Changing jobs can be one of the most stressful live events that a person goes through and the fears and uncertainty involved can hold you back and stop you from having a better time at work.

One of the most beautiful things that life has is that we can choose whatever makes us happy. We can choose our friends, our partners, what to eat, where to travel and also where and how we want to work.

Of course all improvements in any of these aspects may imply an effort and you need to assess yourself if you are ready to take the risk.

I have heard many stories of people really unhappy with their jobs and that complaining about it started to form part of their current conversations. Do you think this is healthy?

Do you think that it worth staying with your current employer because better the devil you know? Or because you don’t want to go through the phase of looking for a job, shaping your career objectives, interviews, etc? but you are happy affecting your health and happiness just because you are scared of changing?

My answer to this is – you must be happy at work! And that is a rule for me. If you are not, change it and it doesn’t matter for how much pain you would go through in the way of changing jobs, the long term results will be much more rewarding and your entire attitude towards life will be different.

First of all I would say that you need to understand what is causing you that feeling that you are not in love with your employer any more.

• Don’t you like your tasks?
• Have you stayed there for so many years that you feel that there is nothing else to discover?
• Do you feel that you are not treated fairly?
• Don’t you like your boss?
• Commuting? Colleagues? Salary?
• Personal reasons?

And the list can go as long as many items you dislike about your current situation. After understanding why you are feeling that way and what may drive your decision of changing, the next questions that I recommend are, is there any possibility for this to change? What should happen at work for me to be happier?

If any of the responses for these questions are negative, I would say that you are ready to think about changing to another role and I can risk and say to another company.

Changes are always for better if you think about them and if you mentally map the future situation. When you decided that it’s time to change, you may be prompted to make a decision from 2 scenarios:

• Will I wait to have a perfect fit opportunity? How much effort am I willing to put to find it?
• Will I put myself timescales and if nothing arises by xx time, I will resign anyway?

Of course, the decisions are made based on how much you can live without having a job but sometimes we need to have spare time and our minds free to make better and wiser decisions.

If you take the first option and you decide to have a good opportunity, it’s a very common question how to analyse this new opportunity against the current job/situation.

Just as a starting point, I recommend to use a numeric calculation and to weigh each characteristic of both roles and see what the final scores are.  This can give you a clear overview of your preference, I put my own example below, I’ve changed jobs very recently and this is the table I used:

As you can see, the second option looked better from a numeric perspective. I am not saying that this should be your only evaluation but can help you decrease your fears and feelings by thinking carefully about your next move.

This analysis helped me calm down since of course I felt anxious and really didn’t know if this would be a wise move.

Something that can really decrease the stress generated and your fears is to know as much as you can from the new opportunity so that you can make a decision with as much as information is available and to everything you can to decrease your stress that these situations can generate; this can be from talking with friends, going to a park to think, running, etc.

My last recommendation is that after analysing this numerically, talking with friends and family, etc, you need to close your eyes, being in peace and listen to your heart. If your heart says that this is good decision, all your fears will be much more manageable and rather that holding you up, they will lead you to make a great decision.