OFI 850: You Don’t Hate Work, You Just Hate Your Job
Sign Up To Receive Our FFA Stories Newsletter! Email address: When I first started this show I spent a fair amount of time talking about the mindsets that either keep us trapped in misery or lead us to the life that we are dreaming about. I have got away from that a little bit. As my journey has progressed, I have let the show progress right along with it. This morning I caught a clip of the Dave Ramsey Show on Youtube that reminded me that I should go back and talk about these things a bit. On the clip there was a 26 year old woman that called in and said that she wanted to be retired by the time she was 40 and "never work again". I had the same thought as Dave, but it took him a little longer to get there because he was trying to get the caller there as well. My thought was, "you don't hate work, you hate your job". So, let's talk about that today. The Wrong Fit A particular job, just like clothing, either fits or it doesn't. And if you are stuck in the wrong fit, you will be miserable. Think of buying a pair of pants that is one size too small. If you put those on the morning and head out to work or to do chores you will be thrown off because it doesn't feel right. You will feel like you are gaining weight and start to be self-conscious about how you look. It will be a constant distraction that will ruin your whole day, and just as soon as you are able, you will pull them off and put on something more comfortable. This analogy of the pants is just like a day or week at work when you have the wrong job. You ability to provide your very best at work will be thrown off by the distraction of being in the wrong job. You will become self-conscious about your performance because you will know that it is not your best. And just as soon as you are done with your shift or it is the weekend you will do the polar opposite of work to just feel comfortable again. This does not mean that we should never work in a job that is not the correct fit. Some of us will do that because we are not yet qualified to obtain the correct job. Others of us are working are way into the correct job. And some of our life situations have changed or we have personally changed, and what once was the right job, no longer fits. This was my situation when I started my first business. If you are not being purposeful about making sure that your job fulfills your talents and abilities then you might mistake a job you hate for hating work. But the two things are not the same. Just like a police officer can become jaded, thinking everyone in the world is threat or a bad person because that is all he ever sees, you can start to see all work as horrible. Working Vs. Recreating The caller on the Dave Ramsey Show seemed to be convinced that all work was horrible, and that there was no middle ground. She believed that the only way to be happy in your daily life was to not be working. So, she was looking for tips and tricks on how to invest her money so she only had to endure work until the age of 40. She was already this jaded, and she was only 26! All of us have gone on a vacation at one time or another and come home transformed, only to be slapped in the face by the reality of returning to a job that does not appeal to us. We spend a week at the coast enjoying the beauty of the ocean and imagining the lifestyle of the locals who are never stressed and walk on the beach every day. We are so happy during our vacation that we want to make everyday of our life feel that way. And we are so miserable at our job, that we don't see a way to ever make that happen until we never have to work again. There are a few problems with this outlook. First, for most of us we are not going to reach the day that we "never have to work" again until we are much older and less able to repeat the activities that we dream about consuming our days with while we are on vacation. Second, full time recreation is not as easy as it sounds...