Love What You Do!

If you love your job, you are in the minority. With happiness at a 50-year low, many people are looking for more. It is possible to love what you do no matter what that is. There are doctors who love what they do and others that hate it. There are administrative assistants who hate what they do and others that love it. What is the difference? It may come down to how you feel about your work or, the meaning your work provides.

Many of us have a job mentality. We are trading time for dollars. This can often be a miserable existence. Some of us have a career mentality and we are striving to climb the ladder of success. Some of us have a calling where we feel like we are making a difference in the world.

There is a story of a man who walked into a village where he saw three men laying bricks. He asked the first man what he was building and he said, “I am building a wall.” He asked the second man what he was building and he said, “I am building a cathedral.” He asked the third man what he was building and he said, “I am building the house of God!” How you feel about your work makes all the difference.

Our thoughts can influence so much in our life. I worked for a leadership training company for almost eight years. We had very intensive leadership retreats. In one of the retreats we had the opportunity to walk on red-hot coals. The first time I did this, I lost focus for a second and was rewarded with a nice burn blister. The following times I stayed focused and not even a hot spot despite having fresh hot coals loaded right before I walked.

Our brains are so powerful, they can influence the body to not feel red hot coals. In some cases, researchers have been able to produce heat burns when applying ice by making the subjects believe the ice is really a hot coal. Psychologist call this phenomenon the expectancy theory. The expectancy theory explains how the brain can influence what happens to us by what we think will happen to us. In other words, expecting an event will cause neurons to fire as though the event was taking place. This can manifest in physical ways like not feeling hot coals, or believing ice is a hot coal and causing blister burns.

Several years ago, Psychologist Ellen Langer and Yale researcher Ali Crumb conducted an experiment with the housekeeping staffs of seven different hotels. They divided the housekeepers into two groups. One group was told their work was the equivalent of aerobic exercise and they were burning calories as they cleaned. The other group was not told any such information.

After just seven weeks, the first group lost weight and lowered their cholesterol. The control group did not experience these results. They had not done any more work than the control group, but how they thought about their work changed and so did the outcomes. How we feel about our work, more than the work itself defines what we experience.

There is a process you can undertake to transform your work into something you love. It is called job crafting. You can start today to connect the work you do with greater meaning. You get to decide if you have a job, a career, or a calling. You get to decide to love what you do!

The Author, Spencer Horn, is the president of Altium Leadership Related articles: Disengagement and The Love What You Do Myth  Is Happiness A Choice? Be Positively Infectious!