How to find a better job and stop feeling miserable

You wake up in the morning and gear up for another day of workplace challenges. Sometimes your manager has unrealistic expectations of you, something that goes beyond your job description. But you give your best to almost everything your boss asks from you. 

In hindsight, you should probably not be doing that job at all. If you are a delivery boy and you don't like knocking on people's doors to deliver food or parcels, you may not want to be doing that job at all. Or, if you are a clerk, you don’t want to sit behind your desk processing files and applications. 

But what stops you from throwing in the towel has a lot to do with having no clear life plan or you struggle to muster courage to make that one strategic decision that pushes your life into a new direction you fail to envision. You cease to move forward because you are afraid of what lies next. 

There is a way, however, and you can break yourself free from the cycle of being stuck in an unwanted job. 

Healthy transitions 

Successful people with good jobs usually do one thing best: moving forward with clear targets on display. They move forward because they are ready to pay the price of progress. As a result, they are able to process their transition from one position to another. 

We usually tend to think that someone will notice us and give us a good job. But the truth of getting a better job might be a little more complicated story. If you think that what you do is not something which helps you display your skills at best, you do not have to wait for the time when you will be fired. 

Just imagine a conscious ending and give yourself some time to think about what you have done previously and where you want to move next as you continue to observe the work environment without losing any connections with your contacts. 

“Healthy transitions involve a clear ending to one role and then a period when you can mentally close that chapter,” Anthony Klotz, an academic on management at Texas A&M University told the Wall Street Journal.

Klotz has also been credited for developing the concept of the Great Resignation, which also evokes Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s famous personality, the knight of the infinite resignation, in his ground-breaking book, Fear and Trembling. 

The philosopher thought that in order to be the man of faith or “the knight of faith” in his own saying, people first need to resign from their current standing, in other words, giving up from their “golden handcuffs” in the business language. 

According to Klotz, after quitting, people need a transitional period to identify better prospects and possibilities in a consciously-led process to move forward. But to smooth out the process, people need to save well enough to finance themselves in the transitional period and their family in case of being a family man. 

If job-seekers are able to use a transitional period in a good sense, then, they might recognise that having time for thinking and seeking for a better job can not be measured with any financial means ensured by a decent salary, according to different accounts. 

Strategic thinking

Despite the fact that luck has always been an important component of finding a better job, strategic thinking facilitates progress, helping people move forward. Strategic thinking also helps people plan steps of their career and healthy transitions between different jobs. 

If you stay in the same position for a long time without any improvement in your job status, it’s definitely fair to ask the essential question: why? Possibly, your good work might not be appreciated much or you might not produce good work for some reasons. 

But in any case what’s your plan to change your own circumstances? 

Like the concept of Great Resignation, taking some risks and daring to question your own settings are crucial to develop strategic thinking skills. At first, when people dare to ask themself how strategic they have acted in their life, they will begin to recognize some uncomfortable facts, experts say. 

“The quest to build your strategic skills can be uncomfortable,” wrote Nina A Bowman, an executive coach and a Managing Partner at Paravis Partners, a coaching and leadership development firm. 

Many people are accustomed to live and work in a certain way and have never thought to change anything, fearing that their survival will be at risk. 

But when people step up and decide to move beyond the borders of their own world, then, they recognise that there are far more opportunities and ways to conduct their lives and jobs than they could think previously, according to Bowman. 

“Your vision will be blurred as you manage through the unsettling feelings that come with challenging your own assumptions and gaining comfort with conflict and curiosity,” she wrote. 

But that ‘blurring’ is not a bad thing, being an essential part to enter a new phase in your life, where your targets, time-framing, friends and enemies will be much clearer. 

More importantly, strategic thinking makes people connect in a better sense not only with their bosses but also outside world, where they will be able to discover new opportunities and also point out possible emerging threats. 

“Showing strategic thinking skills tells your bosses that you’re able to think for yourself and make decisions that position the organization for the future,” Bowman opined.  

“It assures them that you aren’t making decisions in a vacuum but are considering how other departments might be affected or how the outside world will respond.”