You deserve happiness. You deserve to get excited about your career.
But most people are unhappy in their current career, and over 80% of people are currently looking for a new job.
I was unhappy for the last 4 years at one of my jobs. 4 YEARS! The first year was fun then the next 2 years were just ok. Then I just stopped trying after the 3rd year. I coated for the last 4 years, really disliking most of my time there. I would go into different co-workers offices and just chat for 30 minutes at a time. I didn’t see the point to working hard. Other people would literally take naps at their desk. It was such a toxic environment.
Instead of looking at what would make me happy, I compared my situation to the people that I was surrounded by.
BIG mistake!
I stopped looking at how I wanted to feel at the end of the day and work toward those feelings. I stopped trying to make myself feel energized and took the easy way out.
So, how do you currently feel when you are working?
- Tired
- Bored
- Relaxed
- Challenged
- Excited
If the first feeling or memory that pops in your mind when you answer that question is negative, then your career isn’t adding to your happiness.
Your passion for your work dictates your success.
If all you are doing is working for money, then your actions will reflect your results.
Money doesn’t buy happiness. It’s only a tool.
Once you choose work by how you feel and not for just for the external reward, then you will develop a career that takes you to great places physically and emotionally.
Now of course, we must connect to the external world in some way. We can’t work in a bubble.
You can't expect to create a project that you would love to work on and your boss will love it and give you carte blanche to do whatever and however you want. You can’t expect to be able to write a novel, then have a publisher waltz into your house, print it out, read it, love it, and publish it to global honors.
You have to find that sweet spot.
As we talked about earlier, there is work involved.
That’s where "your why" behind your actions, focus and strengths come in. You focus on what will get you the best results and do work that delivers great results.
How do you want to feel while you work? Write down how you want to feel (happy, proud, excited, challenged, joyful, etc.). Think of your top 5.
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Your desires create your life.
When you have a better understanding of how you want to feel while you work, then you can begin to deconstruct your desires and create a career plan to get there.
This is where knowing yourself is so important. The best place to start is looking at how you want to feel as you do your work and how you want to feel at the end of each day.
Here are some examples with concrete emotions of how you might want to feel:
- I want to get excited about the people I work with.
- I want to feel energized by the people I’m able to help.
- I want to be curious about my challenges instead of feeling tired by them.
See how this works? These are positive emotions:
- Excited
- Energized
- Challenged
Now that you know how you want to feel, you can take the next step and deconstruct how you are able to make these feelings a reality in your career.
Visualizing what actions will help you feel happier. For example if writing makes you feel energized then how do you think you could incorporate more writing into your career?
Could you write your company’s newsletter? Could you create your own project that would help the company and create a role that requires you to write more? Could you create a side project to help you connect with other writers?
Which one excites you the most?
Write down 5 small projects you could create at work to help you tap into each of the feelings that you wrote above
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5.
When you know how you want to feel then you can look at what actions make you feel this way. Then it’s developing a plan that you can act on to make these feelings occur on a daily basis.
What actions cause these feelings?
* This article is a part of the Unlock Your Passions email course that you can get access to by joining our community and getting free career boosting updates.