How to Be Happy (or Miserable) at Work
To be consistently happier at work,
examine and replace the beliefs that make you miserable.
There's no question that bad stuff
happens. When a close friend or family member dies, it's appropriate to
feel grief. Similarly, good stuff happens. If your suddenly get an
unexpected windfall, for example, it's appropriate to feel stoked.
Most of the time, though, the stuff
that happens isn't dramatically positive or negative. It's just stuff
that happens. Whether you let that stuff make you happy or miserable is
entirely dependent upon your beliefs.
Everybody has beliefs about what
events mean to them. In most cases, however, people assume those beliefs
reflect objective reality and are therefore immutable Laws of Nature.
However, it's easy to observe that
events mean different things to different people. For example, you might
have two salespeople doing cold calls. One might believe:
- "Cold calling mean meeting new people."
While the other might believe:
- "Cold calling means being rejected."
It's intuitive that the first
salesperson will be more successful at cold calling because her beliefs will
lead her to enjoy the process, while the second salesperson will see the task
as misery-inducing.
What's really important about those
two beliefs is the part that's not explicitly stated. In the first case,
the implicit part is "...and therefore I feel happy." In the second
case, the implicit part is "...and therefore I feel miserable."
This simple observation provides you
with a powerful tool to ensure that you're consistently happy at work.
Every time you feel unhappy about
something that happens, step back and ask yourself: "What is the belief
that is generating the negative feeling I'm experiencing?"
Identifying the belief gives you power over the emotion. Here's an
example.
Earlier this week, I sent my book
manuscript to the publisher and haven't heard back yet. While I know that
book is the best thing I've ever written, I'm still nervous and anxious about
it.
So I ask myself: "what is the
belief that is making me miserable?" The belief is as follows:
"If I don't get immediate praise from my publisher, it means that they
don't like my book... and therefore I feel miserable."
The minute I wrote out that belief,
I realized how ridiculous it was. The truth is that at this point I
simply don't know what my publisher thinks and, furthermore, even if my publisher
thinks the book sucks, I still know it's the best thing I've ever written.
More importantly, now that I've
identified the belief that's causing the problem, I can overwhelm it with
beliefs that have the implicit suffix "...and therefore I feel
happy." For example:
- "Writing a book is a major achievement...and therefore I feel happy."
- "My book will help millions of people...and therefore I feel happy."
The other day, I was being
interviewed by another writer, a guy who'd been nominated for a Pulitzer but
was now doing a lot "corporate writing" (like white papers, ghosting
blogs, etc.) in order to pay the bills. He wasn't happy about it.
His belief was:
- "Corporate writing is boring and anonymous...and therefore I feel miserable."
However, I pointed out that
companies really struggle hard to form messages that make sense to
customers. I encouraged him to focus on a different belief:
- "Corporate writing is helping others be successful...and therefore I feel happy."
In other words, your attitude
proceeds directly from whatever beliefs that you're choosing to emphasize. To
be consistently happy, identify the beliefs that are making you miserable and
replace them with beliefs that make you happy.
It's really that simple.
http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/how-to-happy-or-miserable-at-work.html
1 comment:
Good point, nice written.
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