Discover how to enjoy your job more in three simple steps, even if you if you don’t like it.
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld said, “I like almost any kind of work. I don’t know what my problem is. But I’ve learned to keep this fact quiet as it seems to make people uncomfortable.
There’s tremendous peer pressure around workplaces to assume that everybody hates working, hates their job, and every second at work is pure pain.”
Seinfeld’s comment begs the question: What is the key difference between people who enjoy their work and people who don’t?
I’ll boil it down to this: People who do not enjoy their work are either not challenged enough (bored) or too challenged (stressed out).
If you are bored – not challenged enough – chances are you are avoiding stress by choosing a role inside your Comfort Zone.
If you are too challenged, this means the stress of your job is getting to you. I’ve noticed that people who are often stressed out at work share the same common denominators in their inner game:
They are consumed by self-doubt…
They over-criticize their efforts…
They sell themselves and their ideas short…
They exhaust themselves with people-pleasing and perfectionism…and…
They procrastinate on their real dreams to avoid any possibility of failure, disappointment or rejection…
On the other hand, people with deep mental toughness at work have a totally different experience.
They TRUST themselves while working.
They are relaxed.
They are expressing their true selves.
That’s why work is a source of meaning, joy, and self-esteem in their lives.
In How To Enjoy Your Life and Your Job, Dale Carnegie give us a simple, three step code that will immediately boost your self-trust and ease your stress at work:
1. Do your work as if you enjoy it, no matter what you are doing. You might have to open your mind a bit to use this strategy.
Recently I tried it when washing the floor of my laundry room. I used to dread it and would find excuses to put it off. Finally I decided that I would do it every Saturday morning before my toddler woke up, and I would enjoy it. I realized I had brainwashed myself to believe that it had to be unpleasant; when I opened my mind to the idea that I could enjoy it, the entire experience was different.
2. Relax while you are working. I don’t mean the kind of relaxation where your mind wanders; the kind of relaxation that comes with being in the zone. Don’t scowl, hunch your shoulders, or tense your muscles.
3. Impress yourself. Even if you are doing something you don’t consider reflective of your talents, try to impress yourself – create a daily challenge, measure it, and reward yourself when you beat your high score.
Your goal does not have to be grandiose. Keep it small and extremely easy to do and measure. In The 4 Hour Body, Tim Ferriss shares a inspirational example: “Michael Levin has made a career of taking the pressure off, and it has worked. Sixty literary works later, from national nonfiction bestsellers to screenplays, he was suggesting that I do the same: set a meager goal of two pages of writing per day…Dr. B.J. Fogg, founder of the Persuasive
Technology Lab at Stanford University, wrote his graduate dissertation with a far less aggressive commitment. Even if he came home from a party at 3:00 am, he had to write one sentence per day. He finished in record time while classmates languished for years. ”
These three methods, in combination with each other, will encourage you to trust yourself at a whole new level.
The more you trust yourself, easier it will be for you to let go of self-doubt, solve problems, and enjoy your job.
Within 30 days, you will find yourself at a new level of greatness at your work, causing you to feel important and worthwhile.
By the way, in my audio program, Secrets of Deep Mental Toughness, I go into great detail on how you can conquer fear, self-doubt and procrastination, create a winning self-image, perform flawlessly under pressure, and much more.
The best part is there virtually no ‘work’ involved because the audios invoke the power of your unconscious mind using visualization.
Check out this program for the Secrets of Deep Mental Toughness.
Your friend,
Lisa B.