Why You Must Make Friends with Your Job

On the surface, it would seem that disliking the work you do for money would provide the best possible motivation to move on to something new. But in real life it rarely works that way. Here are some compelling reasons to make peace with what you're doing now, even if you have future plans that don't include your current job:

• When you hate something or someone in your daily life, the hate begins to color the energy field around you. Even if you don't believe in auras or invisible force fields, you've probably had the experience of feeling a sudden chill when a particular person entered the room. That's because the person was carrying around negative energy, and emotional energy has a life of its own. You owe it to yourself to keep yourself from becoming one of those people. Besides, extreme negativity is going to interfere with your ability to find and make the most of happy possibilities that will help you towards your dream.
• Once you decide to make peace with an unloved job, you actually set yourself up for a better one. In some spiritual traditions, there's a belief that you won't be sent any further opportunities until you've mastered what you're supposed to be doing now. Boy, is this a hard idea to swallow sometimes! Test it for a week if you're skeptical. Once you're able to go about most of your daily tasks cheerfully (this doesn't mean grinning all day or dancing on desks) you may find that interesting offers and opportunities start coming your way.
• Once you're at peace, you'll have more energy to spend doing what you really love. This is especially important if your paid work involves long hours and you don't have much free time. If you have a job that's bad by any standards, it's already taking up your work hours. Are you going to give it more time by allowing it to drain you so much that you have nothing left to give after you clock out? An apt metaphor for such self-sabotage is the man who arrives home one evening to find burglars loading all his furniture into a fake moving van and greets them with " Do you need any help?"
• After you've cleared away any emotional clouds hovering around you, your'e free to start mining whatever benefits your job may hold, in terms of your dream. Most jobs have something to offer. In upcoming chapters I'll offer way to find those somethings. 

Even after you befriend your job, you still might be on the lookout for something else. There are instances where you can make a bad job more bearable but if you're going to be happy in the long run, you'll need to find a more congenial day job. 

In some circumstances it makes sense to put your passion on hold for a definite amount of time while you focus on getting the training you need to enter a new field. For example, if you decide you want a position as an administrative assistant because working regular business hours will open up more passion-related opportunities than your current retail job, but your office software skills are slim to none, you will probably have to take classes. In that case, find out what you need to learn, make a learning plan and give yourself a time frame for finishing your training. Setting a deadline is extremely important; without one you might find yourself taking coursework less seriously and prolonging your training time. 

It also helps to set out visible reminders of your ultimate passion-related goal, the one you've temporarily set aside. Reminders will help you stay on track and remember why you're really slogging through Spreadsheets 101. It's not because you envision a life where setting up spreadsheets is the high point of your week, it's so you can eventually afford high quality art supplies or join a community choir that practices evenings. 

By the way, if you're still a traditionally young college student, one of the best things you can do for yourself is make sure you have an easily marketable set of direct job skills before you graduate. Even if you love Art History and are aiming for an eventual position at a museum or in academia, having office tech, sales or service skills will ensure that you won't starve while searching. 

In addition, having a "meanwhile" job will not only help pay for things, it could keep you from having to move back in with your parents. Too often, in cases where the parents haven't required much of the returning adult child, I've seen the kid in question start on a downward slide into inertia. Having a regular job gets you out into the world, makes you get moving and stay moving, and forces you to stay reasonably sharp. 

And you'll need those sharp wits for moving towards your dream.