Who’s Responsible For Us Loving Our Jobs? | Gagen MacDonald

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Who’s Responsible For Us Loving Our Jobs?

Jan 08, 2015
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Love is many things. It is a feeling, an emotion, and a state of being. But love is also a verb, and – best yet – one that we can exercise in infinite supply. Loving is our choice and it has no limit.When you ask people if they love their job, the response you get is often tortured and complicated. We point the finger at companies for not effectively demonstrating appreciation for their own people (and there are important steps they can and should take to address this, as shown in our Valentine’s Day infographic.) However, as in any good story, there are two sides: It’s also a matter of one’s personal perspective. I’ve noticed that when it comes to our jobs, we’re so deeply conflicted as to whether love has found us, we forget that we have the capacity to seek it.In the 1980s, a psychologist named George Pransky, along with several others, developed the idea of “health realization.” Essentially, what Pransky had discovered through years of couples counselling was that the more therapy his patients were attending, the more their relationships were deteriorating. The reason, he surmised, was that they were becoming myopic about their problems, and in the process losing sight of the things they actually enjoyed in one another.Today, unfortunately, too many employees are trapped in a similar cycle of feelings about their employer.There is no universal code or set criteria for what constitutes loving a job. It’s an entirely individual experience. “Finding a job you love” starts with trying to love the job you’ve got. Shape it. Mold it. Own it. Find the parts about it you like, push them to the nth degree, and on the other end, see if you’ve discovered something you love.When it comes to love and work, my wish is to put Cupid out of business. Rather than biding time hoping to be struck by an arrow of passion, I hope that employees sitting on the fence choose to find something to be passionate about – whether it’s their company’s purpose, their co-workers, the work itself, or simply the fact that their job supports their family.We’ll keep counseling employers to show more love to their employees. But we’ll also keep counseling employees to show the love in return.
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