Awhile back, psychologist and fellow Psych Central-contributor Elvira Aletta published a great post about the frog in the pot:
Did you know that if you boil a pot of water and throw in a live frog that that frog will hop right out, saving his life to croak again another day (ha, ha)? If, on the other hand, you place a frog in a pot of cold water and turn the heat up slowly, that frog will stay in the pot. He will not jump out but slowly acclimate to the increasingly hot water until it boils to death. Truth or urban legend? To prove it I’d have to cook a live frog and that’s not going to happen. It sounds true and so should be because of what it teaches us.
The day after I was laid off from my job, a fellow co-worker emailed me and said, “This is your next assignment … instructions on how to jump out of the pot…. But not necessarily the way you did!”
Here, then, in Paul Simon style, are 7 Ways to Leave Your Job (if it is, you know, starting to boil you to death)…
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Site last updated: 24 May 2013
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There is an implicit assumption that we are afraid to leave our monotonous jobs – and it’s true. Many of us are sick of it.
But I think this post points out the indirect and not-so-obvious point that many jobs, leads, and money-making opportunities are right under our nose – a friend or connection with a gap waiting to be filled.
The old life-long career at the same employer days are a fallacy and the ideas in this post are an excellent remedy.
“The reason I took a corporate job was to get good healthcare.”
This. Times 1000!
Medical care has been the bane of my existence! I could get ill just trying to stay healthy!
Great advice and timely! Thanks, I feel a 100x better!
After 12 years of crap, I one day told my co-workers and boss
“You can all just F**K yourselves; I am going home.”
When asked when I was planning on returning, I responded:
“Not in this lifetime.”
They were the most liberating words I’d ever spoken and to this day it was a turning point in my life, for the better. The job was one more dysfunctional and abusive place I lived in that I thought was “normal.”
This is how I have proven to myself that therapy made me stronger, and ultimately helped point me in the direction I really wanted to go.
Perhaps this isn’t the best way to leave but it was in my case. Freedom comes when allow ourselves to be liberated, and then do something about it.
Kris
oh dear I am reading this from the UK and feel blessed that we don’t have the problem of being tied into a job for a Healthcare package here with our undervalued (by many) free NHS. The only problem is that I work for Healthcare (NHS) and feel very undervalued!!
Mavbe its time for me to listen to the above advice!
This is so timely for me! I am also tied in to healthcare. I also believe I have to “be myself” wherever I am. Sometimes I feel forced to be other than myself at work. That’s what starts the self-doubts, and those nagging twinges of guilt for hating to go to work when there are so many who don’t have a job.
I truly believe the advice about going with your gut. It is usally right, so why do we all fight it?
Great advice!
You have no idea how happy I am to start seeing more articles like this. I have been struggling with the job market for years and I also have a set of rules that I came up with a long time ago to avoid burn out. Too many people sacrifice everything for work to jobs that just dispose of them when they are finished.