In a coffee shop last week, a friend was chatting to another about her current job – “I’m so fed up where I am. I’ve been there for five years, I haven’t been promoted and nothing’s going to change. What can I do?” Her friend duly listened supportively and offered options such as “Why don’t you look for another job?” The unhappy employee then came up with a list of reasons as to why she couldn’t do that. “I can’t find anything that’s right” or “I don’t have the experience.” I wondered how many times they had had this same conversation in the past.

The unhappy employee is stuck in a rut that on the surface she wants to get out of and yet, when it comes down to it, perhaps justifiably, she creates countless reasons why she can’t change the situation. What if she could turn each off those negative expressions into equally positive ones? How much of an impact would that have? How motivated is she really to want to make these changes? Does she really want to do what she says she wants to do? Or does she think she should do what she should do? Is she giving herself permission to do what she wants to do?

Tony Robbins said “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got” and he’s right. The woman in this case refuses to change her approach even though it hasn’t worked for a long time and as a result, nothing has changed. In addition to that, where is the evidence that our unhappy employee doesn’t have the experience? What does the right job for her look like? It’s easy to focus on what she doesn’t want, but has she taken the time and energy to focus on what what she does want?

Where’s the evidence that she doesn’t have the experience? What skills, experience and knowledge does she really have? Sometimes it’s easier to ask other people to tell us as they are usually more objective than we can be with ourselves.

If what you thought and did yesterday made you who you are today, then equally, what you think and do today makes you into the person you will be tomorrow, doesn’t it? So, who do you want to be? And with this in mind, what’s really stopping our unhappy employee from making a change? And more importantly, what is she going to do to change to be where she wants to be, have the job she wants and live the life she wants to live? And if you’re still reading this blog, what are you going to do next?