Each and every day I come across the same topic whether I want it or not. Wherever I go, here and there, people are moaning about their routine work, angry boss and total dissatisfaction with the duties. Be it my friends and relatives or some total strangers in public transport, whose talk I become a random witness of, the story is always the same: “you know what? I’m so tired of that. Every day is a Groundhog day – get up in the morning looking for that day to finish.. actually, all the working days to finish and weekends to start. I hate my job.” Or something like: “can’t stand my clients/partners/colleagues, they are always dissatisfied with what we do”.
Stress in the workplace becomes a habit, spreads to our private life, gives a negative reflection on our relationship with dearest and nearest, thus becoming a real depression. We come to the edge.
Do you know what people around us see when they look at us? Now that I have been on both sides, I can say that they see a grey mouse with huge bruises under the eyes, running in its wheel and ready to give up and drop dead. Nice, right? Seems, it’s exactly how everyone dreams to live their life.
Nothing left for ourselves
Most of us think that life is about spending our free time, so we take into account every moment except those at work. We take our work as a tool that gives opportunities (money to be more precise) to live our life. That might include vacation planning, weekends and even pension. But let’s be honest, how many of us spend less than 70% of daytime at the office? How many of us have an opportunity to plan the working schedule so that it gives enough flexibility and we can live to the fullest until the next “dose” of money is needed again?
As a matter of fact, almost all people I know literally live in the office with a night-shift right after a day-shift, and being responsible for those “totally unexpected tasks that stretch from a Friday into the Saturday”. Stress in the workplace starts exceeding all adequate deadlines.
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Actually, there are two options that can come to our mind as a solution to this vicious circle: either change to another company (no warranties, sooner or later it’s going to be the same) or start your own business (no warranties, it might turn out to be even harder). Looks inspiring, doesn’t it? 🙂
Look from above
Dear reader, you might have found yourself in this story, and you might have started thinking how you can put an end to this. If so, keep reading the article. 🙂
I am strictly convinced that if we have to come across some complicated experience and there is no way around, we should make it as positive and pleasurable as possible. And as a matter of fact, there is absolutely no one but ourselves to make it happen. Job life is not an exception.
So, here are several tips on how to make positive changes, reduce stress in the workplace and make work more fun.
1. Taking a new approach
If you are young enough to change your mind, you should definitely start with a careful research on the topic you have always been interested in, the one that has excited you the most. I am not talking just about graduates and starting specialists. Being young is not about your age, it’s totally about you feeling young and ready for new exploits.
There are plenty of examples of those who irrevocably changed their life. Did you know that the KFC founder was not a young energetic entrepreneur? He was actually retired and pretty much bankrupt in his sixties, and he was on the edge of his life. But he nevertheless gave himself another chance to make difference: he cooked some chicken with his secret recipe and went from door to door offering to buy it.
Bang! In his eighties, he was a billionaire with his fast food restaurant chain spread all over the world.
Now think about it, what makes your soul smile? Once found, try to distinguish how you can implement it as a money-making tool.
2. You get what you invest
Another important point is our attitude towards the duties and responsibilities we have. Have you noticed that the more careless we are towards what we do, the worse results we get, the more negative reaction comes from our clients and partners, the more unsatisfied feedback we get from the boss, the more angry we become, the more stress in the workplace we experience, and the more unhealthy become our relationships with dearest and nearest? I assure you that it works the same way around.
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Let’s see a real-life example I have been through.
I work in the IT field, and my primary duties are to come to users, ask them what they want (be it a new mobile app or some website), and to translate it into an IT-language for the programmers.
Well, as it turned out, the more accurate and attentive I was to the users, the more time I spent with them learning what they REALLY need, what would make their life easier, the better solution my team would create. This would then lead to more positive feedback from our clients, and the more motivated and energetic our team would become.
A little bit of extra effort led to major changes in productivity and the work atmosphere. No stress in the workplace anymore!
3. Growth always and everywhere
One frequent case of job dissatisfaction is what I call the “old swamp expert”.
I often come across people that were lucky to find their dream job and work there for many years, thus becoming real experts with a bag-pack of knowledge and experience. However, many years of routine work with the same responsibilities and duties has led them to no longer feel the same joy they once had. And do you know what I find out almost every time I talk to them or watch them work? I see that even though it is clear that some tools, approaches, methodologies and processes become outdated, they never try anything new.
I can agree that not every crude idea should be introduced to the working processes. But it is definitely our professional and personal responsibility to keep up with the age we live in, explore new technologies and methods, find out about new best practices and decide what would be a suitable solution to our problem, and what wouldn’t be.
To sum up
So, dear reader, I hope this was not a wasted read for you and we understood each other correctly. 😉 Life is arranged in such a way that it is we ourselves who are the creators of our own happiness. It’s a simple truth, but we forgot it once difficult times knock on our door.
With this article, I tried my best to prove that even though most of us have to literally spend our life at work, and stress in the workplace may be overwhelming, we still have the choice to be happy. We can still spread our smiles, shine and energetic drive towards everyone around us.
It may be so that we can spend only so much time with our beloved ones, but the ability to give them our happiness and internal harmony would make those moments the warmest and most memorable. For this very reason, it is crucial to be able to experience joy from what we do for a living. The three tips above will help you to achieve that.
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