She gazes at her reflection in the mirror and sighs, attempting once more to smooth down the persistent wrinkles in the ugly mustard yellow suit. One sleeve is slightly shorter than the other, and the jacket is a bit snug through the shoulders. There's a stubborn spot on the lapel. It is the "uniform" of her current job. She hates the way she looks wearing it; and she really hates the way it makes her feel. 
For a moment she closes her eyes and dreams of the outfit she'd really love to wear, the one that fits perfectly and enhances her best features. "No sense wasting time on a dream" she tells herself. "It's time to get to work in the real world."
Being in a job that doesn't fit is like going to work every day in really ugly clothes. No matter how hard you try, you never look or feel good.
Now you may be thinking, "No way would I take a job that made me look bad and feel uncomfortable."
If you've been working more than a few years and can honestly say you've never had an "ugly suit" job - good for you. I suspect you're in the minority.
So why do so many of us find ourselves at some point in an ill-fitting job?
1. It's safe. It came along when you needed a job. It's what you're used to. The economy is uncertain, and you've got bills to pay.
2. You're good at it. All your career counselors said, "You're really good at 'X'; you'll have a bright future if you get a job doing 'X'."
3. Your parents always wanted you to become 'X', and they worked hard to make sure you'd have the opportunity. You don't want to disappoint them.
4. You chose this path when you were young. Since then you've invested an enormous amount of time, money, and effort in advancing your career.
5. It pays well. So what if it requires you to be uncomfortable every day, nothing else you could do would provide as much income.
6. Your job and title are impressive, more so because you obtained both through #4 above. You feel successful and defined by your position. If you couldn't introduce yourself as ' X', who would you be?
7. The work you'd really like to do is impractical, doesn't pay well, isn't impressive, doesn't have benefits, is tough to break into, etc., etc.
8. You haven't yet decided what you'd like to be when you grow up.
The good thing about jobs, like clothes, is that if you want to you can change them.
Martha Brockenbrough, says in How to Tell If You Like Your Job ... And How to Start Over If You Don't "You spend most of your waking life at work. If you don't love what you do and look forward to doing it, that means you are condemning yourself to a life of discontent. It's not that every moment at work has to be the best moment ever. But if you're just putting in time, waiting for retirement or some other milestone to really live your life, you're in trouble."
Po Bronson adds in What Should I Do With My Life "Being smart doesn't make it any easier to figure out what you want to do with your life - the key to job satisfaction is to search for something meaningful, significant, and fulfilling. Some things that help: finding a work environment with a value system that matches yours, letting go of the urge to impress people, and most of all, allowing yourself to ask "What should I do?" in the first place.
Hardly anyone expends more time, money, and effort in career development than a surgeon, but William Gruber reveals in Letting Go: A Memoir that a medical disability forced him to leave his career as an orthopaedic surgeon. He also states that he was no longer finding fulfillment from achieving his career goals and meeting everyone's expectations. "The dreams that once propelled me had been fulfilled," he said "but as a result, life felt empty."
As Dr. Gruber suggests, perhaps the suit was a good fit when you first put it on, but over time as you grew and changed, the suit did not.
Deborah Brown Volkman says that "Work either increases your energy and sense of worth or decreases it. It adds or subtracts meaning from your life."
If you find yourself in an "ugly suit" job that is diminishing your sense of self-worth, career coaches recommend that you take time to discover what really motivates you, identify and break self-defeating behaviors, and give yourself permission to ask "what if."
Being scared of change is okay. Allowing that fear to close your mind to other possibilities is not.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us." - Marianne Williamson
Comments