299: Surviving Work and Navigating Career Stress in 2025

Feeling overwhelmed, underappreciated, and stuck in a job that drains you? You're not alone. In 2025, mid-career professionals are navigating a volatile job market marked by return-to-office mandates, fear-based management, and increasing workplace toxicity. If you’ve been quietly questioning your career path or struggling to stay sane at work, this episode is for you.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

✅ How to manage job stress without a complete career overhaul
✅ The truth behind today’s job market — and why it’s not your fault you feel stuck
✅ Why overusing ChatGPT in job applications might actually backfire
✅ How to protect your mental health from workplace toxicity and overwork
✅ Ways to create “mini recovery moments” that boost your energy and focus
✅ Smart, simple networking strategies for mid-career professionals
✅ Why finding humor at work isn’t just helpful — it’s essential

Whether you're burned out, thinking of leaving your job, or just want to survive the latest wave of corporate chaos, this episode gives you realistic, empowering tools to navigate 2025’s workplace storm.

Top Takeaways:

Back-to-office blues: Why the shift back to in-person work is exhausting — and how to cope
Boundary-setting for survival: Learn to say "no" without guilt
Job market reality check: Most mid-career transitions take 5–7 months — and that’s normal
AI alert: Discover why generic, ChatGPT-written cover letters might be working against you
Your support squad: How to build a career safety net with the right people
Micro-recovery moments: Find peace in small, daily rituals that recharge your spirit

Listen now if you’re ready to:

• Stop feeling like your job is a constant drain
• Navigate workplace politics without losing yourself
• Start building a practical, personalized career GPS
• Handle 2025’s career chaos with more calm, clarity, and confidence

Chapters

• 0:00 Work Exhaustion in 2025
• 5:07 Owning What You Hate
• 7:28 Navigating the Current Job Market
• 10:52 AI Job Search Pitfalls
• 14:30 Mini Recovery Moments
• 17:37 It's Not You, It's The Market

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey there, I bet you're exhausted. I bet you're exhausted from how difficult your work is, and I bet you're exhausted simply from working, and I'm not talking about putting in long hours, though it certainly has something to do with it. I'm talking about dealing with the stress, overwhelm and anxiety of having to return to the office five days a week. Or you're dealing with a toxic boss or work environment, or maybe you feel as if you can't do anything right at work and are simply beyond stressed. Check, please, you're done. I get it, and this job market certainly isn't helping any. That's why, in this episode, I'm sharing a few tips and tricks with you that you can do right now to make your work life a bit more manageable and bring a little more joy into what may feel like the 2025 doldrums are never going to go away. Let's get started. They love, or love the job they have, using my proven four-step formula. Before I dive in today's topic, I hope you will join me next week as we celebrate episode 300. Honestly, I can't believe it and I could not have achieved this milestone without you, and I assure you it will be a powerful conversation and topic and, plus, I will share with you a few changes that are coming up to the podcast you will not want to miss Now. If you're listening to this episode on a lunch break while you're doom scrolling on LinkedIn and, at the same time, watching adorable puppy videos on Instagram, this episode is for you. Plus, if you're feeling really stretched in your job right now, or you're feeling really stretched in your job right now or you're feeling a bit of despair about where your job or career is at, let's take a look at things. Work right now is unquestionably draining in 2025. Look, I'm not saying that you don't have moments where you like the work you're doing and hopefully, you really enjoy working with the people you do day in and day out, but there is unquestionably an air of heaviness and stress around our work right now. So if you've had to switch back from either being a fully remote employee or a hybrid employee and now you're back at the work site five days a week, you might be having some difficulty adjusting to that schedule and you might be having to take some extra time dealing with a commute and feeling like how you just get back into the swing of things when you get home and now you've got all the things that you need to do at home that you've been doing, but now you're back. All the things that you need to do at home that you've been doing, but now you're back to dealing with a commute.

Speaker 1: 3:08

You might be fearful that you might not have a job in a few weeks or a few months, whether it's because of changes happening within your industry or changes happening within your organization. Maybe your company is getting acquired or bought out, or they're going through some big restructuring and you're feeling like you always have to prove your value, and so what this looks like is that you're breaking boundaries, and not in a good way. You're staying later than expected, you're saying yes more often than you would like to, all for fear that if you were to say no or you're a peer to someone who's quote-unquote, not fully committed to the organization, you might have to suffer some retribution, and the last thing you want to do is make a mistake, even if that mistake may unintentionally cost you your job. You might be dealing with management issues, so let me ask you where are your direct reports at? How well are they performing and doing their job, and how are they managing all of the stress going on this year? What are they doing that is either helping or hurting your team as well as your working relationship. Come on, where's the drama? Who's causing it? Who's the one on your team that cannot get out of the drama and is always running around and talking to everybody, either stirring up stuff or wondering what the heck is going to happen? And are you yourself creating drama because it just makes you look busy? Or you're trying to avoid having a conversation with someone at work for fear that either you don't want to have it or you simply just don't have the energy to do it right now.

Speaker 1: 5:00

So what do you hate about your job right now? And I realize hate is not a word that I use lightly, it is not a word I like at all, but I'm going to use it in this case to really emphasize the severity of where some of your emotions may be at in this job market right now. What do you hate about your job? I want you to take some time later and I want you to write it down or pause this episode. I want you to own it. I want you to embrace and release all of the shame that you may be associating with why, right now, you hate your job?

Speaker 1: 5:36

Here's one of the things that often comes up in my work. People will come to me and they'll say look, I know I need to be grateful that I have a job, but I really don't like it. I know there's a lot of people out there that would love to have a job right now and they'd love to put up with all the stress that I deal with, but I don't really like it. That is okay, because right now, the shoes that you're wearing, those work shoes that you're having to step into day in and day out, are causing blisters on your feet, they're causing you pain in your arches and you simply are not comfortable right. So now that you've owned this, or when you actually go through and you own what exactly it is you don't like about your job, here's a little tip to make it better. See if there is a way you can find some humor in it. Yeah, now, it may not be something you outwardly share, but it might be something you say to yourself like good grief, sheila, if she opens her mouth one more time in this meeting, I'm going to lose it. And no offense to anybody listening named Sheila, it's just the name that popped up in my head, okay. Or it's something like oh, this one again, you can have an internal dialogue that will help restore your sanity, and as long as you're not uttering those things out verbally into the air and in public, it may just be a little piece of sanity that you need. Look, we all have a work bestie, and sometimes that work bestie can be exactly the thing that we need to help us manage our stress and our anxiety and our frustrations at work. So if you don't have a work bestie, I want to offer you get one.

Speaker 1: 7:25

All right, let's take a look at the current job market. So here we are. We're starting off in June and we're hearing some interesting numbers come out about jobs that are being filled and the unemployment rate and everything. But here is the thing, and we know that data can tell a very different story. So what I want to offer you is that, when you're looking at this current job market, figure out who's hiring, figure out the industry and the job forecast that is specifically related to that industry, and start figuring out how much time is it really going to take you to find a new job. The research that I follow typically says that for a mid-career professional, we are looking somewhere in the ballpark of five to seven months. Now that time frame can be sped up based on how aggressive you are, how robust your network is and how much they're willing to advocate for you. It could also take longer given.

Speaker 1: 8:34

Hey, you're like you know, summer's coming, I'm going to take the time off. I'll start looking in September and all of a sudden now you are telling yourself a story that it's going to take you 10, 11, 12 months. Be very careful of the story you tell. You can set a goal for yourself and do everything within your power and command to see if you can actually obtain it by doing everything you want to do to achieve that. But if you are telling yourself, eh, I think it's probably going to take me a year to find a new job, my question to you is how do you know that? Show me the evidence, give me the receipts on where you are seeing that it's going to take you a year, and we can have a much different conversation around that. But I will challenge you that if you were in a desperate situation and you needed to find work sooner rather than later, your energy would dramatically shift.

Speaker 1: 9:32

Okay, you might be living in the application black hole, and that application abyss is awful. You apply for jobs online. You never hear back. You're wondering what else you have to do, and so that can be especially disconcerting, especially if that is the only way you are trying to find a new job right now. You can tell yourself eh, I'm not really good at networking or I don't like going to networking events and things like that. That is not the only way you have to network. You could network one-on-one. In fact, that's actually my preferred way to network. I prefer to have a one-on-one conversation with somebody, and in fact, I scheduled a networking breakfast with somebody in a few days because it's someone whom I haven't had chance to connect with recently and we thought, ah, let's go have breakfast. There's a lot of different things you can do, but if you are relying on AI and if you're multitasking, come back to me for a minute. Put down the puppy video, it's cute. Just put it on pause.

Speaker 1: 10:41

If you are playing this AI game, where you are using some AI tool like ChatGPT to help you write your resume, write your cover letter, prepare for your interview, I want to caution you. It may not be helping you. Recruiters and hiring managers are getting more savvy as to what a scripted, ai-generated cover letter looks like or a resume looks like. And remember, the goal here in having a resume or an optimized LinkedIn profile is to generate enough interest that they want to talk to you. So if you're not getting an interview, there is likely something going on either in how you're applying for the position or in how you are. Well, now all bets are off, because now they're going to ask you some questions and you have to demonstrate your expertise, your competence, your knowledge to really showcase why you're the best person for the job.

Speaker 1: 11:52

It's why last month I did a masterclass inside my mid-career GPS membership community called Tips for Using Chat GPT to Help you Prepare for your Next Job Interview, and in this masterclass, which is about 64 minutes, I used three different prompts. I showed everybody in the community, I showed them the prompt and I showed them the responses that got generated, and each prompt got deeper and more specific. And then, when I got to the final generated response and the thing that I asked it was for was to help me prepare some interview questions, to help me increase my confidence and my clarity in the interview when I went ahead and did that, I broke down the 10 things ChatGPT generated and I put my lens on it to share with the people in my community, whether or not I thought, based on my experience, that was good advice or not. And let me tell you there were a few things that surprised me, what it generated and some things I did not agree with. Now, this mid-career membership community is a wonderful place to be. If you are looking for some additional support and information, you can find it by going to my website, johnnerrellcom forward slash membership. But if you just want to get a little taste, if you're really curious about what this masterclass is and how it could help you, then I want you to go to my website, to johnnerrellcom forward slash resources, and you can purchase the masterclass for $47, which is almost half of the monthly membership cost to come into the mid-career GPS membership community and you can see exactly what I'm talking about here.

Speaker 1: 13:51

But if you are sitting back and you're thinking AI is going to be a cheaper, less expensive, better way for you to do things, caveat emptor, buyer beware, because it's not all it's cracked up to be, given how. What I like to say is you're feeding the monster. If you don't feed the monster enough, the monster is not going to give you exactly what it is that you need, okay. So if you're really stressed right now in your job search, your work life in general, what I want to offer you to do right now is find what I call some mini recovery moments. These mini recovery moments are things that you can do daily or weekly to simply put a little more energy in your tank. Maybe you plan a day trip on the weekend or you go to a movie or you see a show or you go for a hike or something, but plan something that you've got something to look forward to, because those are the things that will fill you, they will sustain you as you get back into the stress of the week.

Speaker 1: 14:59

Full disclosure my husband has found an incredible love right now in jigsaw puzzles and he sits at the dining room table at night and he does these 1,000, 1,500, 2,000-piece puzzles and loves it because it lets him shut his brain off and just think about I just got to find the right pieces here to put together. It's given him so much joy right now and so, like every week, we get some puzzle deliveries to the house. He's like, oh, I got more puzzles right. Whatever, it is Okay, but the other thing he can do is start finding ways to re-engage with your network.

Speaker 1: 15:45

And I want to caution you right here, because oftentimes, when I say this a lot of times, people will go oh I'm going to go find this event and I'm going to do this and I'm going to connect with 10 people this month and blah, blah, blah, stop, just stop. Pick one person every month for you to reconnect with. Do not over complicate this. Your life and your work life is stressful enough. You do not need to be adding to it. But if you re-engaged with one person each month, you would have cultivated 12 relationships across the course of a year and reconnected with people and perhaps learned something about them, learned a way they could help you or you could help them and build your networking strategy that way. Just don't make it creepy right. Be authentic, be genuine, be transparent about why you want to connect. Hey, I'm not really sure where this may go, but we haven't chatted in a while. It'd be great to reconnect.

Speaker 1: 16:52

I want to offer you this is an opportunity right now, amidst all the stress, to focus on things you can do consistently, because small steps rather than big leaps will give you the most progress. And, lastly, don't be the one who's overwhelming you. Right, I keep what I call the most obnoxious to-do list and I clean it out every month because I'm not going to be the one that's overwhelming me and putting extra stress on my life. That was one of my goals for this year. So think about ways you can fill your energetic tank and what that absolutely looks like for you.

Speaker 1: 17:37

In conclusion, the work world right now is strange. It is bizarre. It is weird, and you are not alone. There is an undeniable level of stress out there right now, and more and more each and every week. I'm hearing from people, I'm hearing from you, who are saying I don't know what to do next. I'm not having any results. This has taken me much longer than I thought. I've always been able to find a job easily enough, and now, all of a sudden, it's difficult. So it's not you, it is the circumstance of this job market, and there are ways to navigate through it.

Speaker 1: 18:15

So here's the thing If this episode today was helpful for you, would you please do me a favor and just copy the link to this episode and text it to a friend of yours who you think might benefit from it? This podcast continues to grow on an organic reach, and the more you can help me do that, I promise you, the more appreciative I am. It is what keeps me motivated to keep coming back behind this mic every single week and do it. So if you could share the episode with a friend, I would truly appreciate that. You can check out that masterclass. It is called Tips for Using Chat GPT to Help you Prepare for your Next Interview. You can find it on my website at johnnerrellcom.

Speaker 1: 18:56

Forward slash resources, and if you're interested in coming into my mid-career GPS membership, community spots are open. You can go right there to the website, johnnerrellcom forward slash membership and I really, really hope you will be back with me. Next're going to have episode 300. It's crazy to me. I can't wait to record it and share it with you, but in the meantime 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.

Speaker 1: 19:43

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 Apple Podcasts. Visit johnnerrellcom 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.