You say, "I hate my job but it pays well":

If any of those are you, stick around because in today’s episode, we’re going to get clarity on why you hate your job, some actionable solutions to get you resolution, and I’m going to give you some ideas on how to take that pay cut successfully.

So, let’s dive in!

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You keep saying, "I hate my job but it pays well," but do you know specifically why you hate your job?

When you know exactly why, then you can dig into what specific solutions are going to work best for you.

If you had passion for your job, you would feel enthusiasm, you would have high productivity, you would enjoy going to work, and you would enjoy doing the actual work.

However, if you're feeling a lack of enthusiasm, you might feel like you're just going through motions. Just a constant feeling of emptiness or a lack of fulfillment.

Some signs that this could be you are that daily tasks feel repetitive and boring. Maybe you find it difficult to put effort into your work in order to do well. And again, it just feels like you're going through motions. There's nothing new happening. It's the same old every day.

If you're procrastinating a lot, this is another sign that you're lacking enthusiasm because what happens is you start to push off all those tasks and then in the last minute, you're rushing to get it done and the quality is subpar.

If you lack passion for your job, you are also at risk for burnout. Forcing yourself to do something that you don't enjoy can be emotionally and mentally exhausting, which leads to burnout.

This can also feel like increased stress, anxiety, or even depression.

Maybe you hate your job because of a toxic work environment, or an environment that severely impacts your mental, emotional, and even possibly your physical well-being.

If this is you, I encourage you to head back to Episode 13 where I give you some more detailed information and solutions on what you can do.

Some things to look for are poor management, like micromanagement or setting unrealistic expectations. Your manager playing favorites. Maybe there's a lot of gossip or rumors going around. Maybe a lot of cliques and exclusion happening.

Harassment and discrimination, these are obvious indicators of a toxic work environment. But even poor communication can be toxic. This would be like dishonest communication from upper management. Things like giving you feedback that's excessively negative or even not giving you feedback at all, not even telling you how you're doing or what you should be doing.

A high turnover rate and low morale can also be another indicator of a toxic work environment. If people are complaining constantly, if people are in and out, lots of new hires, people not knowing what to do in their job, or coworkers taking a lot of vacation time can even be toxic because you're having to constantly cover for other people.

Are you working constantly, getting emails after hours, working long hours, or you really don't have a life outside of work?

Having a lack of free time or personal space can affect how you feel about your job.

When your job is consuming all of your time, you can feel like you never have a break. You might feel the pressure of always having to be “on” and working.

Even jobs where you are on-call can be stressful because you don’t feel like you can ever really relax and enjoy the moment, which can cause feelings of resentment and hate towards your job.

If you feel like you have no growth opportunities or anywhere to go to keep rising within the company, this can also affect how you feel about your job.

As humans, we're designed to constantly be growing and learning new things. And if you get stuck to a point where there's nowhere to go, you're not learning anything new, there's no challenges, this can really make you feel bored and like you hate your job.

Or maybe you're happy where you're at, as far as growth, but you're feeling like you're undervalued, where you're not getting the recognition you feel you deserve for the things that you do. This can be very discouraging.

Now, what if your personal values are not in full alignment with the company's values?

Personal values are the core values that guide your actions and your behaviors. Examples of this would be things like integrity, compassion, honesty, respect. These are all things that guide how you live and move in your life.

So, if you feel like the company is completely opposite to your values. It can be very discouraging and it can feel like an ethical dilemma where you don't feel comfortable even doing your job.

Maybe you feel one of these. Maybe you feel several of these. I can tell you, for me, I have hated my job for every single one of these reasons.

If you don't know my story, I am a chiropractor and I worked as a chiropractor for over 13 years. I jumped around a lot from clinic to clinic because every time I got to a new clinic, it just was the same thing over and over again.

There were toxic work environments like rumors and pettiness. I didn't feel like my values aligned with the company's. There was just a lot of stuff. It was everything.

And so, I just got to a place where I knew that I needed out because changing jobs, it didn't help. I decided that I needed to change careers.

But as a chiropractor, "I hate my job but it pays well" truly encapsulated my situation. I was making decent pay. I couldn't just up and start something new. Chiropractic is a very specialized field and I didn't have experience in anything else. So, I would have to start at the bottom and that would be a massive pay cut.

I wasn’t sure what to do and I certainly couldn’t afford to quit, so I pulled some of my personal development tools out and applied them to my job that I absolutely hated.

While I still wanted a career change, I was able to find more peace in the day-to-day, my work relationships improved, and I didn’t dread going to work anymore.

If this is something you want too, at least until you figure the rest out, grab my free workbook and get started on finding more peace in your workplace.

Hopefully now you have an idea of why specifically you hate your job. So now let's look at some things that you can do to help.

Start journaling. I always recommend journaling because it helps you get your thoughts out of your head and onto paper so that you can better analyze what you're feeling and what's going on.

Are you just complaining or are you being dramatic? Can you find a solution?

A lot of times when I journal, the answer comes to me as I'm writing. So, this can really help you know which way to go and just know your thought process in general.

You can also try meditation, which can help bring you into the present moment. Rather than worrying too much about the future or worrying too much about the past and stressing about all of those other things, meditation can help bring you down, get you grounded, and get you calm so that you are not reactive to your environment.

Another good tip is to do a career assessment. I encourage you to take one of those tests online, but to take it with a grain of salt. It's not necessarily going to give you the exact job that you're going to love forever.

For example, I have taken many tests and every time I take them it always shoots out results, like accounting and things like that because I'm a very analytical person. That just sounds absolutely miserable to me though.

It also tells me that I should be a teacher or a counselor of some kind. And again, I think even a doctor has come up. And of course, I didn't enjoy being a doctor. But also, I can't imagine hating anything more than standing in front of a classroom and teaching a bunch of kids. Which is funny, right? I'm here. I'm teaching you. But that's the point. Don't take it at face value.

Take those answers, that response that they give you, and think about other options. Like maybe this sounds absolutely terrible, but in this aspect, it sounds really great.

And if you want to analyze what you really want in a career and what you're really good at, I recommend going to Episode 3 to answer some of those thought-provoking questions. That will help you know where you want to go.

What if you went through all the things and your job, it's not necessarily the problem. You just feel like everything is boring. Everything is awful. And you feel like something needs to change. And so why not your job? That's probably the easiest thing for you to change, right?

If your job is not necessarily the problem, try looking outside of your job to fix things. Start doing something outside of work to make a difference and bring you some fulfillment.

I definitely recommend volunteering. At one point, I was really lost and so I decided to go volunteer at the VA hospital. And honestly, it just really makes you feel good. It makes you feel good about what you're doing and it helps your self-esteem.

So, if it's not necessarily your job, go volunteer for something that you're passionate about.

Another thing could be just to go get a hobby. Go find some people that share your interests. Join a group. Join a soccer club. Do something that you have done in the past that you haven’t made time for anymore or something that you've always wanted to do.

Doing something for yourself can help you feel better about your situation in general.

If "I hate my job but it pays well" keeps running through your head, instead of just jumping to quitting, you might try improving the situation first. Maybe you don't need to go anywhere else, you just need to improve where you're at.

The first thing you could do is to have better communication with your supervisor. If they're not an awful part of the toxicity, they may be able to help you.

Going to them and sharing your concerns can make a difference. Maybe your boss has good intentions, but they just don't know there's a problem because nobody's bringing it to their attention.

Make sure you have a plan to communicate with your supervisor. Don’t just go up to them and blindside them with your concerns.

If you are bored and you want something new or different in your daily tasks, learning new skills can help you find the challenge and diversity you are looking for.

You can look for some internal training opportunities, maybe your company offers extracurricular courses or trainings. They may allow you to do certifications. You can also see if you can join a project with another department in the company.

Those are all good ideas to start doing something different and changing up your regular everyday schedule.

You might also go do some learning on your own. Whether you love the career that you're in and you want to keep doing that or it's just not the right company, learning new things only makes you a better candidate for somebody else in a different department or in another company.

Or if you want to change everything up entirely, what do you want to do? Again, go to Episode 3 and find out what it is you want to do. Then look at what skills you need to change careers and get those skills before you leave your job.

Building relationships within the company can help give you a little bit of enjoyment while you're there. Participate in some social events with your coworkers. Go out for drinks after work.

Also consider networking outside of your job. This is a really great idea, especially if you are looking for new opportunities. Meeting new people, potentially can lead you to some new opportunities that really suit you. It can also help reignite a passion in your work by talking to someone different and outside your current environment.

You can also network with people in other fields that you might be interested in getting into. Doing this can help you decide if it is truly a field that will make you happy long-term.

Think about attending conferences or joining an association. Or you can join networking groups. LinkedIn is another great way to network. Most people on LinkedIn are looking to build relationships and make connections.

However, if you are completely ready to get out of your current field and you've decided that you want to change careers but you just cannot afford that pay cut, let's talk about what you can do to take it without taking a huge hit to your life.

The first step is to look at your budget and evaluate your financial situation. Write down your monthly expenses first, catalog everything.

I started diving deeper into my finances a few years ago and it really helped me see how much I spend every month. It showed me how much I need to spend and how much is really just stuff that I want.

That can help you decide, okay, maybe you can cut some expenses. What do you absolutely need as far as a base salary in order to take a different position?

Another thing would be to save. While you're in this job that you hate, but that pays well, you can save as much as possible. Start cutting that budget down and saving more and more so that the pay cut isn't such a shock to the system when it actually happens. Plus, you'll have a good cushion.

In the book, Money Honey by Rachel Richards, she recommends that you have an emergency fund of at least $1,000. She also recommends to save between three and six months of your monthly salary in a high-yield savings account to help you get through just in case something happens.

Another option is to start making more money while you're still in a stable financial situation. You can do things like assess the skills that you have and see how you can monetize them.

Again, I recommend going to Episode 3. It can really help you a lot in doing that.

You can do freelance work, like photography, copywriting, or anything that people will pay to not do themselves. Of course, if you signed a no compete clause or something like that with your job, then you have to respect that. You wouldn’t want to risk losing your job.

Look at doing something that you're very skilled at that you could do on the side in your spare time.

I also recommend doing work that gives you passive income, something like real estate or online marketing, digital products, things like that.

Those offer passive incomes where you are putting work in up front, but you are making income when you're not necessarily working on it, like while you are sleeping or working at your job and money is still coming in.

Passive income is fantastic, but I fully recommend leveraged income. Some people call these the same thing, but I think there's a slight difference.

With passive income, yes, money can come in passively, but you still have to put in that work. Let's say you're selling a digital product. You have to be marketing that digital product in order for people to come and buy it. Once you stop marketing, people are going to stop buying. This is especially true with social media marketing.

So, yes, they can buy it anytime during the day, but if you stop working, the income stops coming.

This is similar with real estate. Maybe it's passive, where you don't have to do a whole lot but, unless you're hiring somebody to manage your property, you still have to do maintenance.

Leveraged income is where you're putting the work in up front and then you are continually reaping the rewards without doing anything else.

This would be things like investing where you're putting money into something and then it keeps coming back in interest.

Another type of leveraged income is direct selling and some kinds of affiliate marketing where there is a subscription-based product. You're putting in the marketing efforts up front to get people on your subscription product and then they keep buying every month and you don't have to do anything to maintain that.

Depending on why you are saying, “I hate my job but it pays well,” you now have some great options moving forward.

If you lack passion or interest in your job, you need to ask yourself if it's the job and the work duties or if the job itself is okay, but you just feel bored.

If it's the job itself, do some self-reflection on what you really want and what really interests you. You can also learn some new skills to either reignite a passion that you already have for a field that you're in or to support another career or a side hustle that you want to start.

And if the job itself is okay, try to find some fulfillment outside of work. Volunteer or start a hobby.

Network with other people that have similar interests as you. These are all good options if you're just bored in general. You might also try having new challenges in your job and asking to be put on new projects or to learn new skills there as well.

If you're dealing with a toxic work environment or there's a misalignment in your values, try talking to your supervisor first. See if there's something that can be fixed before you decide to leave.

And again, start building relationships, start networking in and outside of your job to see if there are some better opportunities elsewhere.

If you're dealing with a work-life imbalance, is it something that can be controlled like overtime or texts or emails coming in after hours?

In that case, go talk to your supervisor first. See if you can't set some boundaries for your time outside of work.

Is it something that's completely outside of your control? Is it something like established office hours and you just have to work long hours? Maybe you lack PTO and you can never take a vacation.

Try adding a leveraged income stream so that potentially you can build that up and eventually leave your job.

Lastly, if there's just no growth potential, try learning some new skills, get some certificates, and make yourself an invaluable candidate for a different position at your company or somewhere else.

Try networking within the company and outside of the company to increase your ability to find new opportunities. You could also start a side hustle to increase your income opportunities as well.

And if you want to get some super easy, actionable advice on what to do when you hate your job now, while you figure out the rest of those details, grab my free workbook. It will get you out of your head so you have more peace and satisfaction in your workplace.

You can grab it by clicking the orange button below.

Let me know what plan you are making for the job you hate that pays well in the comments below.