From surviving to thriving at work
We can shift from hating our jobs to actually liking them with a few easy changes
What do you do when you realize you’re unsatisfied with your job?
You go into work day after day dreading what’s ahead of you, begrudgingly taking your morning commute, having a water cooler chat with your coworkers, and absentminedly showing up in your meetings. Point blank: it pretty much sucks. Once it’s been brought to the forefront that you don’t really like it here, you can’t get it out of your head, and it completely and utterly impacts every other facet of your day.
Storytime
This was my reality for over seven months. Once I had the epiphany moment (see last week’s newsletter) that I wasn’t enjoying work, I couldn’t get it out of my head. It took over my life. So I did what any well-meaning employee would do: I immediately jumped to the job search, trying to figure out what I wanted to do that wasn’t this and gunning to schedule informational interviews. In hindsight, this was not the right solution.
I was treating the symptom, not the cause.
To bring this little analogy to life, let’s say you’ve been getting constant headaches. You pop an Advil, and it goes away only to come back the next day. By taking the Advil, you’re treating the symptom. But the cause might be that you’re getting poor sleep, or you’re extremely stressed. Treating the cause might look like improving your sleep hygiene or starting up meditation or yoga to decrease your stress levels (yes, both of these really do work!).
In my case, the symptom was disliking my job so I went to get a new one. Instead, I could have focused more on the cause first. What was actually not working about my job? The tasks? The people? The hours? Frankly it was none of these things. It was primarily my attitude and how I was seeing the work life I was living in. My manager had just gone on maternity leave, we were reorg-ed to a new team, and the work was in flux. No wonder I wasn’t liking it - the work was entirely uncertain, and I was put in a position to be a leader on the team without being told to do so. It was a confusing time to say the least.
Put it in action
What are we supposed to do if we are living in this “my job sucks” world? I have a challenge for us. Instead of immediately jumping on the job search train, let’s figure out how we can make our current job work.
We spent so much time interviewing for it, actually doing it, building relationships and a reputation, and now we’re here. What if we figured out how to make it work right here, right now? Maybe in this process we realize that getting a new gig is actually the right move, or maybe we uncover that we actually want to stick around for a while (this is what I did).
Regardless of what ends up happening, we actually make our jobs tolerable, and dare I say good, in the process.
We can do better than merely surviving in the job we’re in.
If we then decide to search for a new job, we are running towards something, not running away. We become even a little bit more satisfied today instead of staying miserable.
I’ve broken down your action plan into three core pillars. I’ll introduce each of the concepts today, and we’ll go deeper on each of these in upcoming newsletters.
How we think about work
We still have to do our jobs and show up at work even if we so badly want to leave. The number one tool to change our experience at work, and make it substantially less miserable, is to change the way we think about work.
Stick with me here - we can change our lives one thought at a time. We actually have significant control over our thoughts, and we have so much living rent free in our minds. By changing the way we perceive things in our minds, we can in fact change our experience of the actual thing.
Here’s my easy process for how we can begin to change our thoughts:
Put the Flip It process into action for any one thing related to work, and try focusing on it in a new light for the next week. Every time you think of that thing (which will likely still be that negative thought), say to yourself, “Thank you for this thought. I am changing the way I see things. This is my new neutral or positive thought. [Fill in the blank with your new thought.]”
Ensure that this is something you can get behind. We don’t want to go a total 180 from this is terrible to this is amazing; we have to make it believable to ourselves.
It might take some to flip the thought. Keep going at it. As you continue to flip your thoughts, you’ll start feeling better and taking different actions related to your thoughts. Just stick with it; this really works.
How we can make work work for us
Just because something is the way it is now doesn’t mean we can’t change it. We have another option: to redesign our work lives. Grab a journal and answer the below questions to truly reflect on what your job looks like:
What parts do you like about it? What parts do you dislike about it?
If you believed everything would work out, money and time were no object, and you had a magic wand, what would you truly genuinely really want to be doing?
How could you make the situation better? Is it removing an activity? Is it adding something? Is it offloading something (i.e., delegating or outsourcing)?
What skills do you want to gain? What outcomes do you want to have?
Here’s a great real-life example from a coffee chat I had with a 20-something woman in a project management role. She was excited about the work she was doing, and she felt that she needed data analytics experience to level up.
I kept asking her why she needed this - did she believe the analytics work would help her in her longer term career? Or did she believe she HAD to do this in order to succeed? Was she excited about testing out this new skillset, or was she doing it because she felt she would get left behind without it?
During our conversation, she realized that she genuinely wanted the analytics exposure to round out her skillset, not because she was afraid of being left behind. Immediately after our meeting, she had a one-on-one meeting with her manager and raised this request. Her manager got to work on getting her that type of project, which was a win for everyone involved (here’s a little secret - your manager wants you to be happy and help you grow).
What we do outside of work
Have more fun. It’s as simple as that. When we slog through our work days and go through the motions, we tend to do the same in the evenings and miss out on opportunities to feel really happy and try out new things.
Let’s start getting out in the world and experiencing new things - on both weeknights or weekends.
We’re going to get ourselves some new hobbies. Write out a list of things you liked when you were a kid. As you read through these, which feels most exciting to you? What says to you, “Wow, I completely forgot I did that and really loved it?”
Pick one thing off this list. Find a class, group, or league where you live, and sign up for something this week. No excuses here. Our minds are going to try to stop us since it’s something new, and new things are scary to our brains trying to protect us. Do something different here. Put yourself out there. Have more fun.
There is a lot here, and I have so many more tips and tricks for each of these topics that I truly cannot wait to share. For now, start with one of these topics. Favorite this email and come back to it. We don’t have to do everything all at once.
What I know for sure is that you can do this. You can start changing the way you live and experience your life today without changing too many of the big structural elements. This really works; I’m living proof.
Word of mouth is where the magic happens. If you found this newsletter valuable, forward this email to your team at work, your group chat, and your friends.
As always, happy Friday junior! Wishing you a great day ahead.
Your Mentor,
Melanie