How to Have More Good Days at Work – and at Home

 

Work.  Some days are good, and others not so much…  Just like life, right?

Since we spend so many of our waking hours working, it’s likely that a good day at work will spill over into your life after work.  Unfortunately, a not-so-good day will do that too.

You can’t always change what comes at you in your professional life, but there are some things you can do to have a better experience of it. 

What’s interesting is that improving your experience of work won’t just allow you to enjoy your life more. It can also boost your performance, leading not only to greater satisfaction and fulfillment – but also increased effectiveness and better results.

This week’s video expands on that idea and gives you a simple example of how to have more good days at work – and at home.  The audio is a snippet of some opening comments from a recent Pinocchio Principle Unleashed group session.

If you enjoy it and want more, I encourage you to check out the full program here:  The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed – The Real Leader’s Guide to Accessing the Freedom & Flow of Your Authentic Genius.  Registration for the fall session will open soon, and priority enrollment will be given to those on the waiting list.

We all have plenty of work in our lives.  Here’s to putting more life into our work – and watching both grow infinitely richer!

FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

One day when my son was 8 years old, he came home from camp with a riddle. He said, “Pretend you’re in a box with four walls all around you and it’s airtight. There’s no handles and no latches.  How do you get out?”

“Hmm, I responded.  “I don’t know. I think I would punch my way out.”

He said “No.”

“Okay, then I’d use my legs. I’d kick my way out.”

“No.” He was emphatic.

I thought for a moment. “Hmm. Maybe I’d try to chew my way out.”

He was getting more and more irritated with me. “No.”

I was out of ideas, “I don’t know. I give up. How do you get out?”

“Mom,” he said.  “If you’re pretending you’re in a box with airtight walls, the way you get out is you STOP PRETENDING.”

Wow, this from an eight year old.

It’s crept into my thinking several times over the years because I think it’s such a great analogy for what we do.

How Beliefs Can Become Boxes

We have these beliefs…

Have you ever thought about how your belief about work shapes your experience of work? To a large degree, we’re pretty much conditioned to believe that work is not supposed to be fun – that work is something that you do in order to earn a living, pay your bills, feed your family, and be a responsible human being. Work is something that you do and you just get through it.

And living… well, living is what you do after work, right?

It’s part of our societal conditioning. Have you ever noticed that?

You Can Break Out of Your Box

The people who enjoy their work are people who have realized that doesn’t have to be true.

“What if I didn’t think that? What if I approached it differently? What if I thought of work as an opportunity for me to do something cool, to contribute to something bigger than me? What if I thought of work as an opportunity to be around people or to partner with people that I really enjoy, or that are really interesting to me, or that I can learn from? What if I think of work as a way that I can somehow grow?”

What a novel idea.

Work is What You Make It

What’s interesting is that people who believe work is a chore, experience it that way. And they get bogged down, and they have so much to do, and they feel like they’re never going to be able to finish it. And it’s one more thing and everything’s going wrong. And then there’s this and there’s that and they can’t wait to go home.

And that person could be working side by side with somebody who believes – even just for that day, even just for that moment, that work is something different. And they will have a whole different experience. They will tell you something entirely different.

It’s not that they won’t have a whole boatload of work to do. It’s not that they won’t have pressure or deadlines and people relying on them and more to do than there’s time to do.

But there’s something about people who believe different things about work that changes the way they interact with everybody. EVERYBODY.

Learning How to Have More Good Days at Work is About Making a Choice

If you think about the last time you went even just to get a cup of coffee… the difference between somebody taking your order that never makes eye contact with you, that’s having kind of a crappy day, that is kind of wearing it on their body and the way that you feel when they serve you…

…the difference between that and somebody who when you walk in, looks you in the eye and asks you how you’re doing and maybe shares something funny or is genuinely interested in you. And really you can tell that when they ask you how you are, it’s not just part of their script. There’s something about their presence that is with you.

I guarantee you they are having a better day than the other person… not because anything different is going on, but because they made a choice to see work differently.

Make YOUR choice.

For more, visit www.UnleashtheExtraordinary.com