You hear the phrase at parties. It shows up in text messages and tweets and emails. People get stuck in jobs they hate, but can’t leave. That only happens more often in a whitewater economy.

If that’s your situation, what should you do? Coach extraordinaire Shaun Kieran, likens the situation to being on a desert island.

Desert islands are staples of literature. We know the stories, from Robinson Crusoe, through the movie Cast Away and the TV show Lost. The environment can be hostile, nourishment is hard to come by, and you’re pretty much on your own.

Does that sound like the situation where you work? If it is, you’ve got two choices.

One choice is to do nothing. Just sit there, gazing out to sea and hoping for rescue. This is the worst of the choices. Rescues rarely happen. Even if there’s one in your future, sitting there waiting and hoping doesn’t make things better.

You need to make choices that make things better. Figure out how to survive on the island. As long as you’re there it pays to be on the best terms possible with your boss and co-workers. It pays to keep yourself as safe as possible.

You may find that changing things on your end changes the situation. If not, there’s another course of action.

You can plan an escape. Find a way to get off the island to someplace more congenial. Be careful, though. You want to wind up in a land of milk and honey and not exchange one desert island for another.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 7:27 am and is filed under Tools and Strategies for Success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.