It is a fact, that the need to work with a view to ensure financial resources does not make much allowance for choosing our profession and our work. Given the above, to love what we do for a living, is an even more difficult target.
The love for the job, or else the job satisfaction, as referred to by experts, apart from the positive effects it has on productivity and growth; it is a sign both of mental health and also of quality of life.
The term “job satisfaction” refers to whether or not we like our job, whether we experience it positively or negatively as a whole. Although in the past, the idea of full employment was exclusively about whether or not it satisfied our needs (e.g. , good salary), nowadays the fact of whether we love our job or not has to do with more factors.
But let us take a look at the different factors and what we can do in practice in order to love our job:
How do you understand your payment?
Regardless of the nature of your work, how you understand your payment -physical or mental- will largely determine the feeling of satisfaction or not you derive from this.
Does your salary seem to be fair and proportional compared to other colleagues of yours? Is your value and effort recognized? Do you take into consideration the general economic and social conditions of the environment you live and work? The more honestly you answer to the above questions, the more conscious will your decision be to remain at your post or to search for another job!
It is worthy of your love?
In order to love your job, you have to believe that it is worthy of your love! How do you assess your work- whatever that is? Do you perform it entirely mechanically or can you see that you really contribute something to the world by doing the job you are doing?
Whether your responsibility is to serve customers in a store or you are one of the best doctors of the country, in order to love what you do, you need to evaluate it positively so to feel that what you offer is important.
Does it cause you discomfort, stress and psychological pressure?
Separate your work from the rest of your life. We find it hard to view with sympathy the things that cause us discomfort, stress and psychological pressure.
Do not take more than you can handle, do not work more than you can take, because even if you think you can respond to it, fatigue functions accumulatively and the time of the explosion is not too far away.
When we manage to disconnect psychologically from work, (when we leave) and for the rest of our day, we protect our mental health and do not risk our job performance.
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How do you think of your job?
Any negatively charged thoughts such as: “I was not destined for this”, “I hate my job” etc. , unfortunately create additional burden to your psychology and make your work even more difficult.
What you can do is to start thinking in more realistic terms about your job: “Am I perhaps overlooking the fact that this job of mine covers to a large extent my materialistic and mental needs?”, “Is it maybe unreasonable and unrealistic to demand that there should be no difficulties and bad times in my working environment?”. Accept that in life there is not just black and white…
Does your job requires other personality elements from those that define you?
Undoubtedly, some jobs “are loved” more easily by specific types of people. Both the type of your personality, and your previous work experience, contribute to the satisfaction you will feel from the job that you have chosen to do.
Think of the characteristics of your personality and explore to what extent they help you with the job you have chosen to do.
Does your job require other elements of personality than those that define you? The “matching” between the individual factor, and the type of job seems to play an important role to the satisfaction we get from our profession.
How would you feel if tomorrow you were dismissed from this job?
Finally, take a look into the future and think how you would feel if tomorrow you were dismissed from this job. What would your feelings be? What would you be missing the most? Would it have been easy for you to adapt to another job and just as easily to replace it? Be sure to remember what it was you loved in this job, even if you feel that it was not completely your own choice.
Don’t forget that work covers a large part of our everyday life and our lives in general and so it should satisfy us to a certain extent. Whether you decide to stay with your job or to search for another, always keep in mind that it is not the job you do that defines you, but how you do it!
