Love Your Work

Loving your work is the best way to succeed because 80% of people are caught up in the work trap and only survive the week to live at weekends and for holidays. This is throwing away so much of your time that you should be enjoying and loving. Finding the right job is very important, and most people will move jobs several times before they find the ideal job, so it is important to give a lot of thought to this area of your life. Finding a job where you can follow your passions and achieve meaningful success is worth the search, though some people find that eventually they become entrepreneurs and start up their own business to create their ideal job.

Further Information On Loving Your Work

Categories: Meaningful Success : Follow Your Passion
Articles: Discover Your Strengths : Find Your Purpose In Life

The only way to do great work is to love what you do.If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. - Steve Jobs

The Work Trap

Work today isn't what it used to be. Times have moved on. The skills you learned yesterday may not equip you for tomorrow's job, and we all have to earn a living. We all need to practice lifelong learning just to keep up with the world and to make sure that we fit into our job. However, the fundamental idea of what a job entails is changing rapidly. The idea of job security no longer exists.

Your first job can be pot luck. Put all the effort you can into finding out about the job and career options available. Go in for work experience whenever you can. Get the feel of the jobs available, because they never end up being quite what you thought. Most of all, be prepared to change jobs as necessary, and don't think that your first job fixes your career.

The 'quarter life crisis' is the term used to describe the reason why half of people in their 20's do not feel fulfilled in their current job. This usually happens because they have not planned well enough or done their research about the job or career they have ended up in, and after a year or two find that the job does not give them the rewards they are looking for.

80% of people hate their jobs. This is a waste of a huge chunk of your life. It's something that eats away at your happiness. So many people endure the working week only to 'live' at the weekends and on holiday. The trouble is that living can end up as going out and getting drunk to 'unwind'. Always thinking about the weekend or your holiday is just a way of wishing your life away, when life is actually happening now, today.

The Work Environment

The trouble with most jobs is that they don't bring out your full potential, or make you feel valued. Most people don't trust the organisation they work for, or feel that the organisation trusts them. Most people feel that their opinions are not valued, and that their ideas to improve things are ignored. Most feel unclear about what the organisation is trying to achieve, frustrated about the difficulty of achieving what they should achieve, and not satisfied with what they can achieve. In other words most people are not happy and thriving in the jobs they have.

Work has changed, but the organisation behind it is rooted in the past. Most jobs are still organised with an 'industrial age' mentality, where the job was defined and the person fitted into it, and any person would do. We have now moved on to the 'information age' where today's knowledge worker need a completely different work environment.

Flexible working can be more appropriate for some people, and finding a job that offers this can be very attractive. The wider your skill mix the more chance there is of finding a job like this.

The Secret Of Work

The secret of work was very well stated by Confucius over 2,000 years ago as, "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life". This applies just as well today as it did then.

The best job for all of us is where the work environment fits our nature, and this will change throughout our working lives. Our first job may find us hesitant and unsure of ourselves, and needs to provide a supportive and nurturing environment. As we gain in confidence and experience we look for other things. Some people will stay in the same job, and others will look for more. Some jobs allow progress within the same job or organisation, and others have limited opportunities, and you will have to move jobs to progress and maintain the fit between your work environment and your ambitions.

Most people have to move jobs several times in their life and even change careers. This should be a natural progression towards the job you love as you develop as a person. You can end up in a very different place to where you started, and this is what job progression is all about. It is worth taking a lot of time and thought over this, and some of the books below can be very helpful in opening your mind to all the possibilities that are available.

The choice between earning more money and doing something you love should not be mutually exclusive, as the secret is to find the job that fulfills both ambitions.

Working for yourself is the answer for some people, and becoming an entrepreneur isn't something to undertake lightly because there are many risks involved. It does, however, mean that you can control the job you have. Just make sure that your new boss is better than your old one!