7 Signs You’re Meant for More in Your Career

You wake up each morning with a purpose. You pull out your trusty (yet obviously chic) workwear, and you hustle along the streets ready to clock in at your big girl job. You’ve got the job title, you’ve got the salary. Your office is conveniently located right next to that little boutique coffee shop, which serves the best cortados. You go to after-work drinks, wearing your brand new Soft Loafers from The Row. Everyone notices, and you kinda love it. 16-year-old you would be on cloud nine looking at these scenes.

And yet, something is amiss.

You’re struggling to see what it is, though, because clearly (according to everybody else!) you should feel very grateful to be here. But where is here?

The Stark Realisation

More and more of us are finding it hard to ignore that little whisper in our ear. That little calling that maybe, just maybe, you’re meant for more than this.

You long for mornings that are yours to enjoy. Not an extension of your working day, where you’re clamouring to ready yourself for a job that you don’t quite get. No matter how long you’ve worked there.

You join client calls and wonder to yourself ‘who actually wanted this call? Was it the client, or was it me? Or are we both tangoing to the twang of the corporate guitar, which tells us that we want this call? When we really don’t give a shit.’

It all just feels a little bit… weird.

And you spend your evenings too tired or drained to focus on any of the projects you actually care about. The books remain unread. The journal remains empty. The canvas you bought at the arts and crafts shop remains bare.

You WILL get round to doing these things, though, you quietly tell yourself. You’re not exactly sure when… because your life is hijacked by this thing. The very thing that allows you to sleep with this roof over your head, and keeps food in your stomach. But also the very thing that is bringing you deep, deep dissatisfaction.

But what do you do? How do you know you’re dissatisfied? Maybe you’re just having a bad day/week/month.

Here’s how you’ll know for sure.

1. You Feel Like You’re Wasting Time During The Day When You’re At Work

You sit there at your desk and you look at the clock. It’s 9:01am. Eight more hours of this and you’re free. Free to actually start doing the things that you want to do. Well, that is after the 1-hour commute on the sweaty train. And THEN you can do the things you want to do.

And what is it that you want to do? You don’t really know. You have so many ideas circling in your head. Sometimes you write them down in your notes app. Sometimes you let them take a lap around your brain and then flit off out of sight.

Each idea you have is wild, exciting, adventurous, frightening, or cool. But to try any of them out, you need time and motivation. And unfortunately, you’re lacking in both departments at the moment. If only you didn’t have this job. You would have all the time in the world to explore every creative outlet that you wanted to, until you found something that spoke to you, truly.

Or maybe, you already know what speaks to you. You have a passion in life, but you have to count down the hours each day until you can go home to pursue it.

Regardless of how busy your job is, if you feel like you’re wasting your time (and life) whilst you’re at work, you’re probably meant for something more.

2. You Have Big Ideas

Everyone around you — your family, friends, and colleagues — have little plans. They want to find a little job that pays their bills. They want to have a little sun holiday once or twice a year. And they want to sit down in the evening and watch Strictly Come Dancing. And that is absolutely wonderful. For them.

But you? You could not fathom that lifestyle. You dream of 3-month backpacking trips around Southeast Asia. You imagine writing your own book and seeing it on the shelves of Waterstones. You picture yourself working in your perfectly curated home office, at times that suit you, doing work that actually matters to you.

And the way you’re going to get there? You don’t quite know yet. You haven’t figured it all out. But you can see the image as clear as day in your head, and you have a million ideas to try.

3. You Can’t Find Meaning In The Work You’re Doing In Your 9-5

You work for a big tech firm, right? Or is it a marketing agency? Or maybe a finance company? Does it matter?

Probably not.

Your company’s objectives and values don’t mean shit to you. They’re not aligned with your goals. Somehow, ‘aiming to expand presence within key markets and outperform competitors across product lines and regions’ and ‘focusing on boosting profitability through new customer acquisition, upselling, and operational efficiency’ aren’t on your list of priorities for your life.

You join meetings that contain buzzwords you never hear outside of the office like ‘moving the dial’, ‘low-hanging fruit’, ‘circling back’. And all of a sudden everyone is checking if they have this thing called ‘the bandwidth’?

There are people in online meetings, dominating the conversation, loving the sound of their own voice. And there are people on the call who have their eyes down the entire time, whilst they probably text their friends. You just think it’s all bullshit. It doesn’t mean anything. What is the point?

If you feel this way, you’re probably meant for more.

4. You Have Deep Dissatisfaction With Your Current Situation, And You Can’t Put Your Finger On Why

Everything that you have on paper seems pretty ‘perfect’ in most people’s eyes. Or at least ‘normal’. You don’t seem to have a reason to feel any dissatisfaction.

You get to do what you want most of the time. You have good friends, a loving family, and a nice home. You get to eat good food, and you may even get the opportunity to partake in a hobby or two. It’s the dream, right?

Yet, you can’t help but hear this rumble deep inside yourself. A rumble that keeps you awake at night. Your life should be technicolour, but all you can seem to see is greyscale.

Life is, like… fine. Except it’s not.

You don’t know why, because you don’t ever really get the time or energy spare to explore what that missing piece could be.

But rest assured, if it does feel like there is a missing piece, the likelihood is that you’re meant for more.

5. You Don’t Feel Challenged

One of two scenarios usually happens here.

The first scenario is that your work feels breezy. You get through it in a matter of a few hours (rather than the whole day) and then feel bad that you don’t have anything else to do. You’re kinda scratching around for the rest of the day, trying to busy yourself with other jobs. (Cue the feeling of wasting your time!)

The second scenario is that the work is so easy and mind-numbingly dull that you can’t be bothered to start. You know it’s easy and won’t take you long, so you delay starting it for as long as physically possible, effectively wasting the first half of your day, and then scrambling in the second half of the day to get everything done.

It’s almost like the pressure you’ve given yourself makes it feel more exciting.

Because you know deep down that it’s not.

Your colleagues probably see you as an overperformer. But you don’t know why. The work doesn’t feel hard. It just feels pointless, easy, and boring. You can get it done with very little mental effort. And that is not a feeling you enjoy. You know you can do more challenging work, which probably has more meaning.

6. You Don’t Feel Like Your Colleagues Or Your Boss Get You

We all want to be understood. And naturally, not everyone is going to ‘get you’. But if you’re going to spend 40+ hours per week with people, you’d want to think they’re going to understand you, what you care about, and what you want. But they just don’t.

And this is a problem.

Because if you’re spending this amount of time with people that don’t understand you, or have your best interests at heart, it can be extremely frustrating and isolating.

It’s normal to not be best friends with every single person, but you should have synergy with those that you work most closely with. If you don’t, and you don’t seem to ever be able to find this wherever you go, you might be meant for more.

7. You’re Not Happy With Mediocrity

Of all the reasons we’ve already gone through, this one perhaps summarises them all perfectly.

There’s nothing ‘wrong’, but there’s nothing ‘right’ either.

Everyone else might seem ok with ‘just getting by’ and ‘making it work’. But you do not want this for your life. You have a deep understanding of the limited time you have on this earth, and you want to make the most of it. You want it to be full of big moments, of exciting discoveries, and of work that truly makes a difference - even if that difference is only to you.

The mundanity and mediocrity of each passing day being the same, with no prospects of excitement aside from a standard family holiday once or twice per year, is a debilitating thought to you.

If you simply could not envisage the rest of your life panning out the way the last 10 years have, then you’re meant for more.

Final Thoughts

If you felt resonance with any (or all!) of these signs, you probably already know something is up. Perhaps you just wanted the reassurance from someone else that the way you’re feeling isn’t normal.

The next steps are up to you. You know that you’re meant for more. You might even already have some ideas of what that ‘more’ is… now you need to carve the time out of your life to explore that.

Find 30 minutes per day to research and journal what you want to do with your life. This doesn’t have to be neat and tidy. It can be messy and chaotic, but just get your ideas down and out of your head.

If you need help or prompts with this, download the free Habit Discovery Journal here, which will help you uncover how you’re currently spending your days, and how you can find the time to incorporate habits that are going to unlock new experiences in your life.