Monday, November 30, 2009

#4 of the "101 Ways to Love Your Job"

The Power of Habits in Action

If 90 percent of my activity will always be habit, as The Power of Focus says, then what habits do I want/need to set in place to achieve the results I want? This thinking makes a huge difference in getting results. Here are some things I have noticed that changed my thinking once I incorporated this reality:

- When I have setbacks, I don't tell myself what an undisciplined person I am or give up altogether in an attempt to seek perfection. I realize that my old habit is just still more ingrained than my new one. This will simply take more repetition of the new habit until the old is "erased."

- Once I get passed the typical three-to-four week period that establishes a habit, I will find the new habit harder to break. My "mental tug" will not be to the old behavior, but the new one.

- I created the old habit, and I can reprogram myself to follow the new one instead. For instance, has anyone just loved wine at the first taste? How about cigarettes? These "habits" took effort to become a way of life. Let's face it: these things taste awful and probably had nauseating effects at first. And yet, those who have these habits pushed passed the negative side effects in the beginning to establish a love and even a need for the behavior! Why can't anyone do the same for, say, a workout?

So my suggestion to you is to start taking an account of your current habits (not your current failures or lack of progress). Then insert the new habits needed to change your results. The bad habits you have in place feel "normal" because you have done them over and over. Changing your behavior for at least three to four weeks will feel very odd, but so did the current habits during the first few weeks.

You can keep reading more advice like this on my website (Work Stress Solutions.Com) or buy the book and have it on your desk to crack open whenever you need a boost (it's small): 101 Ways to Love Your Job on Amazon.

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

#3 of the "101 Ways to Love Your Job" : The Power of Habits

As mentioned in the introduction, I am an insatiable reader of self-help, and I have managed to define an entire career on the sentence, "I just read this incredible book. Let me tell you all about it...!"

Interpersonal skills, motivation, self-improvement, setting and meeting goals---all of these are subject matter I just can't get enough of. However, I recently started to see a repetition in my reading. The "new" books were all saying essentially the same thing. Yet I wasn't feeling that same "high" that I usually felt after hitting on some new knowledge that would improve my life. I was already doing what the books recommended, yet I wasn't seeing the usual results. I wasn't losing my Christmas weight. I wasn't increasing my productivity from last year. I couldn't seem to make it down to the Humane Society for my usual volunteer time. I was, well, stuck.

One of my favorite standards in self-help/business skills development is the classic, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Now, I have read this book more than once and have taught it as a workshop maybe forty times as of this writing (it's a three-day workshop, by the way, so that's 120 sessions). It's safe to say I know this program inside and out.

But it wasn't until I read a book called The Power of Focus that something really important clicked for me. Even though I was teaching a class called "the Seven Habits," I never really "got" that this program was talking about setting habits. It wasn't called "The Seven Philosophies" or "The Seven Theories" but still, I wasn't clear that the message was to set (or break) habits. In reading just the first chapter of The Power of Focus, I finally had that "a-ha" moment I had been seeking for so many months.

Instead of setting goals, set habits. What I mean specifically is look at your repeated actions and decide if these are getting you the results you want. When we set goals, we tend to start from a place of lack or judgment--i.e., "I need to get more organized." Well, in setting that goal, I would attempt new behaviors like setting up filing systems or trying to de-clutter my office, but this was leading to mixed results.

The problem was not so much the activity as the mindset. I saw the goal as a thing to be achieved like an item on a "to-do" list. I wanted to check off the "errand" and get back to the fun stuff. Consequently, I saw the goal as a burden, a chore, and my enthusiasm was revealed in this thinking. I either did what I "had" to do and then took a day or two off from this effort (and lost any progress) or I avoided it altogether. Only after switching my thoughts about the goals, to those in which I was creating a new habit, did I have that much-needed shift. This shift allowed for increased enthusiasm, an ease in completing a day's activities, and, finally, results.

See more articles on workplace success at my website: http://www.work-stress-solutions.com. You can purchase "101 Ways to Love Your Job" for $9.95 at Amazon.

Thinking about blogging something you know and love like I am? Use SBI! to turn that same knowledge or passion, having just as much fun, into an income of hundreds or thousands of dollars per month. Build an online business, like tens of thousands have done with SBI!.

Monday, November 23, 2009

#2 Be a Good One Today

Have you considered what your direct impact is on coworkers, customers, or citizens? People in such positions as police officers, firefighters, or school teachers can easily connect their jobs and their impact, but what about the rest of us?

What about sewer workers or garbage collectors? Well, we gotta have clean water. What would happen if the garbage was never collected? Finance and accounting types? We all expect our paychecks in a timely and accurate way and this is probably the number-one reason you work. Any copy machine sales reps out there, wondering about your purpose? I defy any of us to go one DAY, much less a week, without making a copy of something.

I often hear people say things like, "At least I'm not flippin' burgers." What's wrong with flippin' burgers? I go through a drive-thru at least once a week to feed myself or my family. I consider that important and I hope the guy on the grill that week does his job well.

Getting the point? Dig deep today and see where you contribute to the larger whole, the larger good. Don't resist this because it seems too pie-in-the-sky. It's critical that you find your calling and not just work to get paid--that you see your impact on your organization and how this carries over into impacting the city you work in, and then your state...and maybe even the world. (Okay--did I go overboard?)

If you don't feel lucky to have your job and get a sense of satisfaction regularly from contributing to making others lives work better...then my advice is to start digging. (Hey---don't forget about ditch diggers---where would we be without them?)

Go to Amazon and purchase the entire collection of "101 Ways to Love Your Job." Visit my websites for articles on dealing with difficult people at work (http://www.work-stress-solutions.com).

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Sunday, November 22, 2009

#1 Whatever You Are, Be a Good One

Jobs are more than just paychecks. They are social arenas, spiritual workshops, developmental playgrounds, group therapy, and one of the best tools for learning about ourselves. Anyone who has ever been fired from a job can tell you that this significant stressor was one of the best learning experiences of his life (albeit a painful one). Perhaps more importantly, when we are unhappy at work, we are unhappy at home, too. And when we love our work, we spread that feeling around when we aren't at work.

People can't separate the two most important facets of human existence: work and love. When one is suffering, the other suffers. You're at work eight hours a day (minimum). You are doing it for a paycheck, sure, but that won't keep you particularly productive or satisfied. What you need to keep you energized, stress-free, motivated, happy, and loyal is more than just your paycheck.

Then what is the key to staying motivated day after day?

If you aren't sure if your life work is to make other's lives at least easier, then you are going to hit a wall at some point. In short, to make your work meaningful, you must see it through the eyes of working for the benefit of others. Much like volunteer work, except in this case you get paid.

For instance, I hope that what I do in my training classes makes a difference by the time my participants leave. My private goal is to ensure that they feel equipped to head back to work with a better understanding of how people tick, what ticks people off, and how to get results from themselves and others. Then, when applying these new skills back at their workplaces, this new way is modeled for customers, citizens, and even their families through example. Pipe dream? Maybe.

But it sure keeps me from hitting the snooze button nine times every morning.

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