[Are you going through the motions at work and have lost your passion for what you do?]
I get it, I’ve been there before…and it sucks!
When the highlights of your day include going to get a coffee, eating somebody else’s birthday cake in the staff room and the moment you get to finish work for the day, you know something’s got to change.
Yet that doesn’t make it any easier to solve this problem. You know you should be doing something different, but you have no idea where to start. It feels suffocating and demoralising, and that feeling starts to seep into the rest of your life.
The good news is, this is 100% solvable (I promise!)
So how do you intentionally find work that gives you deep fulfilment and brings out the best in you?
Here are some principles that worked for me many years ago, and have worked for many people around me ever since.
– Realise that no one will fix this for you and it most likely won’t resolve itself. This is your life and YOUR HAPPINESS MATTERS. The sooner you get in the driver’s seat of your life, the more you can start loving what you do and making a bigger difference in your corner of the world.
– Understand that you often have significant goodwill and leverage in your current company, so don’t assume you need to escape and ‘find a better job’. You’ll probably be surprised how productive (and relieving!) it is to share your mojo challenge with your manager. The right leader will care enough to work with you to solve this challenge and find a win-win for you and the business. They would certainly prefer to have this conversation rather than the one where you resign and there’s nothing they can do about it.
– Often we lose our mojo when our greatest strengths aren’t being utilised. Ask the people around you what they think you’re really good at. Do a personality test or two. Settle on a list of your unique strengths and choose the ones that you would like to bring more into your working life.
– Once you’ve worked out the types of things you want to be doing each day, work out where these things overlap with the challenges and opportunities at your current company. Consider how you can adapt your job to do more of what makes you come alive or create a project that benefits your company and utilises your greatest skills. This could set you on a completely new path within your current business.
– Find a project or side hustle in your personal life that equally excites and scares you. This can instantly make work more tolerable or if nothing else, give you a bunch of new skills for a more fulfilling career. If you’re lucky, this may even become your new career (but banking on that happening is not advisable, and it also kind of missing the point).
– If you have no idea what you even like doing anymore, you may need to defrost a little before you’re ready to commit to a new path. That’s completely fine and normal. Start by going back to the things you did for fun when you were younger. Dig a little deeper and work out what EXACTLY it was about that thing that you loved. If you loved being in the sandpit, was it being outdoors that you loved? Or was it building something? With this clarity, consider how could you take this childhood passion and bring more of it into your adult life. Find ways to bring more of these latent passions into your current role or otherwise, and start a side project or side hustle that gives you more of these things that fulfil you at your core. The next steps will start to present themselves.
– Break out of your current social circles. If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you’ve always got. There are career paths inside and outside of your industry that suit you down to the ground, but you don’t know what you don’t know. Go to Meetup.com and find some interesting networking events or connect with some interesting people on LinkedIn and follow their careers / build a relationship.
– Don’t discount the value of a really good holiday. The last couple of years have been draining, and most people who are burnt out don’t realise they are burnt out. A change of scenery, perspective and some rest may do you the world of good and reinvigorate your passion for what you do. Seriously, don’t discount this one.
– Sometimes you may just need to leave your business and go work somewhere new. This can feel painful, but sometimes it’s necessary to take a risk and have a fresh start in a new environment. But more often than not, people feeling the way you’re feeling run into the same problems when they simply change companies. To properly consider the list above before you assume it’s time to hit the job market.
The world needs your mojo. Prioritise it, find it and harness it. One day, you’ll wish you had done this earlier.
This is a post from my LinkedIn.
To connect with me on LinkedIn, head to: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljback/
To follow Human to Human on LinkedIn in, head to: https://www.linkedin.com/company/humantohuman/
