Every Sunday night, my heart would begin to feel tight and heavy. “What’s wrong with me?” I’d worry. Nothing made sense, apart from the fact that Monday was approaching.
How do you feel every Sunday night? Enthusiasm for the week ahead? A disconnected feeling of neutrality? Perhaps a sense of foreboding? When it’s the latter, it’s time to ask yourself some questions. I spoke with Jim Kwik, celebrity brain and memory coach and host of the Kwik Brain podcast, who works with the likes of Elon Musk and Will Smith, and he shared some insights on this topic.
If you’ve been feeling as if it might be time to quit your job, you could be right! Here are some signs you need to make a change:
1. You’re not growing.
“If you’re not feeding your mind, you’re falling behind,” Kwik says. “It’s one thing for your job to support you financially, but does it also support your personal and professional growth?”
Are you expanding year over year? “You can be at a job for seven years, but without new learnings and growth, what you really could have is one year of experience repeated seven times,” Kwik says.
Your time on earth is far too precious for that!
2. You’re not learning anything new.
Progress is the joy we feel as we move in the direction of our potential. When we learn, we feel alive. It’s as if our life kicks into high def.
“Education doesn’t end when you leave school,” Kwik says. “If there is one skill to master in today’s fast-paced Information Age, it’s the ability to learn rapidly. The faster you can learn, the more you can earn.”
Are you immersed in an ongoing education at the office that makes you feel challenged and energized?
3. You’re physically fatigued.
Unhappiness or complacency can manifest physically. Sunday after Sunday, I would feel the same thing happening to me—and it was more than the Sunday night blues. My anxiety about my job was manifesting as my feeling worn down. My vitality was gone. My shoulders and neck felt tight. I was in a slump because I lost my appetite for my job.
How does your body feel?
4. Your inner voice is getting louder.
Our intuition whispers to us, always, and it increases its volume when we try to silence it. At our core, we are curious, creative, hungry beings. When we aren’t satisfied at work, our emotional GPS refuses to tolerate it. Because we’re in an age of outsourcing, “your ability to outthink, outlearn, and outperform is your competitive advantage,” Kwik says. “Invest in your unique capacity to be creative and solve problems, so you don’t lose opportunity [to outsourcing], automation, and artificial intelligence.”
Creative problem solvers will always remain the most in demand in the workforce. Cultivating these skills is not only fun, it’s critical to future-proof your career.
5. You seek relief elsewhere.
When I was unhappy at work, I’d seek solace in a third (or fourth!) glass of wine. Some of my clients now find distractions in online shopping, toxic relationships, or food. Are you seeking satisfaction and excitement outside the service you bring to the world because you’re out of alignment—or because your job’s simply not enough?
6. You just know there’s more.
“Is this all there is?” is a common question I receive as a life coach. The truth is, the only limits you experience are the ones you create. If you can’t seem to quit your daydream (or think it can only be a dream), you’re underestimating yourself. Career changes are common. Lateral internal moves happen constantly. So is starting a passion-based side hustle—one-third of millennials rock one now. What are you not letting yourself pursue?
7. You feel as if you’re betraying yourself.
On LinkedIn, I used to be a successful sales director at a Fortune 500 company. But in my heart, I was always life coach and teacher. Year after year, it was harder and harder to maintain what felt like a betrayal of who I really am. When I turned 30, I made the commitment to work for myself as a life coach and committed side hustler. Less than 18 months later, I left cubicle life for good. It was terrifying at the time, but I consider it the best decision I have ever made.
I’ve realized the biggest impediment we have to our wild success is our belief in what’s possible for our lives. Every great manifestation comes from what we believe to be real about who we are and what we can achieve. And the vast majority of the time, we aim too low. We fail to appreciate our unique talents, gifts, and magnificence.
“We are taught a lie that our intelligence, our potential to learn, is fixed like our shoe size,” Kwik says. “We grossly underestimate our own mental power.”
How will you focus on what you can do (instead of what you can’t) right now? How will you seize your power? Then let the possibility unfold!
Susie Moore is Greatist’s life coach columnist and a confidence coach in New York City. Sign up for free weekly wellness tips on her website and check back every Tuesday for her latest No Regrets column!
