Author Tessa West discusses how to find a job you enjoy by assessing your skills, stressors, and career needs. The podcast explores emotional complexities in career choices, self-esteem, stress management, leveraging existing skills, and navigating work dissatisfaction.
Acknowledge and process mixed feelings about work like navigating relationships.
Assess if tasks align with career advancement to make informed job decisions.
Deep dives
Embrace the Complexity of Work
It's normal to experience mixed emotions about work, feeling both love and hate for your job simultaneously. Tessa West highlights the importance of acknowledging and processing these complex feelings related to work, similar to how individuals navigate relationships. Understanding these emotions can help individuals address their career dissatisfaction and make informed decisions moving forward.
Ensure Your Job Aligns with Your Goals
To improve job satisfaction, it's essential to assess if your current tasks contribute to your career advancement. Communicating with supervisors and seeking feedback about the relevance of your daily responsibilities can help clarify if your efforts align with your desired promotion or job growth. Confirming this alignment can guide your career decisions effectively.
Document and Analyze Work Stressors
By regularly documenting anticipated and actual stress triggers at work, individuals can gain insights into their stress patterns and sources. Tessa West recommends a stress test where individuals track stressors to identify overlaps and effectively manage stress. This data-driven approach can provide valuable information for addressing workplace dissatisfaction and improving well-being.
To find a job you actually enjoy, figure out what's making you unhappy and move forward from there, says Tessa West, author of the new book Job Therapy: Finding Work That Works for You. West offers practical exercises to help assess your strongest skill sets, your stressors and what you need next from your career.