Hello my friends and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited to have you here today. I wanna talk about a topic that comes up actually more often than I would've thought when I started this podcast and started this coaching business. I have had to coach a lot of people around this and so I figured we should bring it to the podcast 'cause likely a lot of you are dealing with it. And I wanna talk to you about how your boring job could actually be, the dream could actually be a really great opportunity. And the reason I bring this up is because I coach a lot of people around jobs that they find quote unquote boring or unfulfilling. And oftentimes these are jobs where they might actually have a lot of free time, like maybe they, um, are, you know, sitting at the front desk somewhere and there's not a lot of people coming in and out that's just like an example.

Or there's times where it's like, it's just a very easy job. It's something that doesn't require a lot of mental, um, stamina or energy and they sort of know what they're doing and there isn't a lot of growth. And um, they're kind of clocking in, clocking out and they find it boring. And a lot of people come as if this is like a very big problem and I wanna talk about how it could not be a problem and how it can maybe be the stepping stone to kind of creating a life that you want. And I want you to just think about it differently so you can decide what you want to do from here. Okay, so typically I think the problem arises because we have been sold this lie, for lack of a better word, lies plural about what our jobs should be. And I think that we have this like dream that we should have the most passion filled, purpose filled dream life job, you know, that makes us feel amazing every day.

And we love it. And we're so, and it's so funny because if you talk to people it's like I want the perfect mix of feeling challenged and excited, but also not too much where it's stress and pressure and I know exactly what I'm doing, but I, I'm also growing and that I have a boss and coworkers that I love that don't expect too much of me. And it's like, okay, like obviously that doesn't exist. And I've talked a lot about on this podcast about the fact that like, even jobs that I think are jobs that you can love, there's still 50 50. I talk a lot about my own business because I like to give the example that like, I love what I do. I, I still can't believe that I get to do what I do. I don't, can't believe that I get to make a living coaching people and talking to people about their careers and helping people. And yet I hate 50% of it, right? Because if I like the coaching aspect and talking and kind of big ideas and um, certain client facing things, naturally a lot of my abilities don't really lend to the backend stuff. Um, taxes and systems and onboarding and offboarding and the customer complaints and managing people. And that's part of a business, okay? This is what I always talk about. Like even people who are super passionate about, let's say they have um, um, like a, a hobby that they turn into

A business. So let's say they are an artist and they paint or they do ceramics, it becomes very different when you make that a business because it's not that you are now just doing this thing that you do for yourself in your own time. You now have to do the business aspect of it. And so I think a lot of people get burned out 'cause they go in thinking like, well I'm gonna spend all of my days painting. This is gonna be great. It's like, but you're not gonna spend all your day painting. You're gonna then have to, you know, do marketing and do sales and have the backend stuff and figure out, you know, um, how to sell enough in order to sustain yourself. And that is going to create stress. And so I think that this idea that there is any job where you're gonna be like happy go lucky rainbows and sunshine is just an impossibility.
And so we have to remove that. You have to understand that there will be 50% that you don't like probably at every job and it is a trade off. It's not to say that the 50% is the same, right? When I was a lawyer, the 50% was likely like the stress, the anxiety, the long hours. And for me now it's really just, you know, some of the boredom, some of the embarrassment of like being putting myself out on the internet, other things. And so you can trade for different 50 percents for sure, but I just think that we have to disabuse ourselves of this idea that there is any job where we're gonna be like, this is fantastic all the time, right? I think the second part of that is also this idea that you have to do something that is fulfilling or you have to do something you're passionate about your purpose.

I see so many people waste so much time in their life looking for this like grand purpose that you don't have to do. What is your quote unquote purpose? Like this is such a lie that has been I think, perpetrated by capitalism and kind of the society that we have where I think that we believe it's almost this like exceptionalism within our like individualistic societies where it's like I am some special unicorn, which you are, you are a special human, but it's like there's some purpose in my world. I have to, it's like this very grand vision of like, I have to change the world. And this comes from a lot of like the marketing where we see these stories of like 30 under 30 and like these really big successes and we think that we have to create this huge change by ourselves. And that's just not the reality of human existence.

Like what I, what I mean to say that is that like I always give this example, I say like, you know, what's a monkey's purpose? What's a whale's purpose, right? Like we're at the core of us. We are animals for like 95% of human history. We were just hunter-gatherers. Nobody had a purpose in hunting and gathering. It was just survival. That's what it was. Your purpose was to find enough food to eat. It's literally what every animal's purpose is. Now we've created these societies and that's great, but there isn't this like need to save the world on your own. And it's such a insane amount of pressure to put on people, especially when you think about like, there's 8 billion people in this world. Like is everybody's purpose to do some grand thing on their own? That's insanity. And I find that the more we have these like kind of
Delusions of grandeur, we don't get gran like into our own lives here, right? Like what if my purpose is to be a good friend or to put a smile on someone's face today or to really like invest in my community and to like create these relationships that are so fulfilling for me, right? I think most of us get sidetracked in this quest of greatness for our job that we end up wasting a lot of our life. Um, the other thing I think is that like, it just, again, I don't think that every single person's purpose has to be found in something where they make money from. I think again, that is some kind of a, um, byproduct by of the way capitalism works. And I think that a lot of us, yes, is it great to be able to like make money doing something that you enjoy Of course.

And that is a privilege, but I don't think it always has to be like that. And I think for a lot of us, if we did spend, I think again with capitalism, because we spend so much time working and there's so much focus on productivity that we think that we, you know, obviously if I loved it, it would be so much better. But I think that when you look at like, um, there's so much more to your life than what you do for work and oftentimes your job can just be the supporter of your life. It can just set you up. It can't just be an investor in what the rest of what you do. Now, the problem is, is that a lot of us don't really focus on how to cultivate happiness outside of our jobs, right? Like what am I doing for fun?

Where are my hobbies? What are the things that I am practicing for joy? And if I did spend more time in that, then maybe the pressure of doing that at work can be lifted, right? Maybe this can be something where work pays my bills, it allows me to live in this society, it allows me to take care of myself and it allows me to maybe have the funds to go on vacation or to do this hobby that I love or to invest in my community and create these relationships because I can have people over or whatever, right? Like it's like your job gets to be other things than the sole purpose of what you are doing on this earth. And so I think for a lot of you that like maybe have a job where you're like, it doesn't really require a lot of mental energy, great clock in, get your money clock out.

Go do something that does that does fulfill you. Like if for a lot of us, we don't want the stress of having to be in a, a job that requires constantly, I don't know, figuring things out or having really high stakes, okay, maybe I can get that intellectual stimulation in other ways. Maybe I can find other hobbies. I give me that. And so I don't have to rely just on my job. And I think the added benefit of that is like then if the job goes away, like my identity isn't tied to that, right? This is a job and I'm not gonna need to be in it for the next 40 years. I'm doing it to me ends me. And if this goes away or I get laid off or I decide to move or I wanna find another job, then I still have the identity that I've created in all of the other things that I do instead of focusing just on this job.

The other thing I will say is that I think for a lot of you, you can use that boring job to build up the life that you want or to even build up the career that you want. Like again, so many people tell me that like they have all this extra time at work. Like they may be doing something where in between the tasks they have an hour or two hours and I'm like, how wonderful someone is paying you and you don't have anything else to do during that time. And you can use that time to figure out if you wanna start that business or you wanna do this other har hobby or you wanna learn a language or whatnot. The what happens is that a lot of us have been instilled with this guilt of like, no, I should be using every single moment at work.

But that's just a belief that you don't have to believe, right? They are paying you to complete a certain amount of tasks. If they were paying you and you're completing those tasks, it, there's nowhere, I mean I'm not saying there's no more. Maybe they're paying you thinking you're gonna be busy all the time. But a lot of the people I talk to, it's like even their bosses don't care if they're actually busy. It's like they are paid to do a certain task and maybe they have to do something that takes like an hour to upload and they just have to sit there like, okay, like are you even sure that your boss cares if you do something else? I think we just have this like idea of what we should be doing and what we owe people and like what makes us a good person is to be productive all the time.

And you just wanna question that. Like, what if it was okay that I clock in, I do the tasks they want from me and I use the rest of the time to do things for myself. Or let's say in another way, like let's say again your job doesn't care what hours you work, just that you get the tasks done and let's say you get the tasks done faster, okay? And then you have other time to do things for yourself. Again, when people feel guilty, I just want you to question that guilt like, is it misplaced? Am I doing something wrong? Now you have to answer that and it's gonna be individual for every situ, every situation. Sometimes it will be wrong because maybe they expect you to be doing something else and sometimes they won't. And I think a lot of times for other people it's like, can I look at it like how fantastic that I get to get, make this money and only work four hours a day because I can get everything done and then I use the rest of the time to figure out what I want for my life?

Or maybe I use this job in order to, you know, build up my savings, pay off my debt so that it sets me up for the next thing. I think that we don't realize the benefit enough of having a boring job or having a good stable job that pays the bills, that accomplishes something for me, right? Either gives me the stability to try other things, gives me the time to try other things, gives me the energy. 'cause I'm not putting so much energy at this job to do other things. That in and of itself can be a benefit. And if you're looking at it as like, oh no, but I should be doing something more exciting. I should be doing something more successful. I should be doing something that makes more money. I should be doing something that challenges me more. I just want you to question why, who said what if,
Just bear with me. What if you shouldn't? What if this was perfectly fine, right? And I want you to just like answer that question again. You may come to like, no, I don't feel good about this. Fine. But I think that for a lot of you, you could use these jobs in such amazing ways to fund your creative endeavors, to give you the time to go after things. Like for so many people, actually I think even getting a boring job, like even, you know, leaving maybe the stress of the job that they have or the business that they have and finding a job that's boring that they could do and make a certain amount of money in order to, to support them would alleviate so much of the stress that they have in their lives. But they stop themselves because they think like, oh no, this I dunno means something about me.

Or I am giving up or I should be doing something more successful. Or there's something, you know, that means I'm not as ambitious or whatever that we've all come up with. And I just want you to question it. Like, how could finding a boring job be the best thing that I do to support myself either, um, with actual like financially or emotionally or with time or with energy or whatever might be the best thing. I think that there is a lot of benefits to these boring jobs that a lot of us seem to hate. And I think that if we can get out of our belief system that like, ugh, I'm wasting my time on earth here because I'm sitting in this job, or I'm not doing something more fulfilling, and we kind sort of reframe how like, can this job simply support the rest of my life?

Um, there's so much more you can do, right? There's so much more that you could create in your life if you don't put the pressure of having the most fulfilling, the most purpose-filled, the most passion filled job. Um, so this is my, you know, in defense of all the boring jobs out there, if you have a boring job and you feel like you know, it pays the bills, but it isn't the most like enticing thing, I just want you to reconsider, could this be the thing that helps me build the life that I want? Could this be the thing that, um, helps support me and create peace and is the launchpad to figuring out what it is that I wanna do? Um, maybe you're not stuck. Maybe you're just looking at it the wrong way. Maybe that job you have is perfectly fine for now.


Again, you also have the time, the, the ability to change your mind. So when I say this, it's not to say that like, maybe this is the job for the rest of your life. It's like maybe this for the next year or two or three or five or whatever is the job that like keeps me through this stage and helps me pay off my debt and helps me build that business or whatever. Or helps me like develop the community and the hobbies that I wanna create outside of it. Just look at it from a different angle. 'cause it might just be the best job for you. I hope that's helpful. If it is, join me next week for another episode.