You got to your current career in an interesting and unique way, with your own work history and skills you developed. Sometimes our past careers are forgotten about or even worse, detested. I found myself in this position with a past job and every time I used to talk about this position it was always negative (but funny) stories. I could never deliver anything uplifting about the career until one day I realized I was doing it all wrong.
Find Experience and Value
I now talk about any previous job from a mindset of gratitude. I revisit all the experiences I had that I learned from and find any achievement marks I can capitalize on. Instead of feeling like a victim in a job that delivered a great deal of stress for poor pay, I feel proud of my accomplishments. I feel proud of doing things like managing million dollar ad budgets, handling tight deadlines, and being mentored by millionaires. I am even proud of what might seem like menial tasks such as keeping customers happy and YOU should too.
Capitalize On The Task At Hand
Think back to some of your first jobs and what you did. I can guarantee there are skills you are not capitalizing on. Did you get some construction experience working as a laborer or perhaps you learned sales and customer service experience working at the mall. Whatever job it was, there is a lot you learned from it and you can take this moment to remember. How can this be beneficial for you?
Stumble on Gold
If you are in sales of any kind chances are you came across someone that would love your product at a previous job or through your network. Chances are that you have a Rolodex of warm leads that have not heard from you for a while and would love to chat. Pick up the phone and give them a call. Depending on what past jobs you have you might even find a lucrative opportunity to make more money.
Revisit Your Resume
After you have done the steps above you are going to be emboldened to revise your resume. You are going to rewrite bullet points with powerful job roles and make them less generic, prompting an interview. Even if you are self-employed or at a career, you do not see leaving, it is important to always fine-tune your resume as it serves other applications. If you want an example, look at LinkedIn profiles. Work history allows you to network and creates opportunities of all sorts.
In conclusion, there are several ways to make a profit with past jobs and you should be doing them. Make sure to fully take advantage of anything you learned at a prior job and exploit it. These action steps above should help you if you are not a total asshole.