Why do I keep quitting jobs?

Do you find yourself in a pattern and find yourself thinking "why do I keep quitting jobs?"

I can relate and did the same thing at one time.

When you keep quitting jobs, it feels like your life becomes a pattern of repeated failures. If you’re unable to gain traction at work, your future can seem bleak.

But…Hold on. There is hope!

When someone falls into a pattern of repeatedly leaving jobs, I call this an “I keep quitting jobs phase.” It’s a period of struggle, uncertainty and transition in life.

This is a phase of being in limbo between your potential future and the lessons to be learned in the jobs you keep leaving.

Unfortunately, it can feel like continuous gut punches of failure.

But in all it’s ugliness, it’s period where overcoming an uncomfortable barrier in a few critical situations could drastically change your circumstance and offer renewed hope.

Ahh the ugly “I keep quitting jobs phase”

When I was 20 years old, I too was in an uncertain period in life and went through a strange phase. I would find a new job, work for a couple days and then I would just not show up anymore.

It was as though there was a part of myself that couldn’t help but sabotage my own success and happiness.

At this time in my life, I was working entry level positions, kitchen jobs or labour work. I didn’t exactly see it as the most exciting stuff.

I would show up to work for a couple of days, then think “I can’t repeatedly do this day in and day out.” So, I’d quit.

I saw the work as painful and hopeless.

It was as though I’d rather be broke and potentially homeless than be stuck going to that particular job indefinitely.

During this phase of my life, I was ambitious, but I lacked the discipline and some other key characteristics required to achieve the goals I wanted.

I had an aspiration at the time to start my own business cleaning windows and doing home maintenance. However, I was unable to make a successful attempt of it. I would encounter some form of adversity or financial issues and the business attempt would fall flat.

So, I would resort to other work as a source of income. All the while in my mind perceiving those jobs as a reflection of my failed business venture.

It seems silly to look back on, but it felt at the time like my life might forever be defined by that period of “failure.” I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to overcome the self sabotage I kept participating in.

A lesson in transforming life patterns

Whenever a struggle becomes a repeated hurdle in life, it can feel insurmountable.

These hurdles if left unconquered then become barriers to the goals we want to achieve. When this happens, it feels like you lack the capacity to overcome the struggle, and your goals remain out of grasp.

This becomes a limbo state of existence.

A phase of frustration and resentment.

I remember being almost 22 years old and showing up to what was yet another first day of work.

I was sitting in the front seat of my car, and I vividly remember the thought “I can’t keep doing this.” That being the pattern of quitting or leaving jobs.

Even though every ounce of me wanted to pack it in and go home, I knew I had to dig deeper and find a solution to my pattern in my life.

Even if the thought of working that job felt like it would crush my soul, I needed to have a more bulletproof mindset.

I made the effort and stuck it out until the end of that work term.

It was actually a good job and I have fond memories of it. It became a turning point in my life.

That was the beginning of me becoming an adult and a man.

By sticking it out it was the beginning of me crafting resilience, tenacity and psychological muscle. Ironically these were the attributes I was missing that were required to build a successful window cleaning business.

The lesson to be learned

Often the work and jobs we must take in our career don’t start as the ones you prefer to have, but they are necessary stepping stones to where we want to go.

They serve as valuable and require life lessons for us for the next stage of our career.

If you see a job as imprisonment, it can be that.

If you engage in work as a means of lifting you up, it can do that as well.

Your beliefs about a job will shape your mindset which will in turn shape your actions towards the job.

There’s freedom and beauty in liberating yourself from entitlement. There’s freedom in taking a blue-collar attitude towards work. To do the unglamorous, foundational groundwork towards bigger aspirations.

However, once you learn the valuable lessons required in the humbler work environments, you build skills and credibility for new possibilities.

There was another irony in my own I keep quitting jobs phase. I saw those jobs as being unbearable because I couldn’t stand the thought of doing it endlessly week upon week for an indefinite period.

But…

The thing that was actually unbearable was the difficulty in accepting my flaws and responsibility.

It wasn’t about bearing anything indefinitely. It was in facing the pain of my limitations right then and there. In that given moment.

That’s why I felt the need to quit so rapidly and suddenly.

I had to escape the reminder of what I saw as my own shortcomings.

Create a better reputation with yourself

The way we perceive and feel about ourselves, reflects how we handle adverse situations.

Whether we consciously consider or not, the current track record of our life narrative creates our self perceptions. Our life narrative directly creates how we feel about ourselves.

When I was repeatedly quitting jobs, I went through a terrible period of low self esteem.

By not showing up to work and by quitting without notice, I had created an awful track record of burning bridges. I was leaving a messy trail and wake behind me wherever I went.

I felt the weight and burden of that in its entirety.

I paid the consequences.

But we can also do the opposite.

We can build relationships and bridges by fortifying them.

You can create good fortune in your future by leaving jobs on good terms.

And…

You can create positive esteem and self perception by knowing you have resilience in adverse situations.

When we feel good about ourselves, we see opportunities in the world and will act upon them from a place of empowerment.

Do you keep quitting jobs?

Have you gone through an I keep quitting jobs phase?

If you currently are, it’s important and useful to reframe your current situation.

The work opportunities you reluctantly take on now may be the stepping stones required to get you where you want to be.

If you engage in them as a means of lifting you up, they will do so.

You’re attitude towards them will create the opportunities they offer.