happy. And deep down, you know it too.

Maybe you know what you want. Maybe you have the same 'I wish' dream every Sunday. Maybe you have no idea what you want to do, but you know there must be more to life than 'this'.

If you're sitting in the first category, what on earth is stopping you?

Need to retrain and you're scared of finances getting in the way? I'm willing to bet that you haven't even looked at how much retraining will cost you. You haven't done your research and crunched your numbers to see exactly what your options are. Call the university and inquire about course costs, ask how many hours a week 'full time' means (you'll be surprised, you'll easily be able to fit in a part-time job around studying), you can probably get help with course fees in some capacity. If you need to rent out the spare room to a lodger for a year or two to help pay the rent, then move one in, if you need to move back in with the parents (ouch), then swallow your pride and do it! Your whole life can be transformed in a couple of years if you only give it a chance. And maybe after looking in to your options, you still can't go back to uni right now, but until you explore every option, your 'I can't X, Ym or Z' excuses are exactly that: excuses.

Maybe you are already trained and are so full of self doubt that you're scared to apply for the dream job. Why? Send off the application and give it a go. Don't spend your life full of 'what ifs'

Or maybe you're someone like me: no formal qualifications but you just KNOW that you have the necessary skillset and mindset to do a better job than the person currently doing it and getting paid three times your salary. Then my advice to you is the same, APPLY! Apply for the job you want, send out a thousand applications and get in front of those who are hiring. Use your charm and your character to speak for itself. Let someone take a chance on you!

If you're on the other end of the scale and you have no idea what you want to do, but everyone else's lives seem so much more fun than yours, then write down everything you love about your current job. Write down everything you hate. Write down what you're good at, what you enjoy, what your best qualities are. Get it all down on paper. Take your notes and go and see a recruiter. It is LITERALLY their job to find you a job that you love!

Temp. Try new things. Don't be afraid to not be in permanent employment. No one cares if you've had 30 jobs in a year, people care about your attitude. Do 30 jobs well in a year and you'll gain knowledge and skills most people could only hope for. Do one job for 30 years badly and no one is going to hire you because you're full of bad habits and probably hate change. We're in a period of so much change: technology, business, economy, everything is changing and companies need risk takers and people who will take the bull by the horns. Take. The. Risk. Doors will open up that you never imagined, you'll thank me for it.

Now just in case you're thinking 'what does she know?' well, let me tell you, I've been there. I've been broke. I've been broken. I've had no confidence and I've been totally and utterly lost. But in recent years, after buying the bullet and having some faith in myself, others have started having the same faith in me in return. I've lead a team in a retail environment, I've freelanced as a writer, I've spent a month in Europe running a huge launch event for a luxury automotive client, I've been commissioned as a people management consultant in a corporate office. Things happen when you have a little faith in yourself. I now live a life full of variety and I don't dread Mondays. I've met fascinating people and made friends along the way. Let go of that fear and I promise you, it's more than worth it.

What are you waiting for? Stop keeping yourself miserable!

'If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.'

(And so far, all you've got is a life you hate and an endless mental list of ways to kill Karen.)

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About the Creator

Lisa Watson

British, tea-loving female, navigating the big wide world. 😊

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