Nowadays, over 6 out of every 10 people are not happy with their job. Does this mean that we have to search for new opportunities that will probably improve our happiness, or otherwise, try to build our own path while staying in the same job in order to free ourselves from it?
Usually, the need for money makes happiness useless when it comes to pay bills, eat, rent an apartment, go out with friends and all other expenses that come along with being an independent person and the need of having a more 'stable' life by being paid paycheck after paycheck every month. We don't tend to think if we like our job because we just want to get the outcome of that job, and that is completely reasonable because money can provide you things that nothing else can. However, when you reach a certain stability by saving some money, there is always the question about trying a new experience, just to see if it's better than where you actually are and if it is worth it to give a shot to it.
The average person has on average 12 jobs! This number may be higher than at first thought, but switching jobs due to different reasons such as better pay, benefits, company culture, and location are extremely common.
[Average number of jobs per person](https://stories.sparrows.co/stories/careers-in-a-lifetime#:~:text=It%20turns%20out%20that%20the,and%20location%20are%20extremely%20common.)
I think it's important to work somewhere where you feel that you are valuable for the organization and that your efforts will be compensated. I have worked at places where no meritocracy was applied, as people with lower results and lower investment in the organization, earn more than those than put the extra hours, are willing to help other people's work and always comply with deadlines as best as anyone else, that just got promoted once in the last 10 years. I think that this is key to understand that just hard-work won't take you to the top, but the ability of defending your merits, negotiating and selling yourself, because the only one that is capable of improving your actual situation is your own self. Stop saying that humility is necessary to be better, because always being humble and caring about others too much will make them to walk all over you. I always prefer the goup mindset, than the individualist one, but when there is an injustice, it is necessary to be brave enough to fight for what corresponds you, and if your superiors don't think as you do, the best thing you can do is take a step aside from that place, because you don't deserve to be with people that don't appreciate you.
Self-development is not an arrogant behaviour, but the willingness of becoming better than you were yesterday. This doesn't mean to build a business, write a book, do exercise everyday, learn as much as you can, never eat junk food, and whatever else you may seem as hard, but just making simple and single changes, gradually, to see if you like the new version of yourself; if you don't you can always go back to the one you were, but if at least instead of thinking you just take action, you'll see that it wasn't as hard as you expected, and the results will push you to take more action. Define what you want, take small steps in that direction, and believe that you can, because that's the only way to improve.
Cheers,
Feli