When I have conversations with people about “work,” people tend to have a very negative reaction. The way most people perceive a “job” is that it is a chore, it’s labor, it’s hard and it’s no fun. “Job” conjures up a number of adjectives and almost none of them are positive. The evidence is everywhere in our culture that “work” is not something you are supposed to like.
People get a case of the “Mundays”
Wednesday is “hump day”
Thank God it’s friday. (T.G.I.F)
Everybody’s workin’ for the weekend.
90,000 hours
If you work from the time you are 20 until the age of 65 and you work 40 hours per week you will have spent 90,000 hours of your life at work. That’s the equivalent of 3,750 days of work at 24 hours per day.
Many of us work more than 40 hours per week. Many of us will work past 65.
The very thought of all this work can feel like a prison sentence, if you let it.
Happy Valentine’s Day
There’s a reason for Valentine’s Day and it’s not just a commercialized holiday to sell more candy and flowers.
Sure, it is often expressed by some in the form of last minute red roses and a box of generic chocolate, but that doesn’t diminish the meaning of the holiday. Today is an opportunity for you to acknowledge and reconnect with someone you love. It’s a day to show that you appreciate them and think about them.
On this Valentine’s Day…
I boldly encourage you to fall in love with “the work.” I don’t specifically mean fall in love with your boss or your co-workers or even an individual menial task. I mean take a deep breath, step back and look at the work you do on a day-to-day basis. Look a few years out and think where you’d like to be. Relate to what you do as important, as a representation of you and fall back in love with doing it. Fall in love with the creative expression that doing your work is.
No matter what kind of work you do you can find something to love in it. Seriously! The work you do is important if you say it is. It may not always be exciting work, but you can make a game of it. The truth is that we are all going to be spending a good portion of our lives at work, and maybe, just maybe if we all related to our “jobs” differently we can begin to enjoy it more. If we enjoy it more, maybe we’ll get better at it. If we get better at it, maybe it could change the world.
Whether you are sorting paperclips or CEO of Staples you can fall in love with “the work” simply by relating to it differently. Because if you don’t love what you do, why do it?
– – – – –
What about you? Do you love your job? Are you going to fall in love today? Sound off in the comments on this Valentine’s Day 2011.