How to Lose Your Job [in 10 Days]

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? 

Change Your Perspective, Change Your Life

Have you ever looked at yourself in a distorted funhouse mirror? One where your legs appear to be two inches tall and your neck looks to be five feet long? Your eyes are seeing this - but you know that this is a false representation of what you look like and who you are.

And have you ever tried on someone’s glasses?

The world that once looked bright is now blurry, out of focus, wrong. But if you looked through those glasses every day, or in that distorted mirror, you might honestly believe what they portrayed. Your eyes and your sense of self would eventually adjust, and you would believe in these false outlooks.

Having a toxic outlook on life is like constantly looking through lenses that are blurry and cracked. 

You’re looking out, and everything is skewed and disturbing. Soon, what your eyes see your heart believes. The lenses of our perspective are formed through our past experiences, our cultures, our family roots.

For example, if you wake up every day and think, “I’m so tired. Life is hard,” then you will go throughout every day feeling heavy, unmotivated, and finding an unnecessary struggle in everything you do. Because you believe this day is out to get you, it will. The work you once loved will become irritating, your coworkers will become intolerable, your lunch won’t taste right, and you’ll leave dragging your feet. Home will be your relief.

But soon, this toxic perspective can sneak into your personal life. Your house, car, and clothes will never be good enough. Your kids will seem too loud. Your marriage won’t fulfill you. Your perspective has taken over, and it has sown some deathly seeds. It is shocking how something so intangible - your mindset, your perspective - can control your life.

Think about it this way - nothing is wrong with the world. Nothing is wrong with you, your house, your family, or your career. What makes us believe that something has gone wrong is our perspective on it. Certainly, there are outside forces that can interrupt or influence our lives. But these forces are not what causes us to fail or succeed. Truly, it is the perspective that aids in failure, and in success.

This may sound radical, but you could wake up every day believing that everything has gone right. Believing that you have the perfect house, you have the right relationships and the right career. Gratefulness for every big and small thing can increase, simply by the acts of mindfulness, awareness, and focus.

“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in your mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” – Henry David Thoreau

Does this way of living sound unattainable to you? Do you believe that you simply aren’t made to think that way? You may believe you’re too much of a pessimist, inherently. Or a hardcore realist. This may be true. But listen close, you don’t need a personality transplant to have a healthy perspective. This transformational way of thinking is a learned practice.

For example, one practice that could change your life is self-talk. Constructive self-talk is about changing your inner dialogue. Instead of thinking, “My house is too small.” you can think, “I remember when we bought this house, we were so excited. It’s still perfect for us.” Instead of waking up thinking “Life is hard,” you could bounce out of bed thinking, “My life is so good! I’m going to go to work and do my job well today.”

Researchers have found that one of the main patterns in people that deal with depression is negative self-talk. That goes to show that the way we process life through our perspective is a powerful, powerful thing.

I was once naive as to how powerful my point of view is. Maybe you were too before you read this blog. But now that we know, we would be fools to ignore the call to constructive self-talk, a healthy perspective, and choosing to better our lives.

Join in with me to learn to see through the lens of gratefulness.