It’s Not Bad Enough To Leave

I’ve never truly experienced the feeling of being trapped in a place of work or anything else for that matter. I’ve never let my expenses exceed my earnings which would corner me into a dead end job. I’ve never attached my career to a single company or person when I was employed. I’ve never stayed in a relationship because it wasn’t that bad or chosen to stay in a country because, well, it’s OK.

Perhaps there are people out there who read the above paragraph and immediately think that I’m a job hopper, a crazy hippie who has a fear of commitment or that I have a relatively unstable existence. That all might be true and early on in my working life I was concerned about coming across as a person who couldn’t hold down a job or take anything seriously.

That was until I realised I didn’t want to hold down a job but rather start a company of my own and figure out what the hell I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

Since going out alone and failing a lot I’ve learned many things from a lot of different people. Some things were good and some of those things were horrific lessons that taught me what not to do.

But without a doubt the most distressing and most depressing thing that I’ve heard over the years is:

“It’s not bad enough to leave.”

That sentiment, whether applied to a job, a relationship, a state, a country or anything else for that matter, is appalling.

If you find yourself thinking along these lines then things are probably worse than you think they are.

If it’s not bad enough to leave, it definitely isn’t good enough to stay.

How Good Could Things Be?

What we need to do is reframe our approach from the negative to the positive base measurement. Instead of considering how bad things are and then deciding to stay or go what we should be doing is thinking about how good they could be.

If things can be better then make them better.

Choose Life

Or don’t. But don’t stay somewhere because it’s not bad enough to leave.