Coasting vs Challenging oneself

[Jen]

I need help making a change in my life and breaking out of a self-defeating comfort zone. I've been at the same company now for 7 years (in a few different positions within). It's a "safe" place to work- I actually transferred to another office and sometimes work from home, have a 'virtual' team I work with that I get along great with.

I am so bored. It's not challenging at ALL. I want to make a career change into something completely different, but it seems that all I can find is something at an assistant level that pays about $20k less than I make now (and I don't even make that much now). I feel stuck. I don't know how to go about making a career change. I look at ads online and respond to those but get nothing back. I feel like time is going by and I am wasting more and more of it in a dead-end job that means nothing to me. I think my BF who initially encouraged me to find something that would interest me, has given up on me going out and actually doing it. I'm not a lazy person ( i actually work a 2nd job in retail, trying to make some extra cash during the holiday season). But I feel like I am the least self-motivated person EVER. How do I get myself going again? I want to feel good about myself and that I am moving in the right direction, not just coasting through each day, which is exactly what I'm doing now.

[gberardi]

When I was working a part-time job in college, I remember feeling unchallenged and bored. I had a hard time doing anything, though. I was not very active when it came to finding a better job, and so I didn't find one until a friend helped me get a job at the company he worked at. Most of my jobs came about due to someone else helping me.

If it wasn't handed to me, I didn't do anything above and beyond what I was doing.

For the past couple of years, though, I have been trying to do more. If I do enough, people see me as the one who solves problems. It's easy to get promoted and challenged when you basically show yourself to be a problem solver.

So volunteer for extra work or take on an extra project. I obtained my current job most likely due to the various independent projects I had accomplished. The worst case? You challenge yourself and learn new skills, giving yourself extra things to pepper your resume with.

[Mindformula]

Hey there,

Well you have the same problem as my g/f.

The thing is you are an away from motivated person when it comes to this, you aren´t looking to make any change till there is more pain from the job than there is comfort. So what will happen if you do not change things now?
It is kind of like tax season, people push it off as long as they can, till they realize that the pain of doing it will be far less than the pain of not doing it.

What you can do is start really looking, I know you said you have been looking, but how many people have you told? How many places have you actually visited? How much have you really done as far as finding a new job, do you know what you want to be doing instead of what you are doing now?

If you don´t tell anyone there is noone who can scout for you, it´s the easiest way of letting people know you are looking to make a change. If only you know, you are the only one who can find something. If 15 people know, you might start to get some pointers as far as what to do.

Sit down with yourself and really think about what you would like to do instead, then go to the places that have that kind of job and apply. Only 30% of all jobs are actually advertised, the rest are walk-ins and referrals, so right now by "looking" for a new job in the obvious places you are only looking at a small percentage of jobs out there. In my experience, most good jobs or fun jobs are not advertised, it seems to be mainly corporations that go that route, smaller companies don´t want to spend $400 on monster to fill a new position.

Just some pointers.