We are reviving our “Ask the Reinvention Coach®” feature, where I will periodically answer questions from readers!  Read below for tips for moving forward when you feel unhappy and stuck in your job.

Q: Here’s my situation: I’m a 45 year old male.  Good paying job in a small computer company.  Thought of very highly at the company by the owner.  But I dread work pretty much every day.

I bought Pamela’s book but I am sort of stuck.  I don’t know what my ideal job even is to pursue.  I am also concerned if I had to take a major pay cut too.  I would prefer not to be miserable everyday going to work.

Recommendations?  Thoughts?

Signed, Sick of Software

A: I feel your pain.  Many people find themselves.  Many people find themselves in this situation; they believed that having a good job at a stable company was an automatic recipe for job satisfaction.  But you are living proof that this is a fairy tale.

No doubt the voices in your head (and maybe those in your world) say you should be happy for what you’ve got.  I agree that it is important to be grateful, not to create guilt but to encourage you to value your job as an asset you have at your disposal to launch your reinvention.

From your note, I notice two main traps of reinvention that are keeping you stuck:

1. Looking for an “ideal” job. One of the biggest points of my book, The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention, is that there are no ideal jobs.  There are downsides to every career, even if you love the work.  To get what you want, job-wise, you have to give.  This means that to find work that both excites you and satisfies most of your lifestyle needs, you will have to accept some tradeoffs.
2. Worrying about issues that may not be real. You are concerned about having to take a major pay cut, without knowing what you want to do next.  This is like worrying that your flight will crash before you’ve even made a reservation, much less bought the ticket.  Until you have targeted a new career and begun researching it, you cannot know whether or not lower pay is one of its tradeoffs.  (By the way, a TRI study back in 2006 showed that 25% of successful reinventors made more money in their new career).  Inventing barriers without actual data is a form of excuse-making, and as Law 3 says: Progress begins when you stop making excuses.

To move forward, you must shift your attention from what’s making you unhappy to what makes you happy.  I am certain that there are things about your current position that you enjoy or that work for you; write them down.  Do the brainstorming exercises in the book, especially the ones focusing on flow activities and inexhaustible interests.  If you need more help, there are a number of in-depth exercises in our new Brainstorming Your Reinvention Idea eKit to guide you.

Once you have a few workable ideas for what you would like to do next, see how your job can help you move towards your goal.  At the very least it will provide funding (aka ‘paycheck’) as you explore, but it could also provide a whole host of valuable assets for reinvention (contacts, opportunity to work on new projects and develop new skills, tuition reimbursement, etc.).  You may well find that what you hate ends up being a useful launching pad to what you love!