Scott Porad

Yesterday, I was trying to talk my friend Mark into quitting his job, and was reminded of a Chris Brogan a post about how You are the Captain of your life:

…no one is actively trying to move you up from where you are to where you want to go, until after you take command of your own ship

Yes, in this economy, I want him to quit.  Why?  Because he can and it’s ruining his life.  Let me break those down:

Because He Can

Mark’s wife is a well respected doctor working at a hospital where she is a nationally known expert in her field.  So, I asked him, “Mark, how long could you live on her salary before you ran out of money?”  “Forever”.  Okay, so problem solved: quitting his job, and spending time, perhaps months, looking for a new one is not a financial issue.

Because It’s Ruining His Life

The nature of Mark’s job is that he spends about 4 hours of every work day dealing with irate customers who as often as not treat him rudely.  After 10 years of this, Mark’s job has made him dislike people.  In general, he’s come to conclude that people are, on average, not very nice, so short of his few friends he doesn’t want anything to do with ‘em.

To me, this is heart breaking.  As I’ve written previously, people are all we have in this life, so you do the math: if people equal life, then a job that ruins people are ruining his life.

Then Why Won’t He Quit?

That’s a great question, and I don’t know the answer.  If he’s not doing the job for happiness, and he’s not doing it for money, and he’s not doing it altruistically, then I don’t know why he’s doing it.  I can speculate on a number of reasons, but the bottom line is that he’s scared.

He’s scared that he won’t find another job. (Wrong!  He’s in sales and account management!  If you can sell, you can work!)  He’s scared that his wife will think him less of a man for quitting.  (Wrong!  Your wife, more than anyone, wants you to be happy!)  He’s scared of change.  (Wrong!  Change is like Death and Taxes…it can’t be avoided, so use it as a tool to your advantage.)

You know the real thing to be scared of: when you there is no excuse to stop you–not the money, not the spouse, not nothing…spending your natural gifts, talents and potential–your life, for goodness sake!!–on a job that neither makes you rich or happy or makes the world a better place.  Seriously, what is there to lose?  Nothing.  There’s only happiness to be gained.  Life is too damn short otherwise.

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