Career Tips

How to Lose Your Job [in 10 Days]

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If you have ever seen the romantic comedy “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” you will get a quick mental image of actor Kate Hudson contriving to persuade her co-star, Matthew McConaughey, to break up with her. In the hilarity that ensues, Hudson embarks on a series of tried and true techniques known to drive a man away. While true love ultimately reigns supreme for this screen couple, Hudson’s efforts are admirable and can be applied to other areas of life - including your employment. If you want to lose your job in 10 days or less, please follow the three simple steps below:

#1 No personal ownership allowed

The key here is to view your employment as a job rather than your job. If you have no personal investment in your work, you will be sure to do the bare minimum each day. This will involve submitting subpar work, delaying and missing deadlines, and above all maintaining an entitled mindset, which Merriam-Webster defines as “the feeling or belief that you deserve to be given something.”

Keeping this mindset will allow you to avoid that feeling of trying, failing, trying again, and succeeding. Instead, you will only wait for opportunity and success to be handed to you.

#2 Aggravate your boss

This is very important. The one person you do not want to make happy is your boss. There are various ways to accomplish this, but one technique is to fail to communicate in person. Go above her head, behind her back, or anywhere but directly to her about an issue. You can also call your boss out in meetings, make him look bad with your shoddy work, embarrass him in front of clients, and disrupt productivity with a display of shockingly poor interpersonal skills in general - see step 3.

#3 Make enemies of your colleagues

To complete this step, it is essential that you display absolutely no emotional intelligence. In their book Emotional Intelligence 2.0, authors Bradberry and Greaves suggest increasing your emotional intelligence through self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. All of these skills must be scrupulously avoided. Instead, aim for an atmosphere where you can be moody, passive-aggressive, and unaware of your own emotions and those of others. Oh, and be sure to disagree with others at every opportunity. This is critical.

If followed carefully, these steps will lead to a miserable professional life and the misery of those around you. You will experience unsuccessful projects, failed relationships, isolation, and with perseverance, termination of your employment. Congratulations!

What about you?

Coming back around to our comedy, Hudson’s efforts do in fact work. The guy ditches her. However, that is not the end of the story. Fortunately for Hudson and McConaughey, and viewers everywhere, a change of heart and a change of approach result in the first steps towards a successful relationship and much happier ending.

Where is your current approach to your work and professional relationships leading you? How do you want your story to end? 

The Career-boosting Power of Relationships

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I was miserable at my job for almost five years. I would come home every evening drained of all my energy, leaving nothing to give to my home life and close relationships. After five years of this, I realized that my life needed to change drastically, but I felt stuck. I was drained of energy from my work life that looking for something different felt like a task too enormous, too tiring, for me to take on alone. It was not until I realized that I am not alone that I found the strength to take the necessary steps to change my life as it was.

The one thing that helped me cope with my job for five years was not a substantial raise or the hope of a big corner office; it was a friendship with one of my co-workers. He was able to empathize with my stresses as no one else could, give me feedback when I needed an attitude change, and supported me in eventually leaving the job.

That was how Clear Career was born.

Anais Nin summed it up perfectly when she wrote, “Each friend represents the world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." In fact, many renowned medical experts are finding that friendships are so essential to health and happiness that studies are being published on the topic when in the past friendship had taken a backseat in research. It is scientifically proven that adults with strong friendships have a reduced risk of severe health problems such as depression, high blood pressure, high stress, and more. In Growing The Positive Mind, Dr. William Larkin talks about healthy friendships, calling them Master Mind groups. They are simply this: a group of people that you have taken with you on this journey of finding the vision for your life. Dr. Larkin wrote, “The Master Mind will lift you to a new level of consciousness and awareness beyond the limits of your own vision.”

If I had not been completely honest with my friend at work, he would have never been able to know how to be there for me during the times I needed him the most. Possibly the most vital ingredient in the recipe of healthy friendships is vulnerability. Only after a vulnerable encounter can someone truly know you, your vision, and your goals. This deep knowing then allows them to walk your journey with you, and you with them.

As Brene Brown wrote, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.”

Certainly, you could go about making essential changes to your life without friends, but why would you? Your friends point you towards your goals when you forget your direction, and they are there to celebrate you when you reach those goals. Unfortunately, friendships are often the first things to be forgotten when life get’s busy. I strongly encourage you to tend to your friendships and make space for them no matter how cluttered your calendar gets.

That friend ended up being one of my first clients with Clear Career, and now both of our lives look completely different. There is certainly a kind of life-changing magic found in friendship. When people walk closely beside you, and through honest conversation, you will be able to accomplish much more than you could on your own.

And the best part is, now you will have people to celebrate your accomplishments with you.