“Job” and “joy” have one letter between them, but for many they’re like chalk and cheese, oil and water, or snakes and mongooses.
And yet people do experience joy in their work. They’re the people who regale you with tales of how much they love what they do and make you feel bad because you don’t leap out of bed on a Monday morning.
Here are two ways to feel more joy in your work.
Don’t Be an Island
When you’re hating on your job, there’s a tendency to withdraw from the people you work with. You don’t chat with them because you don’t even want to be there. You don’t ask about them because you don’t care. And you don’t laugh with them because you just want to get your work done and get home.
Time and time again, polls have shown that the people you work with are the number one reason for loving a job. So disconnecting yourself from people will not only deprive you from human connections that can provide some much needed relief, support, and joy, but it’ll also do real damage to your happiness prospects and self-esteem.
Say hey. Be interested. Smile. Offer help. Not because you have to, but because there’s more fun to be had when you’re part of a community.
Accept Responsibility
Sometimes the last thing you want to do is raise your hand and take on responsibility, especially when you have a full plate already. But if you’re not responsible for something, you’ll feel like a tiny, insignificant cog in a big machine.
When you side-step responsibility for the contribution you make, you also side-step the inherent value you get from it.
More than a sense of a “job well done,” taking and accepting responsibility is the only way you can really see your contribution. Whether you played a small role in a big project or were leading a complex program of work, you have an impact. Maybe you offered a dependable, ever-present skill that helped things along. Maybe you had an idea for a better way of doing things. Or maybe you listened to people and made the best choices you could.
Whatever your contribution, own it.
source:themuse
