Your boss spends half of the time being an idiot and the other half being unreasonable.  The co-worker in the next cube clearly has no understanding of how sound travels.  Your paycheck feels like it’s shrinking while your workload keeps growing.  You want out, and you want it NOW!

But be careful, this is when you are most susceptible to career goggles.  Ever heard of beer goggles?  Yep, it’s a lot like that, only it can leave you with more than just an awkward one-night stand.  When you’re unhappy, it’s easy to look at a new job opportunity as the answer to all of your prayers.

Instead of evaluating the job on its own merit, you get hyper focused on all of the things it’s not: not your mean boss, not your annoying colleague, not your current sucky reality.  That’s all well and good, but too often people find that they just swapped one set of problems for another set of equally frustrating ones.

Don’t let career goggles seduce you into leaving a crappy job for YET ANOTHER crappy job.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself before moving:

• Is my emotional distress bleeding into other areas of my life?
• Have I exhausted all options to make my current job more bearable?
• Does this new job allow me to showcase my strengths?
• Will it give me skills or experiences that will move me closer to my career aspirations?

With clear vision and a little personal reflection, you can make an escape that you won’t regret later.