A recent study published by Open Study College found that 80% of Brits are not happy in their careers. If you agree, then now could be the perfect time to take action. 

It doesn't matter what your current career or earning potential is; even high earners were included and aware among those unsatisfied despite how much they earn or how wealthy their current job role has made them.

Career satisfaction means different things to every person, and with the majority of people spending over 50 years working, wasting some of their best years being unhappy shouldn't be something you settle for.

These tips can help you upset the status quo and discover what's been missing from your working life.

Identify What You Don't Like

Take a step back and look objectively at what you are doing currently. For instance, if you're a marketing executive, you might find that you're not satisfied with the repetitive nature of your tasks. Avoid pinpointing people or the company as a whole, and look deeper as to why you don't feel fulfilled doing what you're doing. Is it the work itself, certain aspects of your duties or your career entirely? Some people fall into what they're doing out of necessity, not choice, and owning up and saying you don't want to do this forever isn't a failure on your part; it's a sign you're growing, and you know what you don't want to do to get more from your life.

Challenge Yourself

While you're in a period of flux, take this time to challenge yourself. Can you push yourself in your current role to learn more or develop new transferable skills you can use in an alternative career? Can you push boundaries, hit more significant targets, and see what you can do? Try to move your own goalposts and challenge yourself to what you're capable of. Remember, the more you challenge yourself, the more you grow, and the more confident and inspired you'll feel about your career journey.

Increase Self Awareness

Improve your self-awareness by looking at your strengths and weaknesses. What are you good at, where do you want to go, how do you think you can get there? It's okay to not feel satisfied with things in your life, but it's also important to understand how you factor into this and why you feel unsatisfied. This self-awareness is crucial in understanding your career dissatisfaction, and it's the first step towards making a change that will lead to greater career satisfaction.

From here, you need to have a good understanding of your personality traits and how they impact your current employment, your feelings towards your current employment, and how they will impact any changes you make moving forward. You need to know this so you can find a position and career that appeals to your personality traits and allows you to play on your strengths and interests so you can find what it is you're looking for. For example, if you're an introvert, a career that involves a lot of public speaking might not be the best fit for you.

Enhance Skills

Take this time to ask for more responsibilities at work, cross-train skills, try your hand in different departments within your current employment, ask to work different shifts, get involved with communities, or do anything else applicable to your company. This can allow you to see things from different perspectives and see if you fit into any of these job roles. For instance, if you're a project manager, you could ask to lead a cross-functional team to develop your leadership skills. At the very least, you can rule out some things you don't like or want to do so you have a clearer picture of what you do want to do moving forward.

Polish Your CV

If you've decided your current employment isn't for you or want to move forward and climb the ladder, you need to ensure that your CV is backing you up, too. Now is the ideal time to give it more than a cursory glance and see what it says about you. You need to update your skills, who you are as a person now and what doors you hope this opens for you. Your CV needs to be to the point, formatted correctly and able to grab people's attention without them having to scroll through lots of unnecessary information. A service like CVExperts can help you with this.

Know Your Options

If you are seriously unhappy with your current work life, you need to know your options. Do you want an entirely new career and need to know what training you need, what your prospects will be and how you can make the jump? Or do you need to become more involved in your current employment to help you climb the ladder and get the desired promotion? Whatever you want, know your options, what you need to do and how it needs to happen. This gives you choices and can help you put a plan in place for when you're ready to make changes to your career.