What do you do when you don't like your job and you feel stuck?

What do you do when you don't like your job and you feel stuck? In this video, Jenna and Phil discuss their ideas for bringing excellence to a job, even when you don't like it.

Phil:  All right, Jenna, I've got a question for you.  What if you're in the situation where you just hate your job, you hate what you're doing, but you don't have a way to get out of it right now?  How do you bring excellence?  We've talked about passion and things like that, but how do you bring that when your circumstance just sucks?

Jenna:  So that's a hard question because like, if you don't know what's next, you don't have anything lined up, like what do you do?  But I will tell you that from the amount of people that I've seen face this, the second that they decide that they are going to leave, things start to change and things become a little bit more tolerable.  They can do things better and then something better does come.  So I think like the first thing, if you're in a situation that you hate and again, you don't necessarily an option now, like give yourself a timeline, be like for the next two weeks, two months, say I'm going to start looking and I'm going to start getting my resume ready and I'm going to start talking to people and I'm going to I'm going to kind of get everything going to the point where I am actively trying to get out of this situation.  And I don't know. I think maybe it's a mindset shift.  Maybe it's the fact that, like you have hope or you didn't have hope because it just felt so stuck.  But once you make that decision, I feel like a lot of people all of a sudden can show up better to their work. They're more excited, they're more engaged, and that is what kind of leads to that next cool thing.  So I want to say make that decision.

Phil:  Well now, I've never thought of that that way of make that decision because but that is what kind of frees people because you feel it, because it's so hard when you're stuck.  Like, I don't want to take anything away from that horrible, stuck feeling when you're in a job you don't like because it is bad.  But if you make that decision that I am leaving, it does. It frees you up.  But I'm going to put one more step on that then even to advance that farther is make the decision that you're leaving, put a timeframe on it . . . two months, six months, one year, whatever it is, and then every day treat every day like the job interview for your next job. Meaning that I need to be able to call your coworkers and your manager and say, “How are they doing?”  And I got to hear they've got an awesome attitude, they work harder than everyone else, and I would hate to lose them. Because if you don't have that, it becomes really hard to get that next thing, especially if it's a better thing. Right. Is that fair?

Jenna:  No, I think both of those things would definitely get people moving forward because I think so much of like feeling stuck is it's like we're convincing ourselves we're stuck to.

Phil:  Yeah and it's hopeless.  It's a very hopeless feeling when you and especially again, you're in a small town or there's not a lot of other jobs or this, that or the other, you know, it's just like, hey, let's just prepare for your next thing, even though you don't know what it is.  So cool. I love the advice.