“Another day another dollar” “Back to the Grindstone” “An idle brain (or hands) is the devil’s playground”; how many other quotes can you think of about work? Are they as negative as the ones above? How about the infamous poster – “The whippings will continue until morale improves”.  

Here’s another one – “The only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions”. Be honest… are you reading this at work? Are you taking time away from your employer to play with email or the internet? If so that’s not a good idea for 2 reasons; 1) I found out when I was working in Information Security, that the ‘spying’ tools that corporations have these days, are far more sophisticated than you might imagine. There is NOTHING that you do on your computer that your Boss, cannot find out about – or even watch you doing without your knowledge.  

Second and most important is that you perpetuate the above attitudes. Trust me I know how boring a job can be. I understand that we are not all doing what we love (very few for that matter). But listen to this – It doesn’t matter if you are doing what you love – what truly matters is to love what you are doing. Sure, there’s a dream job out there for everyone and I fully encourage you to go for it! But while you’re ‘going for it’, are you paying the rent, feeding the kids, paying the bills? So we are ‘forced’ as Freud says, to get a job in order to live in a certain style we are accustomed to. It’s often not the dream job but we meet our responsibilities with it. After a few years, months or even weeks, we get bored or indifferent about the work. Then we are surprised when we get fired or laid-off. When in actuality that is EXACTLY what we wanted! We’d rather “be doing anything other than what we were doing”. Well, tell yourself that now, but wait till you have to find something else! The key? Love what you are doing. This actually pertains to everything in our life, not just work. It is especially useful at work, because often it is at work when we feel we have no choices. In that instance you better love what you are doing, or you will go crazy – ‘postal’ even.

Bright blessings ~ Richard