It happens all the time.
You find yourself sitting at a bar with friends and someone starts describing their work. It’s the day job from hell. And within minutes everyone agrees that your friend should just quit and look for something else.
This is a scary proposition if you’re in a job that doesn’t have high demand. If you’re a software developer, on the other hand, it’s a no-brainer.
Everyone is hiring. All the time.
And so you end the night listening to plans of your friend quitting their job and looking for work. You promise to keep an ear open to new positions and to be a reference.
Yet, as you head home that night, there’s a stirring in the back of your brain that is trying to remind you of some long-lost truth that you used to know one time, a long time ago.
It’s the kind of thing that you know is there, but you can’t seem to bring it back to the surface. Until, of course, you go out the next weekend with some other friends and have a remarkably similar conversation – only this time it’s about boyfriends or girlfriends.
And that’s when you remember the truth that you were trying to recall previously.
You’ve heard that the “grass is always greener” somewhere else. And after going thru enough relationships you discovered the corollary:
Wherever you go, you bring you with you.
It’s why so many of your relationships start looking alike. And it’s why so many different jobs end up feeling similar.
Not because of your mate. Not because of your boss.
But because of you.
It doesn’t matter if you’re on the front lines or managing others, you can have an impact on the culture around you.
You can change how things work so that you don’t have to keep looking for the next job that works out perfect.
The grass is always greener right where you water it.
There are no magical places where everything is perfect. (Well, except where I work, duh!)
One of the things that makes a place great is its culture. And that means paying attention to it. Not someone else paying attention to it.
You.
You can have an impact on the grass right outside your window.
If you want to.
If you water it.
The grass is always greener right where you water it.
(The above is an excerpt from my new eBook, coming soon.)