I hadn’t heard the expression “dead end job depression” before, even though I had experienced it throughout my life. I have had several dead ends jobs over the course of finding a path in life. The worst thing about a dead end job is thinking of it as your life. I mean, having no plan or long term strategy of escape.
Early morning traffic builds up along the Princess Parkway into Manchester city centre. Voters have their last chance today to vote in a referendum on the introduction of a congestion charge in Greater Manchester.
When you’re stuck in a dead end job and have a plan or are training or focusing on a project for the future, it’s not so bad. At least you are working towards a better life. But when you’re in a job and feel like there’s no future in it and you don’t have anything else, that’s the worst. It’s depressing to identify your self esteem with your role.
Dead End Job Depression
If you’re in this position there are ways out of it. Firstly I would suggest to think about what you would like to do in life a little. Dream a little but don’t beat yourself up for not ‘making it’. Think of life as always becoming something, rather than your current situation being final.
Disclaimer: Severe depression is serious of course and you should always seek some professional help and advice. I’m no doctor but I’ve always been an advocate of self help. If your depression is linked to your job, you need to change your job or change your attitude towards it.
I’ve had a number of dead end jobs, but a happy outlook isn’t always about what kind of work you do. However, since work is a big part of life, you should aim to find work which is at least conducive to your happiness. Forget about the big bucks and think only about finding work you love. Many millionaires are miserable, simply because they focused so hard on the money that they missed other aspects of life, or neglected life in favour of making a stack of cash.
What Is A Dead End Job?
A dead end job for me is one which had no value for me personally. Unless you can get some fulfilment from a job, you might be better off somewhere else. I used to get a job because I needed the money. Then I would find myself in a position of being miserable in my job, which made me feel worse than the financial worry of not having one. Eventually after repeating this pattern over most of my life, I decided it would be a much better idea to focus on what made me happy and learn to live on less in the mean time.
My Journey Through Dead End Job Depression
In my 20’s I was completely lost and went from one dead end job to another. You could say I had dead end job depression on a number of occasions. I was completely without direction apart from my hobby and passion which was Wing Chun Kung Fu. Throughout my 20’s and 30’s I had a series of dead end jobs. In my 20’s I met a stuntman who had worked on James Bond films. I decided this would be a fun career to pursue so I set about training and applying to the (then Equity) Stunt Register in the UK.
Around four years later I had all my qualifications and successfully joined the British Stunt Register. My first job was hanging from a hot air balloon doubling Rhys Ifans on a film called Enduring Love.
After this job I thought I had ‘made it’. Little did I know! I got back working my 9 to 5 job as a taxi driver on my return but I was anxious for the next job. What I didn’t know then was than nobody knew of me in the stunt business. I didn’t work again for a while so I was back in my dead end job. Knowing I had other work options though, was enough to relieve me of the dead end job sinking feeling (for a while). Unfortunately I wasn’t getting enough work as a stunt performer.
Dead End Job Depression
I was still training in Wing Chun and that gave me something positive to focus on. Wing Chun pretty much saved me from depression. Whenever I trained it would lift me up, relieve anxiety and de-stress me from the day. I moved jobs several times and moved to Leeds in the UK. I had got some driving work in the film industry and although it wasn’t stunt work, I thought it might help me meet people within the industry.
Working 60 hour weeks driving people around (for minimum wage) for a TV show seriously bummed me out! It was a dead end job of sorts, but vaguely related to the field I wanted to work in. This gave me some motivation to stick it out – something I had always found difficult to do when a job held no interest for me. Many jobs made me feel so worthless that I would just quit. I had no back up plan or other source of income, and would fall back on family or friends. I didn’t know how lucky I was to have them – sorry!
I was in my late 30’s and still working a dead end job in a builder yard when I realised something had to change. I had the occasional stunt jobs, but I still couldn’t make ends meet. It was more of a hobby than a career at this point I had decided.
Dead End Job Depression – My New Path
My Sifu (Wing Chun teacher) gave me the go-ahead to start my own Kung Fu School in Yorkshire something I had always wanted, but had held back from for a number of reasons. At first it was chaotic. I couldn’t make it work. I juggled a kung fu school, driving jobs and some occasional stunt jobs. It was pretty stressful. But it was all miles better than just working in a job I hated.
I had also kept up an interest in working online with various business ideas. At first it was eBay and I bought and sold from the auction site. This led me to a business model known as affiliate marketing. I knew this had a huge potential because it could be automated. Websites, emails systems and online advertising could all run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If I could find a way to make a profit from it, I knew it would solve a lot of my money problems.
I’ve since found an online business community who have helped me make progress and overcome many obstacles I would still be struggling with had I kept going it alone. See this video series for details.
Dead End Job Depression
So if you feel you have dead end job depression, I would recommend finding something you love first. Make a gratitude journal and shift your thinking. There are many ways to earn money in much more interesting and enjoyable ways. Don’t focus only on the negative aspects of your life, concentrate on what makes you happy. For years I wasn’t happy in life. I was always focusing on the negative. If I had have just changed my focus, things would have changed much more quickly for me.
Check out this film “The Shift” which helped me see some of my patterns which were not helping me move forwards in life.