7 Ways You Can Make Your Job More Meaningful
“Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to meet your passion.” — Seth Godin
Whether you love your job, hate it, or are somewhere in between, you can choose to make it a more rewarding experience for yourself and your co-workers.
You can choose to see your job as a mission instead of a profession.
You spend a third of your day (at least) at your job, why not make the most of that experience.
Turn it from drudgery to a source of happiness and joy.
How to Make Your Job More Meaningful:
Create Your Platform — We can choose to see our job as a platform where we get the opportunity to bring our best selves. Where we can serve others, follow our own high standards, and deliver art on a daily basis. This is a powerful mindset. It takes us from feeling like a cog in the machine to a feeling of empowerment.
Create Art — Your job is a platform for generosity, for expression, for art. The conversations you have with co-workers, emails you send, projects you complete. These are all opportunities to create art.
Delight People — Look for ways in your interactions with people to bring them happiness and delight. Go above and beyond, deliver more than expected. From major projects to daily emails, deliver more than is expected.
Go First — Always be the first to say hello, make eye contact, speak to someone. Don’t sit back and wait for someone else to “break the ice”. Go first, this is a great way to meet more people and build relationships with your team members.
Servant Leadership — If you lead a team, make sure you are putting their needs first. Focus primarily on the growth and well-being of the teams to which you belong. Create opportunities for them.
Canvas Strategy — Imagine if for every person you met at work, you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them. And you looked at it in a way that entirely benefited them and not you. As Ryan Holiday says: “Create canvases for other people to paint on.”
Lovingkindness — Throughout the course of the day send thoughts and wishes of happiness to co-workers you cross paths with. In a Zoom meeting? Look at the faces of your team members on the screen and send wishes for them to be well and happy.
You may not have your dream job. But you always have the choice to love the work you do.
Choose to see your job as a mission and any job can be a source of joy.
