To Something Much Better!
The purpose of Believe In Help is to inspire others to not only believe in receiving and giving help, but to inspire people to become the best versions of themselves. Our goal is to provide positive words on a consistent basis.
Over the years, I have realized just how important of a role a job has over my life. If I feel this way, then there are surely more of us out there who can agree that where you work, who you work with, and what you do is influential to our self-development.
That influence starts to envelope into your personal life over time. Which is why I believe that we need to know when is the right time for us to leave a job and move onto something better.
I believe, that in order to be able to do this effectively, it is going to require conscious effort and experience (time). The point here is to recognize the signs that it may be time to leave your job and find something better.
I want to start by telling a quick back story as to how I reached the understanding that there is a way that we can identify when it is time to leave a job. If you pay close attention, you could begin to see the red flags within your current day-to-day work schedule.
At first, I could not see them. I thought they were just part of life, part of the job, part of work-life. You know, what everyone feeds you as “normal”. With time, I began to experience feelings of distraction, unhappiness, and un-fulfillment. But, here is the thing, while I was feeling these things, I could not recognize them.
I was feeling terrible inside, but I couldn’t put my finger on what was taking place. It just started to happen. Each day became more and more of a struggle to deal with, and I thought that something was wrong with me.
It turned out, it wasn’t “me” it was my job.
I believe that recognizing when to leave a job, is an extremely valuable skill. It doesn’t matter if you are early on your journey, or you feel like you are deep into your journey of life. Knowing when to leave a job is a valuable skill and I had to learn it the hard way.
It wasn’t until I received one piece of valuable advice that I gained the confidence to try different jobs.
“Don’t create a life-style where you become dependent on your salary in order to live.”
Meaning; if you make $100,000 dollars a year in salary, don’t go spending and living like you make $100,000.
This spending and mentality can lead to debt and will make you feel like you NEED to stay in that job if not, you cannot survive.
You would then have to find another job that will pay you $100,000 a year or more right out the gate, if you were unhappy and chose to leave your job.
Let’s face it, a starting salary of that sort is not just sitting on every corner waiting for you to come pick it up.
Instead of jobs having a tie over you because you “need” the job, you can now gain your power back by taking on jobs that you appreciate and are interested in learning more about. Consequently, you end up spending less time in jobs that are keeping you from growing to your full potential.
If you don’t take care of your own development and health, believe me—no job or employer is going to do it for you.
As quickly as you were hired, with that same quickness you can be replaced.
Here Are 11 Signs It’s Time To Leave Your Job:
You Hit A Glass Ceiling
Have you ever been working with a manager who is not going to allow you to top him/her? They put a glass ceiling on you and if this is not caught early on by you, you will spend countless years in the same position all because they aren’t going to allow you to pass them on the ladder.
They will never tell you this, of course. YOU, have to be the one to pick up on the cues and tells.
If you are at a job where your manager or supervisor is letting you know that you are at your “top”, until someone retires from the positions that you want, this is a red flag. This is where you should consider making plans to move if a solution cannot be met.
People stick and wait on standby for years because their supervisor tells them to “hang on tight” until a position opens up.
Do you know what you can go and accomplish in a year or two?? A-lot!
Why stick around due to comfort, versus taking a leap of faith and creating an opportunity for yourself? Don’t do this to yourself unless you truly want to.
A great approach is to create an open means of communication between you and your supervisor. However, if that can’t be created effectively, don’t be afraid to leave to a new job.
People can’t be scared to leave to a new job and start over. This type of fear is what keeps people from growing and reaching their full potential to begin with. The thought of all the hard work and discomfort associated with starting over keeps people in the same place, doing the same thing, over and over. Worst of all, they are unhappy while they do it.
Looking back, jumping from job-to-job every 2-3 years helped me grow tremendously. I was able to expose myself to new industries, learn new skills, challenge myself in massive diversity and work for a lot of great leaders.
With time and experience, I realized that my growth was accelerating at an extremely higher rate in comparison to those jobs where I spent years of my time feeling empty.
When it comes to your work, it’s a commitment that you sign up for.
Choose wisely.
Toxic Co-Workers And Toxic Work Environments
I have experienced jobs where the knowledge and experience that I was soaking up was valuable to me. I was challenged daily within my own learning curve and I was providing value to my customers. There was just one problem—the people who I was being surrounded with on a daily basis, were not on the same page as I was.
I believe it is important to sign up for a job and then execute on that job to the best of your ability. To me, that is true commitment. Unfortunately, the people that were on my “team” did not have the same mindset.
Each morning, was a downer. People would roll into work like hell on wheels all because they got 2 hours of sleep and had to show up to a job that they hate.
To make matters worse, not only were these people hating their jobs, they were hating their customers and probably something within their own personal lives too.
At the end of the day, you are there to do your job. You are at your job to take care of your financial responsibilities and doing what is necessary for you and your family.
However, the environment and people that you are surrounding yourself with are just as important as the job itself.
Negative people will spit their venom out to anyone who is willing to be in close proximity.
If you are at a job where people are trying to bring down the morale or holding your development back—don’t let this slide. Seek solutions, but do not settle for a weak environment and allow this to become your new norm.
Make the best decisions that you can within your life so that you can avoid these types of work environments all together.
Feeling Like You Should Make A Move
Have you ever been at a job where you find yourself sitting there and just wondering about what it would be like somewhere else?
The grass is not always greener on the other side. The grass is only greener where you decide to water it. This translates into you putting forth effort to make a situation or scenario better for yourself.
My goal here, is to empower anyone reading this, who is currently at a job where they feel like they should make a move to something new and more challenging for themselves.
Our intuition is very powerful. If you have a strong inclination to leave your job and take on a new journey—don’t ignore it.
Grab some paper and a pen, and start jotting down ideas of new opportunities.
Identify why it is that you are interested in leaving. Create a pros and cons list and make a solid decision for yourself.
You don’t have to go to your boss and pull the trigger on a whim and just walk out. You can take that information that you have unpacked and see where you truly stand within your career. Take time to identify where you are currently in your career and then see if that lines up with where you want to go.
You Aren’t Being Challenged Properly
Mangers, supervisors, leaders, bosses—whatever you want to call them, they all come with different mindsets. Different management styles.
Just because your manager is in a manager’s position, does not mean they know how to be an effective leader by any means. This is often overlooked by the company itself and the corporate ladder. A good experienced sales representative does not equate to an effective leader. So, when it comes to work and new jobs, you must be able to spot a real leader from a fake one with accuracy.
This goes back to owning your own development. This is why knowing when to leave a job is such a valuable skill. A paycheck is not everything.
If a paycheck is everything for you, then this article is not for you.
If you realize that although you are getting paid and making ends meet, you still feel like you are not being challenged properly and this is not okay with you—then, this is for you.
We all have skills, we all have this great God-given potential that is limitless and timeless. It is our responsibility to own that ability and to stretch it as far as we can. The only catch is, the only one who can grow this ability into greatness is you.
This means you will have to do things within your life that are hard, that are scary, and fear the unknown that comes along with it. This results in leaving a job that you have spent the past 10 years at.
This is a big time decision. You are at a job that at this point, is probably all that you know. The thought of leaving to a new place where you know nothing, is frightening.
I get it.
However, what should be more frightening to you, is the fact that you are wasting years of your life at a job that is not challenging your skillsets to make you a better version of yourself.
That should be more scary to you rather than starting a new job.
You Are A Master At Your Position And There Is No Next Opportunity
In switching jobs, I have gone from retail, to the financial industry, to warehouse management, and back to the financial industry. Within industries, I have worked for multiple companies. I have learned so much simply by challenging what I believed to be the status quo.
That status-quo was staying at one job for years upon years. In switching jobs, I was able to recognize the points in which I was a master at the position. Mastery is what led me to management. In management, I was able to see when the associates that reported directly to me, reached mastery in their roles.
General rule of thumb in management is that associates reach a very high level of skill around their job descriptions close to the 2 year mark. At the 2 year mark, most associates were demonstrating a level of mastery within their job description. They were working like they understood the system both, in and out.
This is important to take into consideration, because around this time frame you are going to want to move towards a new challenge. You should be wanting to push yourself to a new level around this time-frame. Staying within the same position, or not taking on any new responsibilities, you will hinder your potential greatly.
The longer you continue this point of stagnation, the more the value of what you are spending your time on depreciates.
You want to be putting your time (40+ hours a week) into something that is not only going to pay you for your time (because let’s face it, our time and value is worth more than what we are receiving), but it is also going to help teach you strong transferrable skills. Skills, that you can take with you to the next job and grow from there.
You Aren’t Learning Anything New
I have done a great job on accident to dive into diverse job opportunities that provide a high return when it comes to knowledge. As time passed and my mindset progressed, I began to realize that knowledge is something that is extremely important to pay attention to within your jobs.
Every job out there, is going to have its own unique learning curves. These learning curves, will vary greatly depending on the career path you choose, and that’s okay.
The important thing here, is to extract as much as you can by applying yourself properly to these positions you choose to commit to.
I have always told people that were willing to listen, that the beauty of taking on a job in comparison to college is that, in college you have to pay to learn. Conversely, in the work force, you get paid to learn. This is why it is vital that when you choose to take on a new job, you take that decision and commitment seriously.
Apply yourself as much as possible, not to seek promotions and money, but to learn as much as you can.
If you are in a position where you can do your job better than most, and you are not being challenged in a way where you can extract more knowledge, then you should consider sitting down and taking some notes on how you can improve this scenario.
Your Job Is Taking More Energy Than It Provides
All of the information that I have provided so far, I feel to be extremely valuable. However, this one here is the golden nugget of this blog post.
You may be thinking “no job provides energy”, and here is where I challenge that and say—you are wrong.
If you know, you know. But, to anyone who hasn’t experienced a job that they like and has felt the energy that stems from it, I am here to tell you it exists.
There are jobs that will suck the living day lights out of you, and then there are jobs that are specific to you, that can provide you excitement, joy, passion, challenge and positive growth.
It’s your job to find them.
If you have worked for 4 different companies in the past 4 years, and still haven’t found what I am describing, then go for a 5th. Keep going, until you find a job that provides you with the positive energy you need to grow as a human. Seek jobs where you can provide your gifts and talents and then flip that into service for others.
Don’t settle for jobs just because they pay the bills. Look to inject your precious time into a career that is going to stretch you as a person. There is too much time that is required to take on a job that is not going to provide the proper return on investment that we need.
If you wake up in the morning and experience that knot in your stomach as you prepare for your drive to work, this should be a big red sign that you should consider leaving your job.
Do NOT spend months and months, years and years, doing this to yourself over a paycheck.
Find the solution to make the leap as painless as possible for your finances, but do not settle.
It is better to work 10 times harder for a job that is going to surround you around the right people, provide fulfillment and proper growth, than to have some laid back kush job that is doing nothing but stealing your true potential and time.
Love yourself enough to bet on yourself. Then go find yourself a better job.
Your Home Life Is Being Affected By Your Job
I have always heard people saying “when you walk in through that front door, you hang up your work problems at the door.”
While I completely get the principle behind this, I don’t think that this can realistically apply to everyone. There is no way. Some of us spend more time at work than we do in our own home and with our own family.
To become enveloped in something that is soaking up practically most of your time, and to not let that seep into your own personal life, becomes impractical thinking.
In some way or some form, that energy that you are experiencing at work is going to make it’s way into your personal life. Into your home.
I know that this is happening a-lot more than we think. If your job is creating problems within your relationships, your marriage, your children, your health, then these are all red flags that need to be taken into serious consideration.
Family and health come before jobs, careers, and money. Don’t let the system, society, or family try to convince you otherwise.
We need money to survive and provide for our families, but what good is money when you are losing your family in the process. It makes no sense.
People want to make money to provide for their family, but yet, they are staying within jobs and careers that are destroying their families in the process.
This is caused by jobs consuming too much of their time, creating more of an imbalance that already exists. People are sticking with jobs that take every ounce of their energy away, to the point where they get home they have very little energy to give to those around them.
Don’t fall victim to this. In my opinion it is a trap and if you fall victim to it, your priorities get lost in the mix and that is when problems take place within your home.
Your home is your sanctuary, protect the energy in it by auditing where you are putting your time when you are outside of it.
Teamwork Is Non-Existent
10 years of management and I had the opportunity to be a part of some stellar teams. I was apart of teams where I soaked up every second of it because I knew that I would probably never work with a group of people that just gelled so flawlessly. Teamwork, is everything when it comes to work and jobs. The more you play on the same page as your co-workers, the greater the achievements that are gained.
Just like everything in life, there is a different side to things that unfortunately we need to see and experience in order to recognize and appreciate the good in life.
While working in different teams, you will come across people that are not team players. They are there for one thing only—themselves. They do not care about anything or anyone, other than what benefits them and their pocket. From my experience, these people exist and a-lot more than society needs.
“Individually, we can accomplish a-lot, but together, we can accomplish anything.”
Mother teresa
We have a group of people in NASA working together to navigate a drone on planet Mars right now at the time of writing this. I mean c’mon, the sky is the limit (literally) when we work as a team.
When we believe in one another and we value and respect one another, we create a power like no other. There is no comparison to this effect that we have when we collaborate. When you are being surrounded with people who are the opposite of this mentality and only care about themselves, you are hindering yourself by settling.
I say this, because you have the power to go find a team who will value your mentality. Your teamwork. Don’t waste time surrounding yourself around people who are not going to appreciate your drive.
Your Supervisor Works Against You Rather Than For You
Attitude reflects leadership. From my experience, there are too many people out there sitting in management positions and getting paid a whole lot more than their direct reports and they have no clue on how to be an effective leader.
In fact, there are managers and supervisors out there who can’t even articulate leadership in any form. If you find yourself working for one of these “managers”, you can already bet that this is a red flag that you should consider a transfer, or ultimately leaving your job.
When taking on a new job or role, I always try to do my best to get to know the woman or man above my own position and my supervisors position (if possible).
Leadership is recognized not by the words that people say, but by the actions performed.
If your supervisor is not looking to help you grow and become better than you were yesterday, then you need to audit your time. Managers are holding their position because they have a high level of understanding within the given realm. Not only do they hold that position because of their expertise, but they can also develop their people into managers themselves.
The Challenge Of Leaving And Trying Something New
Maybe you have no issues within your work life.
You are as happy as you can be, but there is this inclination of trying something new that fascinates you. The excitement of entering a new field and challenging yourself to discover who you really are, intrigues you.
If this sounds like you, then you should consider a timeline as to when you want to make that jump.
Don’t put these inclinations to sleep by immediately saying yourself— “I can’t.” If that is the first thought that comes to your mind, then ask yourself—why not?
Write those reasons down.
Write down solutions to those reasons.
Ask yourself, why you are inclined to leave your job to start something new and what new opportunities and possibilities could stem from that?
Some of us sit at jobs that we have simply spent too much time at and our mind begins to wander to a place of “what if”
What if, I leave this job and I end up at that job that I have always wanted to do but I have been too scared. What if?
I believe this to be a healthy response, don’t put these thoughts and inclinations to sleep without truly unpacking what lies beneath.
Final Thoughts
The real take away here is that you will reach a point within your life where you should leave your job. It’s just that simple. You need to be able to recognize these points within your life and be strong enough to pull the trigger.
I believe that far too many people have blown past this point of recognition and they are miserable in their personal lives and cannot figure out why. The reason is because they are spending too much time into something that is not providing full satisfaction and proper challenge. Either that, or they are just scared.
Take time to find rational steps towards solving obstacles that you reach within your day-to-day job. Look for opportunities, push yourself to have difficult conversations with people and supervisors. Challenge yourself towards creating a standard within your life where settling is not an option.
Leaving your job is not something you need to do tomorrow or next week. If you are not happy, make a plan of action, find the solutions and put yourself in a position to leave your job when you are well prepared.
Hope this helps someone out there 🙏
