Welcome to Ask Skyla, AllBright's advice column giving you the chance to ask the hard questions about careers.

Whether you've got a tricky HR situation, need some direction, or are angling for a raise, our resident career coach Skyla Grayce is here to help.

This week, Skyla helps a reader who's falling out of love with her job...

Dear Skyla, I have a question… how can I tell if I am falling out of love with a job/employer or falling out of love with an entire industry? I am finding it hard to know whether I’ve had enough of doing the job I’m doing or working in an industry that I don’t fully love at the moment. I would love your insight/experiences on how to tell whether it’s a job/employer from which one needs to make space or an industry as a whole.

It’s so hard and left me feeling very confused. 

Dear, ‘falling out of love’,

As Christmas draws in of course we are looking at the subject of ‘love’, actually, and as we close 2021 of the Ask Skyla column we can turn to what Natalie says in her card to the prime minister, if you can’t say it at Christmas when can you eh?. So let's look at Love. 

What does it mean to ‘love your job’ ? 

Love is a strong word, perhaps best left for the movies, your family, dog, cats and closest friends. I would like to suggest that Love (with a capital L) puts unreasonably high expectations on your work, industry and employers. And this is coming from someone who loves (small l) her job.  

It's interesting isn’t it, to consider what this ‘love my job’ means for us individually. How will you know when you love it, and what will the signs and measurable aspects of it be when you get there? Will it be based on qualitative or quantitative results, in short will you consider the ‘feeling’ aspect of your job the more conceptual and descriptive element of your every day. Here there is space for you to be good at your role but feel dissatisfied by your company culture. You can make room for both experiences to sit beside each other and not put the whole experience, the good enjoyable bits included, in the bin.

With the wellbeing industry and career coaching becoming more mainstream we have become fascinated with the possibility of actually loving the work we do and why not? You only need to open Instagram to find a post advocating for loving your job. I am a big fan of promoting the importance of feeling energised, inspired and motivated by the work you have chosen to do. Yet on further inspection is this ‘being in love with my job’ actually putting undue pressure on you to be ‘happy’ with the job you have? Is this, Love, a concept that we are all trying to uphold?

We also need to ask ourselves, is this the norm for the majority? How many people do you know that love what they do? Perhaps they love parts of it but there are elements they would be happy to have taken off their plate. My sense is that the further along in your career you are the more established you are at what you do, you know yourself, your gifts and where your energy and time is best spent so loving your job becomes a lot easier. 

When we are attached to finding a job we will love we can get caught in a ‘pipe dream’ that is actually being used to fuel our comparison, judgement and shame translating as negative thoughts about unfulfilled potential as we wake up and get to work. Your next step might not be your dream job but a job that is taking you one step towards a job that feels exciting to you and allows you to learn something. When we are enthusiastic about our jobs we can stop desiring to love the job and instead begin to love the person we are becoming as we do the job we have well. It’s time to allow ourselves to have a range of experiences in our jobs, to make space for the wins and the losses, the stress and the celebration. 

I want to give permission to all of you reading this, specifically those who are not currently in love with their job to be ok with that and not make yourself wrong for rolling up your sleeves and getting on with it. A mentor of mine says that sometimes we need to swim against the current in order to get to where we are going. This is wisdom. Just because it doesn’t feel easy right now does not mean you are not in flow. It’s ok to be a salmon now and then. 

So, your dilemma, “I am finding it hard to know whether I’ve had enough of doing the job I’m doing or working in an industry that I don’t fully love at the moment.”.

It would seem to me you might have got yourself in a bit of a tangle. Like a fine necklace that has found itself in tiny knots let us see if we can find a gentle way through to undo some. Below the surface of the decision, should I stay or should I go, is the relationship you have with yourself. Your capacity to trust your gut feelings and act on them. The answers you seek are found in your ability to listen to what is true for you and be guided by your intuition. The thing about intuition is often it can defy our logical brains. It can feel like we are going against the rational tide and turning away from something that on face value is a ‘good’ thing. And maybe for the right person it is, a great job and a dream company. The thing about our careers is that they are ours and what is right for you is not right for the person standing next to you. It will be a unique blend of the defining factors of your education, life experience and idiosyncratic interest. 

So how then do you discern if you are in fact falling out of love with a job/employee? 

First things first, consider what it is that you no longer enjoy? Is it the work you do or the person/people you work with? Or both? This can be remedied by a simple hop skip and a jump to another company with a new team, culture and job title. It will take some research, job applications and patience but it is completely fixable. 

Most of what we do at work are transferable skills, similar things that are valuable in the context of any industry. Every job is hard as you learn to master it, whilst you do it's helpful to work out what elements you are enjoying and what magic you are noticing that you are able to bring. 

As we develop our careers we need to get ok with allowing each job to run its course. Asking yourself simple questions as you review your own progress. 

Am I still contributing to the company?

Do I feel that working here is contributing to my own career progression? 

If this has changed and you no longer feel like you are learning or you feel the balance has been tipped too far one way you may be bored, uninspired or frustrated by your job. Which would mean that it would make complete sense to be falling out of love with it. When we start to feel twitchy it is the perfect time for a ‘career audit’ - a chance to harvest all you have learned, acknowledge your transferable skills and get honest about what part of the job you enjoyed and what you really don’t want to be a part of your next position.

If you are falling out of love with an entire industry? This is something very different.This can feel like an existential crisis, leaving you feeling lost and uncertain of who you are and what you do. Especially if walking away from this industry means you will be stepping outside the lines of your university degree, the goals you have had since you were seven and the parental pressure to stay on track. Can you relate? 

In my experience it is easy to label a whole industry as something when in fact our experience of that industry was based on our relationship with those few people we were working with. People are always at the heart of these things and it is people who we must learn to build relationships with. If you love fashion for example, the industry at large may have a ‘culture’ a way of being that perhaps either suits you or does not, you can still love fashion but perhaps you need to consider what part of the industry inspires you or grabs your attention and to take your time and energy towards that. You can begin to build your values, go watch the Sue Belton course, Discover Your Values, inside the Academy, and then you can get clear on the job you want within your chosen industry. For example, if sustainability is important to you, sounds obvious, but perhaps try not working for a fast fashion brand that is going to leave you feeling off at the end of each day as it feels out of alignment with your core values. 

When we are having an industry crisis it's vital to look at how much of your identity is caught up in the industry you are working in? If you are finding it hard to leave you can be sure there are aspects of you that feel safer being able to use this as part of your identity. Who are you if you don’t work in publishing, media, law? Changing industries can be hard for anyone at any time especially if at one point you felt you were in love with the industry you find yourself in. Like any break up it might take a moment to unhook yourself from the industry at large and find a new path towards new potential opportunities. 

In the end, we must stop looking outward for all the answers as the truth of your experience and the reality of your next step lies much closer to you. This Christmas take some time to recharge and give yourself the attention you need to truly listen. To hear the whispers of what you actually want from your career, how you desire your work day, what your dream job would be and give yourself full permission to paint this picture beyond the restrictions of your mind's idea of what's possible. From here you can begin to define what it is you want and start to build a map to reach it. 

Trust yourself, a part of you already knows what you want, your only job is to take the obvious action to make that happen.

Warmest, 

Skyla Grayce