My point is this. You leave the comfortable boring job and start looking for a new one (or start looking while working). Pretty sure it requires a knowledge you don't have, because jobs that require learning nothing new are probably precisely the boring ones. First issue is not being hired at all, because the HR idiots want 3 years o experience in a technology 5 years old and we want people who can hit he ground running yada yada. But let's say they are willing to invest. Still there is a probation period - usually 3 months here - where they can still easily think you are not up to it. Moreover, to be really considered part of the family - I am using this term on purpose, to demonstrate I have no idea about how big impersonal corporations are like, I am more used to the kind of small-business culture of Central/Eastern Europe and to a certain extent rural UK where the business owners office is three rooms away from yours - can take up to a year. After that, it is hard to get fired, indeed. But there is a temporary risk factor.
Attitude adjustment is IMHO one of those things that depend heavily whether reliable methods exist or not. We cannot just decide to feel different about something. When I used to go to buddhist meditation centers they were always like, OK you understood this teaching now, but in the head or in the heart? As it takes a lot of work for a teaching to go down from the head to the heart, to become not just thought but felt, and this is why methods like meditation exist to change the heart. Your Ranger co-worker did not just decide one day to feel good about it, there were probably really powerful psychological forces going on inside him to make him feel that way. This powerful forces may or may not be simulated or evoked by conscious emotion-traning methods, but the point is we at least need experimental methods for that. Some kind of an at least potentially reliable emotion changing tools.
I am afraid what-do-you-want will not really cut it as a method as "want" is such a tricky term. What do I want? To quote an old joke, tax cut, free beer and forever life. Well, or a lottery win will do it. So I guess the question is, what do I want what is actually realistic? Well, getting a black belt in kick boxing would be nice. It is realistic for people of my age and fitness level, eventually. But wait, I am probably unwilling to invest into it what it takes. I want it, but not want the price to pay for it. So I guess it is more like, what do I want what is not only realistic, but I really want the whole package, not only the goal but also all the side-effects and want to pay the price that has to be paid for it, goal, side-effects and price being a whole package? Well, that is precisely the issue, there are probably no packages that are really perfect, there is always some side-effect, a too high price, or sometimes I am the weak link, unwilling to pay even a realistic price or all that. So reformulating it yet again, which one is the least bad of the available packages? Well, the current one, obviously, or else one would have changed it already. But it is still possible to feel unhappy about it - for example to feel if I was only braver or more diligent I could choose a different package, and then feel unhappy, not even as much about the situation but about myself. I am actually of the opinion that almost any kind of unhappiness for almost any reason reduces to a kind of self-loathing, because, if you were heroic enough you would have solved the problem, right?
I'll take your word on the local job security situation.
Attitude adjustment is IMHO one of those things that depend heavily whether reliable methods exist or not. We cannot just decide to feel different about something.
A lot of attitudinal adjustment can come from choices about self talk and mental focus. One of the drivers of depression is habitual negative self talk. Reading your posts, I see a lot of that.
It's all "what if the bad thing happens"?
How often do you ask yourself "What if the good thing happens?"
...So reformulating i
Here is an interesting blog post about a guy who did a resume experiment between two positions which he argues are by experience identical, but occupy different "social status" positions in tech: A software engineer and a data manager.
The author concludes that positions that are labeled as code-monkey-like are low status, while positions that are labeled as managerial are high status. Even if they are "essentially" doing the same sort of work.
Not sure about this methodology, but it's food for thought.