| Obviously I don't have the details of your situation, but using terms like love or hate my job are a warning sign. First, I would advice to stop using the love your job mental model. Instead look into the concept of "Career Capital" from So good they can't ignore you. Second, here is another mental framework and exercise that I recommend to my mentees. Rather than thinking about job satisfaction as a line between "love" and "hate", think of it as a measure in a multidimensional space. Maybe you work with cool tech, but the commute is killing you. Maybe you have tons of fun with you colleagues, but it pays way below market. Every day write down your mood, and what caused that mood. Maybe you are angry because of a bad interaction with your boss. Maybe you are unhappy because Tim got the new cool project again and you are stuck doing grunt work. Maybe you had fun when you went out for lunch with your team. Once you have enough data points you can start observing patterns. I find people hardly ever completely hate every single aspect of their jobs. Most often there is a few factors driving the dissatisfaction, that paint the whole experience badly. Then you can decide what step to take next to improve on those points. Some actions might include doing things differently in your current position, change teams or change companies (it hardly ever comes down to changing careers). You might be thinking that this is a very long winded way of telling you to change jobs, but the self reflection step is important. I've seen people change jobs because they were unhappy, just to be unhappy in their next job. Often the reason is that they misinterpreted the reason of their unhappiness. Without that awareness they are bound to find themselves in the same situations over and over. As a side note this isn't a replacement for help with anxiety and despair. If needed be look for professional help. Best of luck. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore-You/dp/14555091... |