Your boss might email you at 7:00 PM at night and it might just be that he or she had the thought like oh, I have this idea or I need this thing or I'm working right now so I'm just going to send the email. And because we're now connected all the time like you get that email and you check your phone and then you start having all the thoughts. Oh my God, he emailed me, I got to email back or like I need to show that I'm a good employee. And why is she like this? Why is she emailing me at this time? Uh this is so frustrating and maybe your boss wasn't even expecting anything.

Hey, welcome to Lessons From a Quitter where we believe that it is never too late to start over. No matter how much time or energy you spent getting to where you are, if ultimately you are unfulfilled, then it is time to get out. Join me each week for both inspiration and actionable tips so that we can get you on the road to your dreams.

Hello my friends, welcome to another episode of Lessons From a Quitter. I am so excited you are here. And we got a good one today. I want to talk to you today about why I don't think you should quit your job at least just yet. And I know that this is heresy. This goes entirely against what my entire brand stands for. Obviously, I would love for you to quit your job and figure out what lights you up and ride off into the sunset into your dream life. But I don't think that you're quitting for the reasons that you should be quitting. Now I've talked about this before, I think I've done, I've talked about it on the podcast. I definitely have done stuff on social media but I never did a full episode. So I want to talk about it. I want you to really get clear on what the problem is and what the problem is not so that you are taking the proper actions and you're not going to end up just repeating the same problems over and over again. Okay? So let's talk about why you shouldn't quit your job right now. Okay. Now, if you're a longtime listener then you obviously know we focus heavily on your mindset and your thoughts and how that's creating your reality. If you're a new listener welcome, you may want to listen to some other episodes too, to really see the focus that I put on mindset work and thought work and making sure that you clean up your own thoughts before you take any actions. Cause here's the thing, your thoughts are what create your own feelings, okay? Something happens in the world and then you have thoughts about them and then you end up triggering whatever feeling that thought causes. Okay. And even if we intellectually understand this on a certain level like we get it that, you know, if something happens out in the world and we don't know about it, we don't have any thoughts about it. It doesn't cause any feelings in us like it's not just the occurrence of that thing that makes us feel. It's our thoughts about it. Right? And so many of us have different thoughts like take politics or religion or the current COVID crisis, right? We all have different feelings about it because we have different thoughts about it. The facts might all be the same. And yet our thoughts are what dictate our reality, right? And yet we're constantly running around trying to change the circumstances, the facts outside of us, the things that we don't control ironically. We constantly think if I can just change that, then I'll feel happy. And sometimes changing that might make you feel happy, but you know why it makes me feel happy? Because your thoughts change, right? You think like if my circumstances better, then I'll have better thoughts and I'll have better feelings. And that might be true. And then you don't have to do the all of the work in changing your thoughts. Right. You're kind of taking that cop out like the easy way out where it's like let me just change the circumstance. Let me just change, you know, my surroundings. And then that will let me think better thoughts. Sometimes that works because it just makes it easier for you to have certain thoughts. Let's say, if you work in a place where you think that your boss is difficult or mean or whatever the word you want to use and you think that if you quit and you go somewhere where your boss is very kind, then obviously you're going to have different thoughts, right? You're going to be like oh, it's so wonderful to work here. I work with such a pleasant human being. And then you feel wonderful, right? That's one way of doing it. The problem with that way of doing it is that there will always be something in your environment that triggers you. There will be always something that you don't like or that annoys you or whatnot. And if you don't ever learn how to manage your own mind but rather you need to fix everything outside of you to be happy, then you will constantly be on this hamster wheel of trying to change circumstances, right? Move to a new city, get a new job, find a new partner, all of the things in order to just feel happy. And I want you to know that you can feel happy exactly where you are. And once you learn to do that, once you learn to manage your own mind, then you can make a decision to change from a place, like an empowered place, from a place of like I just don't want to do this work anymore. I think I have so much left in me, in my life. And I want to do work that, you know, uses my creative side or pushes me in a different way or whatever the other reasons are. But it's not because I have to leave this job in order to feel better. I need somebody else to act a certain way so I can feel good because what that does, whether we know it or not, we're inadvertently playing the victim in our own life. We are giving all of our power to other people and saying like if you act this way, then I will feel this way. And I have no control, there's nothing else I can do. So I have to get away from you in order to control how I feel. And it's just a dangerous way of living because it typically doesn't work. It might work in certain instances.

But I see this all the time where we will quit thinking like if I go to another job, I'll feel happier. And then they go to the other job and they're still unhappy. I mean, this exactly happened to me. This is because I didn't have thought work. I hadn't discovered this when I was a lawyer, but I really thought like if I go from a big law firm to a government job, then I'll be happy. Like then I'll be doing things that I really feel passionate about, and I'll feel really happy. And I did and I did feel happy in certain instances, I was also miserable in other instances cause I brought my same thoughts with me. And I see this all the time with my clients who have gone from job to job or even city to city thinking that if they fix the dressing, you know, like the art that's hanging on the walls, then they'll all of a sudden feel better in that room. It just doesn't work that way. And so I want you to really understand what the problem is, right? Typically we think like oh, the problem is my boss or it's my coworkers or it's my hours. I just want to offer that it might be you. And I know that's going to be triggering for some of us. And I'm not saying that there's a problem with you or that you are the problem. Or you're like you know, we love to throw around terms like you’re the toxic one or you’re whatever. No, I'm not trying to be mean. I want you to just like hear me out in how you can be contributing to your own misery and how you can be creating the situation that makes you so unhappy. So I think the best way for me to explain this is to give you some examples, like some very common examples that I hear all the time and with a little digging, I have, you know, come to realize that typically the root problem is the same problem for people and they don't understand that that's their problem.

Let's say you think that your boss is, I dunno, whatever the problematic word is mean, doesn't give a lot of praise, is highly critical, is short with me, whatever you want to put in that sentence. Right? There's some way that your boss is being, that makes you feel a certain way that you think, right. You have a lot of thoughts about it. And I want you to ask yourself why it's a problem that your boss is that way. Why is that a problem for you? That like they're short or even like complain a lot, whatever, whatever the problem is, like really get to like w-what is the problem for me with that? Like some people are allowed to just be curt or curmudgeony, or, you know, not super bubbly people. Maybe that's just the way they are. Why do I have such a problem with it?

And oftentimes when we are looking at either our coworkers or our bosses, and I hear this all, like my coworkers are mean, I'm like okay, first of all, I'm unable to even question what that means like cause you could be interpreting it, you likely are interpreting it the wrong way. But even if we just accept your premise, your thought that your boss is mean, what does that mean to you? And why is that a problem? Because I will venture to guess that it comes down to this deep-seated need that so many of us have to be liked, right? So many of us were like teacher's pets. We've always followed the rules. We love praise. We want to constantly do what's right so people love us, especially women. We have been programmed in the patriarchy to see being liked as the most important thing. Like our most important value in this world is that everybody likes us and doesn't have an opinion. And oftentimes when there's this like bit of a discomfort for us, because somebody may not love us. Somebody who's not our best friend or doesn't, you know, give us the praise that we want or whatever we're looking for, our brain like catastrophizes it, right? Our brain goes to the worst-case scenario. And a lot of times we think it's an actual problem and I'll hear people and it's like well, I don't want to get fired. And I'm like is that really the possibility? Like are you actually worried that this person doesn't like you enough and you're going to get fired or is it just that he's a curmudgeony human and just doesn't believe in giving a lot of praise, let's say, and I want you to truly answer that. Now, I'm not saying there's never times where a boss is, you know, unhappy with you for your performance and it might have some consequences. I'm just saying, even with that, really dig deep into like what's the problem here, right? Do I want to fix whatever the problem is because I want to keep this job. That's fine. But am I overdoing it because I want to be liked because I want him or her to like me. Cause I think that's where a lot of our problems come in is like the people pleasing. We want to be in this place where we feel accepted and have so much fun. And everybody, you know, is our best friend and that, and that might not be your situation at work. And that's okay. It doesn't have to be as big of a problem as you're making it in your head. And it's just really important to get clear on that. Like is it a problem that my boss is a certain way?

Or is it that I'm a people pleaser? And I want everyone to love me and maybe that's what I need to work on. Like maybe this is a wonderful lesson in doing my work and not needing to be the star employee and working on being okay with letting people have whatever thoughts they want to have about me. And not even like me. Can you sit with that? Because that may be where your work is instead of quitting the job to find another boss that loves you. Maybe you could do the work and just be okay with them not loving you. Another example I see is like people will tell me that in in so many words that basically their boss or their job don't have any boundaries, right. That they email at all times of the night, that they don't hire enough help, whatever. And now, again, I'm not saying there's never circumstances that this is true. Right. I think like for my lawyer friends, I know like if you work in a law firm, a lot of it is expected that they're going to pay you a very large salary for there to be relatively no boundaries that like you know, and even with you, I would encourage you to question whether that's totally true. Like doesn't mean that you can't put any boundaries. Cause that's my question typically when people tell me like oh, he emails me at all times of the night or whatever. And I'm like okay, well do you set boundaries? And someone was like no, no, I have to respond. Do you? Again, it goes back to kind of the people pleasing, right? And the way that we've been programmed for work where it's like always be the yes man, you want to be a team player, right? Like when they say jump, you say how high. You want to be that star employee. We want to get that employee of the month award in our own head. And so we're so terrified of having either tough conversations or just testing out boundaries and seeing what happens. Right. Here's what I found with my clients, even with myself, your boss may email you at 7:00 PM at night and it might just be that he or she had the thought like oh, I have this idea or I need this thing or I'm working right now so I'm just gonna send the email. And because we're now connected all the time like you get that email and you check your phone and then you start having all the thoughts. Oh my God, he emailed me, I got to email back. Or like I need to show that I'm a good employee and why is she like this? Why is she emailing me at this time? Uh this is so frustrating. And maybe your boss wasn't even expecting anything. Maybe they had no problem with you emailing back the next day. It's worth questioning. Right? Like can I just decide that I'm not going to return to work emails after six o'clock?

I don’t know, can you? I recently had this experience myself with my last, I had a virtual assistant who was helping me, and I realized that a lot of times like I just work in the evening cause I work better at night. And my kids, when they're asleep, like I can get some stuff done and I'm kind of all over the place. Often during the days, I'm not as focused. So anyways, I would realize like I would get to things or get to her emails and I would respond at night or I would respond or I would send an email being like hey, can you take care of this thing for the podcast with zero intention that like she'd do it that night. But just like hey, can you do this for me? And I started seeing her respond like at 10 o'clock at night and like have it done. And because I've done so much of this work, I started realizing like oh, her thought might be like Goli's sending this, which means I have to get it back to her. And so I made sure it'd be like when I send you an email, you don't have to send it back to me at night. You don't even have to send it back to me the next day. Like it's okay if it takes like a day to get to me, unless I ask for something immediately. But I realized that like at first, when she sent it, I was like oh my God, look, she's on top of things. That's so awesome. What a go-getter. And I realized that oftentimes like as an employee, I've never been an employer before. And I started realizing like oh, I kept giving her tasks at different times and she would do them. And I really didn't have a gauge of like how much work she was doing. Like how long, I mean, she would bill her hours, but I I would ask like okay, can you do can you do this other assignment for me? And she would say yes. She would always say yes. And it took me like having a meeting to be like listen, you're allowed to tell me that you don't have time to do this. Like I don't want you to tell me yes if it's going to stress you out. Cause I don't know what her thoughts were. She could have very well been thinking like oh, why is she like this? Why is she sending an email at eight o'clock at night? This is so unprofessional. Now I have to do this at night. Like I hate work, that she keeps giving me stuff. I've already done my 10 hours for this week. But she never spoke up. And what I realized is that like most employers aren't going to have this conversation with you. They expect you to be able to manage yourself. And I hear this all the time with people, will tell me like I'm overworked. They don't hire enough people. I have the job of like so many, like three people. And I'm like yeah, because you do it. Why would they hire someone when you're getting all the work done? When you're spending your nights and weekends doing the work. I mean, maybe your boss is aware of it and realizes you're doing it and doesn't care. And that's their thoughts. Maybe they don't even realize. Maybe they think oh yeah, this is enough for one person. And you're just like this is what most of us do is like we bitch, we complain. We talk about it with our spouse, with our coworkers. Most of us don't ever actually even tell our bosses. And even the ones that do, like we say it in a very roundabout like oh yeah, I think we could really use um some help on this or whatnot. And the boss is like yeah, yeah, we'll get to it like I'll hire someone. But they see that everything's getting done, so why would they need to hire someone else? Why would they pay somebody? That only happens when you set boundaries and stuff actually doesn't get done. And they're like oh, maybe we need to hire somebody else. But so many of us are so terrified of putting up these boundaries of saying no, of saying like yeah, I'll get that to you by tomorrow. I can't do it tonight. Cause like I can't do it after seven o'clock or six o'clock or whatever your time is. And I just want you to work on that before you quit because I promise you that you go to another job and it will be the same story. If you're a people pleaser, if you're a perfectionist, if you're an overachiever, you're going to go to the next place and you're going to want your coworkers to like you, you're going to want your boss to like you. And you're going to want someone else to set the boundaries. And you're hoping that you find this like magical place where the boss is super helpful and they do set the boundaries and hopefully you find that. And that's great. But also think about the growth and the possibility to use this as a lesson, to be able to set boundaries yourself and to learn how to manage your own thoughts and to learn to be okay with people not liking you because that is a fricking super power. And you can use it in any area of your life. So what if your job isn't a problem? It's like the training ground for you to learn how to manage your mind and how to get to a place where you are okay and you can still decide to quit. I think a lot of times when I talk about this, people think like I'm I'm trying to convince you to just like well, we can all just be happy anywhere. Yeah, we can actually. I actually wish I had these tools cause I think I could have been a lot happier as a lawyer. And I don't know, maybe I would've stayed at a lawyer and I think you can be a lawyer and be happy, but you can also decide from a place of empowerment that like I can make it in this job, but I'm choosing to do something else because I want to, and I want you to think about how different of an energy that is when you're trying to decide what you want to do.

I see this with my clients a lot too, because people come and they're so desperate to get out of this job they hate. That they're so graspy, this like graspy, desperate energy of like I got to figure it out. I got to find the next thing right now. It has to be now. I'm going to die here. Right. And when you're in that space, how well do you think you make decisions? Like how easy do you think it is to figure out what you truly love doing and following your curiosities and letting yourself develop in like a natural timeline, as opposed to a pressure cooker, like I'm going to burn out. And so I need to figure out something right now. And so I want you to realize that this is an opportunity for you to slow it down and practice your thought work exactly where you are and learn to set boundaries. And this is the other thing that I think is funny is like so many of us don't set boundaries. We don't work on our thoughts. We're so terrified we're going to get like fired if we speak up or if we, you know, whatever. And then like I was saying, like you get burned out, right? You're so exhausted by this constant chatter in your mind about how terrible work is by dreading it, by having anxiety, waking up and like hating going. And then you end up like quitting anyways. And so my thought is, if you're going to end up quitting, you're gonna end up leaving, you might as well see if you can figure out a way to make it work and make yourself happier. And part of that works on all of these thoughts that need you to be liked and be the best employee. I'll share like two um examples I had from my own life that I didn't realize at the time, now looking back I'm like oh right, it was my thoughts. One was like just really talking about this like the way, you know, my deep-seated need to be liked. And to be like the a-plus student star employee was when I was at the law firm I was at my first year as a lawyer. I remember getting an assignment from this one partner and he gave me the assignment and I finished it like that day. I think I stayed late and I finished it and turned it in like the next morning. And then the next week he gave me another assignment and I did the same thing. And I don't remember if I like how many days I worked on it, but I remember like I stayed late. I like made sure I got it done very quickly. And when I turned it in, I remember him saying like wow, you're super fast, like you don't have to do it this fast. And I remember taking such pride in me like oh my God, look, he's so happy with me. Right. And the fact that I'm super fast, wonderful, pat on the back. Right. And that dopamine hit of like achieving. Now I look back and I realize why I burned myself out. Right. I didn't re, I mean, he didn't say it in so many words and I didn't get it. Cause I was like well, it's a good thing like I'm so, you know, it's like you almost, it's like a badge of honor, it’s like I've impressed this partner. I didn't realize I'm setting myself up for burnout. You didn't ask me to do it that quickly. You didn't ask me to stay late. I'm not saying this never happens. I'm not saying that in a law firm, you don't have to turn things in and stay late. That's not at all what I'm trying to say. It's just really important to parse out when you actually have to do it ,when the circumstance calls for it. And when you are doing it because you have such, like for most of us that are in those positions, we are overachievers and we've always gone above and beyond. And we've always been liked. And we've always been like the A-plus student. And that translates to your work. Another story I've talked about this, but um, when I was at this law firm too, we were on a deal. And this is one of those times where we were working 24 hours a day. I mean, literally through the night to finish this deal. And on the, at the end of the deal, on the last day, it was kind of winding down and I had not slept the night before. We'd finish at like 6:00 AM. I went home and slept and showered and was back by 8:00 AM. And I remember just sitting around for like hours. There was nothing to do. We were waiting for like the client to sign the papers. And at the time we had Blackberries, I'm dating myself, and I lived like 15 minutes from the office. Right? So like if I got an email, I could be at the office in 15 minutes. And yet I was just sitting in my office full of anxiety, as one does, worried that God forbid if a partner walks by and they need me, or if I get an email like I have to be there, you know, at a moment's notice. And I went to talk to one of the other associates who was the same year as me and we'd both been working on the same deal and we'd been both doing the same exact work. So this is why the story is so perfect because it really blew all of my excuses out of the water. And I couldn't find him, it was like 11 o'clock. And I asked his receptionist where he was and she was like oh yeah, he went surfing. And I remember feeling as if somebody like punched me in the gut. And I was like I'm sorry, what? He went where? She was like yeah, he's out surfing. He'll be back in like an hour. And I remember thinking this man is out in the middle of the water where like he can't even take his Blackberry, without a care in the world, just surfing. While I'm like developing an ulcer, sitting at my desk, worried that God forbid somebody who's going to want something from me and I have to be ready to jump. Right. And now I'm not saying there aren't things like privilege and you know, that's a discussion for uh another day. But my thoughts heavily dictated why I was in that office and he wasn't, and to no surprise to anybody, he went on to like become partner there. Right. He was there for like 10 years. Because the thoughts he had prevented him from burning himself out. Right. The thoughts he had about being able to show up when he wanted to and have the hard, even if someone asked about him, right. Or if somebody was upset that he was gone, he was willing to deal with that. And I think for me, like I wasn't. I didn't want anyone to have a bad thought about me. I never wanted anyone, I didn't want anyone to even think like oh, she went home? That's strange. Why isn't she at her desk? Even though that didn't affect my actual job, what I was doing, right. I wasn't going to get fired, I knew I wasn't going to get fired. And yet I just wanted everybody to think that I was such a good lawyer. And so I’m just saying like be on to your own thoughts. It's very easy to put it on other people. And to think that it's everybody else's fault why you feel a certain way and taking that responsibility for like why am I so anxious? Why do I feel the need that I have to respond immediately? What will happen, just as an experiment, if I don't respond till tomorrow morning? Am I willing to have that conversation with my boss to say like yeah, oh I got it but it wasn't an emergency and I take the day off after six o'clock. And be willing to sit in that discomfort that your boss might not like that. Are you willing to do that? Most of us aren't. And that's the problem. I want you to understand like you signed up for a job, okay? You didn't sign up to kill yourself. You do not owe them your whole life. And the sooner you learn that, and you learn that you are allowed to put up boundaries and you learn that it's okay if everybody doesn't love you and you're not the star employee, the easier it becomes to actually like your job. And it's so important to work on these things now, because I promise you the same problems will follow you from job to job or even to your own business. So many people want to quit and start their own businesses, which I think is great, and I love the flexibility and I think there's so many pros, but if you have learned to put your value on what you achieve, to constantly think like you have to do more, to never let yourself rest, you're going to become the worst boss that you have. Maybe this is just the best training ground for you to stay at this job and work on the things that you need to work on to be able to have thoughts that make you feel good. Not all the time, life’s 50/50. Right? But how can you get to a place where you're more neutral at this job? And then you can decide what you want to do from there. All right, you guys, I hope this was helpful. I want you to go out there and figure out how you can be happy in the job you are at right now. How can you can increase that even by a little bit? What difficult conversations you can have? What thoughts you have to work on to be able to produce that happiness for yourself? And then we can talk about quitting.

If you want help with this, I know it's not easy to do on your own. To be honest, I didn't do it on my own. I got tons of coaching and I would love to help you with it. So I want you to go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/unstuck and sign up for the waitlist for the group program. Because we work on this over six months, we dive deeper into how to do this stuff, how to start managing your mind, figure out what those root causes are and uh work on them, and also figure out what you want to do to create that dream life. So join the group. I'll let you know when doors open and in the meantime, get out there and start enjoying your job. Alright you guys, I will see you next week for another episode.

Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode, share it with someone else. I promise you know somebody who also hates their job and wants to quit, so why not share the love? And if you want to come follow along for more, come join me on Instagram at LessonsFromAQuitter and make sure you say hi. I'll see you next week for another episode.