Jobs: Love The One You're With

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Jobs: Love The One You're With


If loving your work sounds like a luxury you can't afford, think again. You MUST be in harmony with what you do every day. As a biological organism and life system, feeling positively about what you do is necessary for both your well-being and effectiveness. When you hate what you do, you carry the chemical reality of those negative feelings around inside of your body, impacting both critical functions of vital organs, as well as diminishing your ability to respond well, communicate, recall, formulate ideas and create solutions.

This is no time to be less than optimal. With unemployment higher than most of us can remember, never before have new ideas, good communication skills, reserves of energy, and an ability to stay cool through chaos been more important. But if the notions that happiness at work is an operational norm and that true success is an inside job rank somewhere between Hallmark-wishes and reality TV, you may have to make a practice out of shifting how you think about where you earn your daily bread.

Whether it's bosses, subordinates, peers, clients, IT, finance, marketing, the news or even the company cafeteria that is getting you down, you can't afford to let anything stand in the way of feeling good about where you spend the majority of your days. If health reasons and quality of life aren't enough to motivate you to try on a new attitude, consider this: there are plenty of people out there who really, really, really want your job right now. So how do you do it? How do you adopt a positive mental framework about WORK?

Chances are your attitude DOES need a shift. Even before the downturn, Gallup reported that less than 27% of us were "truly engaged" in our work. And in companies where layoffs have occurred, chances are employees are feeling even more forlorn as they head to their desks. Post-layoff, the damage to the sense of trust between employer & employee is so grave companies can anticipate a multiple of 3x however many people were laid-off to leave their jobs in the next 12 months. And since the US Department of Labor recently reported productivity has improved 6.6% - the highest level in six years- chances are also pretty good that your company isn't about to spend bunches of money on extra bells and whistles to put a smile back on employees faces.

Here's how I LOVE MY JOB works:

Practice Makes Perfect: For the next four weeks, by each Monday at noon you will find a specific Focus Practice to help you shift your mind out of the work gutter.

Progress Not Perfection: Based on the ideas in the post, you will work with each concept and practice for a week and see if you feel a change in perspective or new energy. We're not talking magic wand here, we're talking personal empowerment at work and in life.

Happiness Loves Company: Some of us work best alone, but there's also something to be said about community and support. If that resonates with you, tell your friends, forward this as an invitation, talk to them about what it means to you to feel better at work every day and see if they are interested in doing it with you. Make sure they understand this will not be a scheduled gripe session or opportunity to vent, but will be all about looking at and practicing how you cultivate happiness in the midst of your workday.

Playing Nice (If you're going it alone, you can skip this point): Decide together how your group is going to function. If you work in the same company you can meet in a conference room at lunch time. If you prefer virtual, you can agree to swap notes on the posts and what you are observing. In some companies, people have even named their groups, a Success & Satisfaction Salon or whatever you want to call it. Agree that participants are all peers and only speak from the "I or ME" rather than giving advice to each other. Respect your meeting times and/or online sharing commitments, and also, what people SAY in the group STAYS in the group.

Keeping Zentention: Okay, so maybe "love" or "happiness" at work seems excessive - especially after a bad meeting or challenging commute. Hold the zen-tention of being at peace with whatever is happening around you, and compassionately seeing the very real humanity in whomever is around you.

Be well,

Tevis (webMD)

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