How do we find our joy in work? When we motivate ourselves, we act according to the principle: "I'll do it now, even though I don't feel like it at the moment!" Often, reason is the driving force behind our efforts to motivate ourselves. We push ourselves to do things for which we have no real inclination, but which we consider necessary for some reason. Self-motivation is a fundamentally indispensable skill – yet it is also very demanding and fraught with various problems. Self-motivation should never be the basis for daily work.
I prefer to focus on joy in work as an alternative. Joy in work means: "I enjoy what I do." This has a completely different quality than self-motivation. Joy is quality of life for the moment, and we truly only have the moment.
Joy in work is also possible when the conditions are far from optimal. Like all happiness, joy in work always has the quality of "nonetheless." I know many ways to enjoy work, even though one could equally have reason to complain about it.
One of the many ways to find joy in work is to be present while working. We tend to let our thoughts wander from the here and now. For example, many people think about the end of the workday while working. Or we formulate our response in our minds while the other person is still speaking. While working on a task, our thoughts are already on the next one...
This often continues throughout the day, and it doesn't do us any good! We cannot truly feel alive if our attention is constantly wandering. The past is over, the future is uncertain. All we have is this moment. We should make use of it and savor it.
For example, what if we were fully present in every conversation at work?
- We would be fully alert and could actually absorb what the other person is saying. The conversation would be much more effective. There would be no talking past each other, and we could reach results more quickly.
- We could gain a deeper understanding of the individuals and connections. This would enable more effective actions.
- The other person would feel acknowledged. Utmost attention and presence are always a great contribution to the relationship. This way, we gain the sympathy, appreciation, and trust of the other person – even if we may not agree on the matter.
- Presence could make the workday more exciting. Because our attention would be constantly engaged. We would make many interesting observations that we would otherwise miss. At the end of the workday, we would be surprised that it's already time to go home.
Vitality and effectiveness are the rewards of presence. This is how work brings joy – a real alternative to self-motivation!
Ten Simple Ways to Find Joy in Work
When we experience something terrible, our defense mechanisms ensure that we will soon feel better. However, it is different with the daily small annoyances. They slip under the radar of our psychological defense. Therefore, the sum of these everyday small frustrations and burdens can often affect us more than a single major misfortune.
In this way, our joy in work is sometimes significantly diminished by trivial adversities. Small things have the power to spoil our mood and take away the fun of work. An inappropriate remark from a superior, an unreliable colleague, computer problems, an unexpected schedule change – actually just typical everyday inconveniences, but certainly nothing dramatic. However, the more we dwell on them, the more significant they become. They gain a large presence in our thoughts and feelings.
Only a good deal of sovereignty can help here. Being sovereign means being above things. In this state, we are not easily upset, keep a cool head, and allow ourselves to form an independent judgment. We determine our behavior ourselves, instead of letting others determine it for us.
Actually, sovereignty is very simple. I have a very simple formula for it:
Sovereignty = Freedom of Choice
Whenever we take offense at something in our job, we should pause and think. The goal is to find as many alternative courses of action as possible. The more ideas we have, the better. Then we choose the alternative that we like best. And we try it out. If it doesn't work, we still have other options available. In any case, we are the ones who set impulses for our environment with the carefully chosen reaction. We determine the course of events instead of being unthinkingly carried away to any reaction.
With increasing sovereignty, anger and frustration decrease. It may not work perfectly overnight, but it is a reliable and rewarding way to allow more joy in work.
Ten Simple Ways to Find Joy in Work
Work shapes. The brain and character. That's why there are so many jokes about teachers and psychologists. That's why you might not necessarily want to sit next to an auditor all the time at an event.
John Ruskin expressed this wonderfully: "The true reward of a man is not what he earns from his work, but what he becomes through it." And we should be very careful about what our work makes of us. Many professions require very specific behaviors. The more often and naturally we perform them, the more likely we are to become what we do. Because the brain changes depending on what we do with it. No one as a child sets out to say, "When I grow up, I will become a petty nitpicker, a know-it-all, a constant complainer, a pessimist, etc." However, if we are not careful, we may find in ourselves after a few years characteristics that we never wanted to cultivate, that we may even reject.
It follows that we should act very consciously in everything, that we must remain vigilant. While we cannot control what happens around us, we can always decide how we want to react to a given situation.
Therefore, an essential way to find joy in work is to never allow oneself to be shaped thoughtlessly. We can always choose our behavior, and each choice demonstrates and strengthens our character. So, it would be good to ask ourselves more often: "What would the person I want to be do now?" And then we should act accordingly.
If we manage to do this, we can be proud of ourselves. We will feel good – even if things around us may not seem right in our eyes. But we act according to our own standards, and thus our self-respect remains intact. It doesn't get any better than that.
Ten Simple Ways to Find Joy in Work
Being controlled by others is an experience that is hostile to happiness, which many of us have to endure at times. It is in our nature to want to have a say and shape our work. It is important to us to put our own stamp on things. Therefore, we find it unsatisfactory when we are predominantly busy fulfilling requirements. This takes away much of the appeal of work. Then we feel compelled to motivate ourselves to remain capable of working.
However, self-motivation is certainly not a suitable basis for work life. Instead, we should be able to find joy in what we do.
In fact, this is possible even with a high degree of external control. Because there are always spaces to be discovered that we can shape according to our own discretion. We just have to develop an eye for them.
My favorite example in this context is a true story that took place in the Midwest of the USA. There, a mentally disabled young man worked as a bagger in a supermarket. He spent the whole day packing customers' purchases into bags. One day, the store management sent the entire staff to a workshop focusing on how each individual employee could increase customer satisfaction in a very individual way. The young man remembered that he loved tear-off calendars with wise sayings. He duplicated some of his favorite quotes and started putting one of these quotes on the packed purchases for each customer. It soon became apparent that the longest lines formed at the checkout of this young man.
It is good for us to bring our own values and preferences into our work. This way, we experience deep satisfaction and can be proud of our contribution. And as the example shows, even the preference for tear-off calendars can be used to increase one's own joy in work. The necessary spaces for this can be found everywhere. We just have to develop an eye for them...
