Of course, the problem is not those one or two off days that everyone has, it is the times when you have that sick feeling in your stomach every day before you go to work for who knows how long.

While your job may be the problem, you just might be transferring some negative feelings from other parts of your life onto your career. Before you decide to make any big career changes, maybe you need to look at other areas.

Here are a few ideas.

• Look at your commute. For a lot of people, particularly those who live in big cities, the job that they have is not the real problem; the big problem is the commute.

Depending on which city you live in your trip to work in the morning can take an hour or more, with the trip home taking as much time, and that is on a perfect day. Add an accident or any other traffic problem, and you can double that.

What this commute time essentially adds up to is a ten hour work day, two or more of which you are not being paid for.

Maybe it is time to move closer in or to carpool so you can use that HOV lane!

• Take an objective look at your home life. Aside from work, families can be the biggest stress causing factor in one's life.

If you have teenagers or really small children, you are going through some of the toughest times in your life, and it is likely that you are transferring some of that negative energy to work. In addition, any added stress at work will add to the bad situation at home.

It is important to work out which stresses are family caused and which are work related, and then try to deal with them individually. There's nothing wrong with counselling, either; it gets everybody talking.

And it is better than trying to start a whole new life right in the middle of your old one!

• Co-workers. Some of use work with fellow employees or managers who make our jobs a lot more difficult than they have to be.

A co-worker who rubs you the wrong way can make you feel as though you hate your job, even though if you looked at it objectively the work itself is probably fine.

Unfortunately, there just aren't a lot of good ways to deal with this problem - but you might want to try to set up a meeting and talk your issues through.

Before you decide you need a change in careers, take a look at the other factors that might be affecting your life. You might find that the job is not the problem after all!

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solutions - Six Sigma Online ( http://www.sixsigmaonline.org ) offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.