327: Not Unhappy to Quit, But Not Loving Your Job Either

Many mid-career professionals sense something is off but struggle to articulate it. 

Feeling “fine” at work can be one of the most misleading signals in your career, especially in a volatile job market. In this episode of The Mid-Career GPS Podcast, I name and unpack a growing mid-career pattern called job-hugging. It is the instinct to cling to comfort, stability, and familiarity during layoffs, hiring freezes, and economic uncertainty, even when your role no longer challenges, stretches, or fulfills you.

For many mid-career professionals, job-hugging feels practical. 

Mortgages, caregiving responsibilities, financial commitments, and risk aversion all make staying put seem like the responsible choice. 

But over time, that comfort can quietly erode confidence, stall growth, and reduce your long-term market value.

This episode explores the real tradeoffs between security and stagnation, with honesty and empathy for the realities of mid-career life.

One of the most important mindset shifts for mid-career professionals is learning to separate intrinsic worth from market value.

Your worth as a person is infinite. Your market value, however, is shaped by your skills, level, results, visibility, and relevance in the current job market.

In this conversation, you will learn how to:

• Advocate for compensation and opportunity without pricing yourself out of roles
• Clarify the impact you deliver, not just the responsibilities you hold
• Reframe how you talk about your work so decision makers understand your value

If this episode resonated, subscribe to The Mid-Career GPS Podcast, share it with a friend who is feeling “fine” but unfulfilled, and leave a review so more mid-career professionals can find the support they need.

Chapters

• 0:00 Naming Job Hugging
• 1:47 Why Comfort Feels Safer Now
• 3:33 Security Versus Stagnation
• 5:47 The Hidden Costs Of Settling
• 9:17 Knowing Value Versus Market Value
• 12:20 Refresh Your Story And Presence
• 14:20 Signs You’ve Outgrown The Role
• 17:00 Safe Experiments To Get Unstuck
• 20:30 Action Builds Motivation

Transcript

John Neral: 0:00

When someone asks you how your work is going, do you ever find yourself saying to them, It's fine? You're not unhappy enough to quit, but you're not energized either. This is an example of what I call job hugging. It's when you're holding on to your job for comfort, even when it's quietly holding you back. In today's market, it is understandable. Given the number of layoffs we've seen this year, hiring freezes, and economic uncertainty, job hugging may be a viable strategy for you. Many mid-career professionals right now are clinging to stability, convincing themselves it is safer to stay in their job rather than trying to find something else. But the danger isn't in staying, it's in settling. Today I'll explore with you what job hugging really means, why it's so tempting right now, the hidden costs that come with it, and how you can start testing your readiness for change in 2026 without blowing up your career. Let's get started. Job hugging is about staying too long in your job out of comfort or fear. And I want to preface by saying that very simply, if you are hugging onto your job right now, that may very well be the smartest decision you can make. As we're trying to see where hiring is going to be going in 2026, there is a difference between saying, I'm going to stay where I'm at for right now, but I'm going to keep looking and keep networking and seeing what else may be out there, as opposed to saying, I'm fine where I'm at, let's just leave it alone. Job hugging is about staying in a role primarily because it feels safe or familiar. Perhaps you've said things like, I really like the people I work with, I'm just gonna stay. But deep down inside, the job doesn't excite or challenge you. If you're telling yourself that you'll revisit things next year and that's been a repeated pattern, you might be job hugging. If you have stopped seeking growth opportunities because maybe you've been overlooked for a promotion or you haven't been putting yourself out there, you might be job hugging. If you feel invisible, but you're telling yourself, hey, what I've got right now is fine. It is better than starting over, you might be job hugging. Job hugging isn't laziness. Job hugging is about protecting yourself in a time when things are uncertain. So I want you to ask yourself this question: are you choosing the job you are currently in, or are you simply avoiding something that may be a lot scarier? As I said earlier, job hugging is very tempting right now, and comfort is something we crave, especially around the holidays. 2025 has shown us economic uncertainty, layoffs, and hiring slowdowns. And very simply, a lot of mid-career professionals are risk-averse because of things that they have going on in their personal life. You have your bills, you maybe are raising your children, you might be taking care of your aging parents. You might even be fearful that you're not going to find anything better out there. You might be tired. You might be dealing with a lot of things and saying, you know what, I'm okay where I'm at right now. And all of that is fine. The difference here is are you job hugging because it's safe and comfortable right now? Or are you job hugging because you are scared to even consider making a move? Are you job hugging because you are settling? Well, this is the best I'm gonna get in my career. As a coach, I spend a lot of time with my clients working on their mindset, their thoughts, and beliefs around where they are valuable in the job market and where their career path has taken them. This is where coaching gets very individual. And again, it's not my place as a coach to say to them, you should find a new job or you shouldn't. That's not what I do as a coach. As a coach, my job is to simply show you your brain. And if you're valuing security, let's explore that. But when security becomes your only strategy, you are essentially trading short-term safety for long-term stagnation. And if you are someone who doesn't want to settle, if you believe there is far more in your career than what you have, we have to realistically take a look at what job hugging may or may not mean for you. Look, staying in a job that might not be ideal right now or a job that you're comfortable in certainly has value. Hopefully, you are gaining institutional knowledge, deepening your skill set, and building that loyalty or organizational loyalty, if you will, within your within your company or organization. You know how to navigate the internal politics. You, in fact, you probably play the game really well. And you might have some benefits because you've been there, be it either financially, work flexibility, vacation time, retirement match. And so there are times, especially at mid-career, where we cherish and value a steady season. That is necessary for life balance. So job hugging isn't automatically bad. But again, I want you to explore is this your comfort and is that becoming your default mode? How many times have you and I talked to someone where they have said, Oh, I stayed in this job way too long, I should have left years ago. There are hidden costs for staying in a job too long. And I want to just emphasize here that staying in a job too long doesn't mean you have to pick up and leave your organization. If your company or organization has flexibility for you to move to a different department, get that internal promotion, up level your skill set in some way, but it's the idea of you being stuck, quote unquote, in a particular job that doesn't really excite you. When I talk to people and I coach with people, we talk about what are the benefits of them staying too long. What they will often say is that their skills aren't developing. They're missing out on promotions, they're they're losing value or credibility in the marketplace because they're not confident, let alone competitive. They might feel the energy being sucked right out of them. And the day-to-day stresses and frustration and boredom that they get on their job, they simply acquiesce and accept. And also, they might have what is often referred to as an identity blur. Now, an identity blur is when you start confusing organizational loyalty with your self-worth. And when I talk about your worth, let's just frame this that the worth that we're talking about here is how valuable you are in the market. What you are worth as an individual is infinite. You are not going to be paid that. There's no way a company can truly pay you what you are worth. You have to know the kinds of jobs, the kind of companies, the kinds of industries, and where the market value is for someone with your skill set and expertise. I want you to be able to get as much money as possible for the work that you do, but you're never going to truly get paid what you're worth because we're all invaluable, right? We're worth far more than what we get paid. That's about knowing your value, but not confusing that with where you realistically sit within an organization. Okay. I can remember working with someone and we were having a coaching conversation. And what was really interesting about it was what they wanted for the work that they were doing was grossly out of range with what their industry was paying, especially for someone at that level. And so the question then becomes how willing are you to keep pursuing after a salary when you are repeatedly told you are overpricing yourself out of the market? They were getting frustrated because they weren't getting any job offers. We finally started getting some feedback as to why they weren't getting any job offers. And they were repeatedly told, you are overpriced, you are overpricing yourself out of the market. So, so the path there was to get them into a job that was a promotion from where they were. But then for them to reach their compensation goals, we had to chart and build out a path for how they could get there in order to meet the compensation goals that they wanted. So these are things to consider. Another thing I often get when I first start working with people is they'll say to me, they haven't updated their resume or LinkedIn in years. And I get that. Okay. You're working hard on a job. LinkedIn may not be part of your networking strategy. You might think of LinkedIn as only as a place to go when you're looking for a job. So it doesn't get or give the attention that ultimately you should be giving it. There's no shame in that. But what happens when you don't update your resume or your LinkedIn even on an annual basis? You probably find that your narrative is getting flat. You aren't telling your story as impactfully as you could be based on the results you've gotten, because it's just passing you by while you're dealing with the day-to-day things of your work. So I want to offer you that this is an opportunity for you to increase your awareness about where you may re-engage or change something in your career. So, for example, have you outgrown your boss? Meaning, does your boss continue to see you in a very compartmentalized manner? Or is your boss someone who is really advocating and supporting your professional growth and development? Do you find yourself getting defensive when you're gathering for the holidays and someone's saying, why don't you look for another job? Or why are you still there? Or you say you're not happy, but you're not doing anything about it, and you're like, Well, look, Aunt Gladys, will you just get off my back? Okay, right? Are you getting defensive? Are you unable to articulate how your current role is supporting and moving you toward your future goals? And also, do you find yourself saying yes out of obligation at work rather than saying it with enthusiasm? Having organizational loyalty should feel like a partnership. It should feel like an investment between you and the company where you're employed. Loyalty should not feel like you're stuck. And when your effort no longer moves you forward, I want to offer you that is a time to take a step back and reassess. So if you're looking to get unstuck, you do not have to quit your job in order to get unstuck. There are ways you can start experimenting safely that can help shift this whole notion of job hugging and bringing you back into a place where you can be moving your career forward as you build your mid-career GPS. So things like what internal moves can you make? Is there an opportunity for a side project? Is there training or development for you to reskill or upskill? Okay. And then lastly, how are you connecting with your network in order to advocate for them and vice versa? This isn't necessarily an opportunity for you to leap and change jobs from one organization, but I do want you to consider where you can lean. Where can you lean towards something that might start exciting you a little bit more in your career? As we head into the holidays over the next couple of weeks, what I want you to be thinking about is what does 2026 really hold for you? Where are the opportunities there that you can welcome and show up for them and do so in a way that you can truly assess where you are at the given moment? I was working with my coach recently, and he was saying to me about how action builds motivation. We often think, oh, when I get motivated, I'll just go ahead and do something. But the motivation actually happens when we start taking action. Are you having a conversation? Have you changed your resume or your LinkedIn? Have you held an informational interview with someone? Whom have you networked with? Where have you asked for more visibility? That's the action. The action is what then starts creating that motivation. That motivation then starts creating more momentum. If you're waiting for it to come up and tap you on the shoulder, more than likely it's not going to happen. You have to start first with an action to see if that creates the motivation or momentum you need. So what I want you to think about as we as we close out 2025 here, or if you happen to be listening to this in the early part of 2026, think about where you can identify one low-risk change that you can make. Something, if you will, that tests your curiosity a little bit. Maybe you volunteer for a new project or you join a networking group or you just update your resume and see how it feels. See what it feels to start taking some action with that. So much of my coaching is working with my clients on helping them to decide what an action step is going to be, and then working out the accountability structures to help them succeed in accomplishing that particular goal that they set. This is where coaching gets personal. This is where it gets fun, if you will, because it's it's all about you. So I want to leave you with this thought. If you are job hugging, what would it look like if you stopped hugging your job and started embracing that new opportunity? What would that look like for you? How would that feel? And if you love your job and if you are happy where you are, then it's this question. What would it look like for you to love your job even more in 2026? What do you have to do, or what has to happen for you to lean into loving your job even more? So I'm curious what you come up with. All right. Now, if part of your goal is to move your career forward or elevate that in some way, here's how I can help you. So I offer a one-off leadership and career strategy session. It is a 45-minute coaching session. You and I are going to work on whatever it is that is most important to you. It is the precursor before we actually start working together. Now, if you decide to move in a coaching package, you can take the fee for that strategy session and apply it to the cost of the coaching package. But this is where we get to see if coaching is absolutely a great fit for you. All right. So if you want to know more about that, all you have to do is go to my website, johnnarrell.com forward slash resources. You can see all the resources that are there. There's an opportunity there for you to book and pay for a leadership and career strategy session. Now, you might be hearing that and going, well, John, why don't you offer a free session? Well, how does that work? And I don't. And the reason why I don't is because um people will reach out and they'll be like, hey, I'd love to get your advice or guidance on this. It's not what I do, right? And it's also not what I do for free. Okay. If you want to work with me, if you want to engage with me, then we do that within a relationship. And that relationship is a paid relationship based on our services. Okay. What do you need? How can I help you in that regard? Okay. Um, you can listen to this podcast, you can sign up for my free newsletter. There's plenty of ways for you to get to know me and get that value at that free level to see if you think this might be a great next step. But where we really get to work, where we really get down and dirty around what's most important for you and your career and those next steps you are willing to consider, that happens within the strategy session. And that is a paid opportunity. So again, you can visit johnnarrell.com forward slash resources to get started with that. And uh, I wish you a great rest of the week. Hopefully, all your holiday planning is going well. And uh, I'll be back with you next week. But until then, my friends, remember this you will build your mid career GPS one mile or one step at a time, and how you show up matters. Make it a great rest of your day. Thank you for listening to the Mid Career GPS podcast. Make sure to follow on your favorite listening platform. And if you have a moment, I'd love to hear your comments on. On Apple Podcasts. Visit johnnarrell.com for more information about how I can help you build your mid-career GPS or how I can help you and your organization with your next workshop or public speaking event. Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on social at John Darrell Coaching. I look forward to being back with you next week. Until then, take care and remember, how we show up matters, and I'm not sure.