Recently, a reader asked me, “Am I leaving my job too soon?”
“I’ve been here a year. At first, it seemed like the perfect fit. But the person that hired me has now left, and I’m not sure I’m clicking with my new leader and it feels like I might be better off leaving. But is it too soon? How do you know?”
If you’ve been wondering if it’s time to leave your job—or if it’s too soon to tell—I’m sharing a few surprising ideas you’ll want to consider first.
For more help as you answer “am I leaving my job too soon?,” check out my book, “Red Cape Rescue: Save Your Career Without Leaving Your Job,” available at all major online booksellers. You can also download a free chapter here.
Am I Leaving My Job Too Soon?
Transcript:
It seems easier when something’s not going quite right . . . to leave.
I mean, I’ve been there. I get the hidden discomfort. You have a bad meeting, or client fires you or there’s a merger going on and the company that you thought you were working with isn’t the same company anymore.
And you think “I just need to run away from that pain”— “I just need to change totally everything.”
This is natural: it’s actually brain science. The brain triggers us to stay safe and to stay comfortable.
But it’s like the old phrase: a ship in the harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are for.
When we jump to the assumption that we have to change everything, we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to take advantage of what we might already have, where we are.
Change creates opportunities. Change creates the chance to hit that reset button.
And even the change in our world is the chance to have a new conversation with your leaders and with yourself about what it is you want in your life at work.
There are times when, after you’ve done the work, you can make a confident decision that it’s time to move on. I would not tell anybody to stay in a situation where they really recognize that they’re not going to be able to get what they need out of that relationship at work.
But too often I’ve seen people not want to do that work, not know how to do that work. And that’s really the focus of my book, Red Cape Rescue: Save Your Career Without Leaving Your Job.
(Download a free chapter here).
There are simple, practical things that you can do. Do that work to find out if it’s possible to make changes here, and very often, the change is available much faster and easier than you ever would realize.
Read this next:
Is it Time for a Relationship Reset at Work? How to Know & What to Do