by Jayne Clarkson

Created on: July 20, 2009   Last Updated: November 17, 2009

However much you love your chosen career, there will be times when you consider leaving a particular job. Our career constitutes a significant proportion of our lives and so to feel miserable at work can have an enormously detrimental effect on our health and well being. Yet how can we tell when a period of dissatisfaction has developed into a more severe problem and it is time to move on in our career? There are many answers to this question and I will attempt to consider them in the following article.

To begin with, it is important to consider your feelings about your job. Do you feel content overall in the job you are doing? Do you feel that you are engaged generally in your work and that there is a potential for further development and training? There is little worse than feeling stuck in a job with little or no prospects. Feeling stuck can have a negative effect on both your performance and motivation, so if it appears that there is little room for personal development, it may be time to move on.

To feel a certain modicum of stress at work is normal and can even be beneficial in the short term , as adrenaline can be a very useful tool when trying to give an important presentation or make the deadline for a last minute brief. However if this positive stress develops into constant anxiety or depression , where you actively want to avoid going to work or manifests itself into worrying physical symptoms, it is time to consider updating your c.v. and looking for different employment. Life is far too short to consider chaining yourself to a job that causes you to feel profoundly depressed or unwell, even in these difficult financial times.

Another important aspect to consider is your relationships with coworkers. To have positive relationships with colleagues is vital as a badly functioning team is like a cancer, not only affecting the quality of work produced but also the well being of the team itself. I used to work in an incredibly competitive environment, where colleagues practised very poor communication skills.

For the most part, collegues either didn't express feelings constructively or engaged in bullying tactics. Suffice to say, such behaviour caused a very difficult working environment where morale became gradually more negative. It is incredibly important to deal with difficult working relationships constructively through discussion and mediation. However, if this is impossible to remedy, as unfortunately at times it is, move elsewhere.

Certain physical

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