Some people can figure out what they want to do with their lives quickly. Maybe you like to pretend you’re a doctor when you’re little, and when you get older, you realize you want to make that dream a reality. You might go to medical school and never look back.
Other times, you might have a person who is not sure what they want to do for money at all. You might take the first job you can find and stay with it for years because it’s easy and convenient.
Either way, a time might come when you feel like your career is not working for you, and you want to move on to something else. There are different things that can prompt this feeling. Let’s discuss some of them now.
You Might Daydream About a New Career While on Your Way to and from Work
Many people commute to their jobs by driving, and if you’re one of them, you know there are certainly tons of things that might distract you. You might try to text on your smartphone, or perhaps you try to change the radio station while sitting at red lights.
Distracted driving is dangerous, though, and you should try not to do it. The CDC says that distracted driving kills about nine people every day, while it injures a thousand more. That’s ample reason for you to keep your eyes on the road every moment you are behind the wheel.
Aside from the things we already mentioned, maybe you daydream about finding a different position every day as you go to and from work. Perhaps you think about how much you dislike your job, and you think about marching up to your boss to tell them you are quitting.
If you can’t seem to get this idea out of your head while you’re doing the daily commute, that could be a sign that you’re approaching the limit of what that career can offer you.
You May Detest Your Boss
If you’ve got a boss for whom you work, how they treat you matters a lot. If you have a great boss, it probably follows that you’ll like your job. In fact, a good boss can make a difficult or stressful job a lot more tolerable.
The opposite is also true. Even if you like certain aspects of your job, you might grow to dislike it if your boss demands things of you that you cannot give. If they are rude and nasty to be around, that’s a challenging situation for you as well.
You may need to go with a different job or a different career entirely if you can’t stand your boss anymore after a certain point. You may feel like you can put up with a lot, but too many negative experiences with a superior might push you to take action.
You May Dislike the Culture
Maybe you get into a career path thinking that’s it’s for you, and you keep doing it for years. It might be, though, that you find the culture surrounding that profession is not what you expected.
If you are never comfortable in a career because of the culture and the kind of people the work attracts, you might finally have enough and want a change. You may realize that you will not be able to change the inherent culture surrounding a particular niche or industry, and you’ll want to go with something else entirely as a change of pace.
You May Dislike Your Coworkers
Like a bad boss, having rude or inconsiderate coworkers can make you dread coming to work each day. If you can work mostly independently, this might not be so much of an issue. If you have to work closely with people you don’t like very much, though, that’s going to wear you down over time.
You might be able to get around this problem by moving to a different department within your same company. If that does not work, you might move to a different company but stay within your field. Getting away from your coworkers might not necessarily entail changing careers entirely.
You May Realize You’re Not Making Enough Money
You might come to the realization that you’re never going to make enough money doing your job to get the things you want in life. If so, you may have to move away from a career you like simply for financial reasons.