How to increase your work happiness without quitting your job (again)
The honeymoon phase is over.
You started your job some time ago. You still like your job, but you are not in love anymore.
You went from “woohoo” to “yihaa” to a mere “yeah”. Not yet in the “mwa” or “meh” territory, but still.
You even noticed you started to complain a little. Not like Julie who worked here since the birth of the internet, but you are starting to get afraid to get stuck in a rut. Your biggest nightmare.
Anyone would say it is the perfect time to start looking around.
Believe me, years ago, I would have told your the exact same thing.
Or even encourage you to get out.
Pack your things.
Leave.
Go.
I was the Queen of Leaving.
I once packed my things and left Amsterdam within a mere 2 weeks from ideation to exit , all to move halfway across the world just to not get stuck in a rut.
The apartment I left behind still has some of my old furniture, including a decent Netflix-worthy Smart TV. That’s how bad I wanted to go.
For the record: I left more than 6 years ago.
(and yes, I came back)
Truth is, anywhere you go you bring one thing: yourself.
I know; cliché. But yourself is likely to be part of the reason why you feel a mere “yeah” and not a “yihaa” or “woohoo” when waking up in the morning.
Viewing your situation through this lens of (co-)responsibility actually makes it pointless to hand in your resignation letter or press whatever button in a system to give notice.
Because if you do so, you may experience a “woohoo” again for a while. But as the honeymoon phase of your next gig fades, you are back to where you are at right now.
So let me save you a whole bunch of trouble
This blog introduces you to 3 simple-to-grasp-yet-harder-to-implement steps to increase your happiness at work without quitting your job.
These 3 keys will turn you into Jordan Belfort’s answer to everything: I’m not f**** leaving.
And while I don’t agree with all that is Wolf of Wall Street (this scene is great though), the guy’s got a point when sharing:
"Successful people are 100% convinced that they are masters of their own destiny, they’re not creatures of circumstance, they create the circumstance. If the circumstances around them suck they change them.”
So let’s dive in.
Step 1: Awareness
Some of you may think “D’oh!” like Homer Simpson when reading this first step, but let me explain why something simple yet complicated deserves this center stage.
Let’s play out a scenario
Imagine you scheduled next Monday to be a work-from-home (WFH) day. You like working from home every now and then, if not always.
WFH allows you
to be on time for your football practice,
to pick up your kids from the child care (that must be covered in diamonds based on how much they charge you),
to drink wine with your girlfriends while moaning about Mondays,
to have an early Tinder date,
or whatever else you fancy doing on Monday evening.
But not this Monday. Your manager asked you on Friday to have a meeting in the office this Monday. A very important one. And so you’ve canceled your plans and made painful alternative arrangements.
So this Monday, after your alarm goes off, you actually go in the shower, put on pants, and drag yourself to your commute. In Amsterdam, this might be your favorite bike ride. In San Francisco or London, it may be a painstaking journey by public transport.
Somehow you make it on time. It’s 8:55 when you walk into the building. You enter the meeting room and you feel your phone buzz. You grab it from your pocket or purse, and you see this:
What is your FIRST reaction?
Be honest here. Like brutally honest.
Write it down.
If you are like any of the leaders and teams I’ve done this thought experiment with, your answer may sounds like any of the below:
“Are you &%*&^% kidding me?”
“A text. A TEXT. Seriously?”
“Of course she cancels. I would too if I were her. I have nothing valuable to share”
“Why does this ALWAYS happen to me?”
“I hope he’s okay. This is nothing like him”
“Well I guess, I’ll just start working on the project by myself then”
What all these answers have in common is that they are all responses to the same stimulus.
As you notice, answers vary A LOT, though. They vary from carrying sadness, disappointment or anger to taking responsibility or being concerned about the other.
One stimulus may trigger all different sorts of responses within different people.
I find this insanely intriguing. My nerd-mode is turned on by stuff like this. I mean: How can one text message make one person explode from anger while the other is concerned about the wellbeing of their manager?
How is it possible that we experience the same thing, but we all have a different reaction?
It’s because we all have different perceptions.
Our perceptions are influenced by everything that happened in our life up to this point. Parents, teachers, weird uncles, cool friends, horrible bosses, strangers, you name it, influenced us. And all your different experiences too.
We all grew up differently and experienced different things. These experiences formed our belief system, so here we are, with countless responses.
These different “first thoughts” lead to different emotions and to different reactions.
The man thinking “Why does this always happen to me?” is likely to feel defeated and may not have a lot of energy left to deliver his best work one hour later.
For the woman thinking “Are you ^&@*^ kidding me?”, frustration is likely to be an understatement. Angry mad is probably a more accurate description of what she would feel like. As a result, she may call a co-worker and start spreading dirt about her manager, creating a toxic environment.
Should we be puppets of our first reactions then?
You can.
If you want to.
I personally don’t.
The beauty of being human is that you have consciousness. You have the superpower to form an awareness of what you are thinking and how that thinking is influencing you.
So if you don’t like
Beating yourself up over the text message and telling yourself how stupid you were in the first place of accepting the invite and canceling your plans;
Boiling in anger for 8 hours straight, coming up with ways how you will teach your manager a lesson;
Or any variation of the above
Then awareness of that first reaction can actually be your salvation. Like Robin Sharma once (probably many times more) said:
“Awareness precedes change”
Without awareness, there is no choice.
With awareness, there is.
Hallelujah.
Step 2: Choice
Oooh, do I like myself some choice.
Actually that is an understatement.
I love choice.
Life without awareness is like having to eat mac ‘n cheese every damn day.
Or like listening to one song on repeat. Forever.
Or like hanging out with Pete, your one and only friend, that tells you the same story every time you meet them.
You get the point.
There are many great things about being human. Steven Covey (author of the infamous book “7 habits of highly effective people”) thinks there are at least 4 great things about being human, namely these qualities:
We have self-awareness,
We can imagine stuff (create in our minds beyond our present reality),
We have a conscience (a deep inner awareness of right and wrong)
And we have independent will (the ability to act based on out self-awareness, free of all other influences)
These four epic features create something that no other animal has: the freedom to choose.
This is huge.
Suddenly, we can transform from tantrum throwing toddlers to response-able adults.
Instead of screaming “murder!” when we don’t get our way when we ask for ice cream, or explode in anger just because someone texted us 4 words, we can choose a response that works fór us, not against us.
So what choices do we have?
Well, the choices are unlimited, really. But let me help you categorize them. You’ll find a lot more nuance to the choices in another place, just so I can be blunt here.
#1: 😞
The first choice is to be a victim to whatever happened to you. In this case to a last-minute cancellation of a meeting you did not want in the first place. Your negative self-talk lives here. It sounds something like this:
”Why does this ALWAYS happen to me?”
”I can’t believe I was so stupid to cancel all my plans just for this to happen”
”Now, what do I do [in whiny voice]? I can’t progress on my project without my manager”
#2: 😡
Up next is the boiling in anger choice. No negative self-talk here, but negative other-talk for sure. The blame game is on.
”I can’t believe he is doing this to me! What a %^&%$!”
”Are you ^&^(&* kidding me?”
”This is the trillionth time. I am done with this!”*
#3: 🤗
Also described as (by no-one but me) the “smile and wave” choice.
You take response-ability for your thoughts, emotions and actions and stay focused on the goal. Responses may sound something like:
“Ok, well I did not see that coming. I guess I’ll just work on the project myself then”
“Oh, it’s fine. This can happen to the best of us [said not believed]”
”This is nothing like him. Something urgent must have come up. I am sure he has good reasons for it”
#4: 🥰
The focus now completely flips from “Me myself and I” to “You you you”. A feeling of concern is driving you to focus on the other person, in this case your manager.
”I hope he’s okay”
”Let me call him to see what’s going on and if I could help out”
”Oh my god, you think there is something wrong with his kids?”
#5: 🤩
From this place, you see opportunities everywhere. Problems don’t exist in this type of world, only solutions. You accept whatever comes your way and see everything as a chance to learn and grow.
“Wow, maybe I could lead the meeting now. Something I’ve always wanted to practice!”
“Does this mean I just got back 2 hours of undisturbed work in a quiet environment? Win!”
Now that I laid out 5 different types of choices for you.
Which one do you think is more productive?
More fulfilling?
Increases your work happiness?
I don’t know about you, but to me it’s pretty clear that the first 2 choices do not lead to my best moments, let alone my best days or life.
Funny enough, it’s exactly those two choices that a lot of us take on a daily basis (unconsciously) as our fight, flight or freeze response is activated through stress.
Those two are usually in the driver seat when you contemplate quitting or not enjoying work as much as you’d like.
I’ve got some good news for you though:
The growth of your awareness, and thereby ability to choose, will help you identify where you are reacting versus responding. You can then really start taking ownership, reduce levels of stress and increase fulfillment.
Do I hear a “Hear, Hear!” ?
Step 3: Ownership
I guess by now you’ve realized you are part of the problem, which also means you can be part of the solution!
(🤩 Boom! feeling the #5?)
Ok, so now what?
You take ownership. That’s right. You are the leader of your life, so starting OWNING your life like it’s nobody’s business.
[it actually is nobody’s business but your own]
This step deserves a whole chapter or book, but let me keep it short and sweet by handing you a 4-step AAAA process to take ownership right away:
Acknowledge your reactions
Accept your current reality
Aspire something greater
Act front your greatness
Here we go:
1: Acknowledgee your reaction
You can train your awareness just like a muscle. And we’ve just learned that the bigger our awareness, the more choice we have.
This is exactly why many successful people swear by meditation, because it offer an opportunity to practice this when you are just by yourself and with your thoughts. Yet, you can also practice this is “real life” if you are not a big fan of sitting on a pillow.
A simple way is by starting to pauze when you notice you are being overtaken by stress or anger. In those moments, assess what your exact reaction to the stimulus is. Your first thought; the emotion it feeds; all of it.
2: Accept your current reality
This step is probably the most difficult one. Usually when you don’t like something, you want to Kung-fu fight it outta here.
”Difficult” emotion? No, thank you. Annoying thoughts? Aargh. Your inner Bruce Lee wants to make them all disappear.
The truth is: whatever your resist, persists.
So while you may have accurately assessed that the current thoughts and emotions you are having about a situation are not the most fruitful, the last thing you want to do is create another conflict (in your mind).
If your first thought was “He’s so stupid”, and then your second thought about the thought is “Oh what a judgmental brat I am for having that thought”, you are further away from ‘home’ than just accepting the first thought for what it really is.
So instead of entering the self-blame game, check in with yourself what is really going on here? Maybe you find something deeper: disappointment, fear, certain expectations not fulfilled or anything else that may have driven you to have the thought in the first place
And then: accept exactly where you are right now.
This is usually the most difficult step for most ambitious leaders who have a “fix-it” mentality. This mentality is exactly the opposite of what acceptance is. Once you let go of the “fixing”, “it” will actually be fixed. It is one of those annoying paradoxes that keeps slapping you in the face.
Before I confuse you: acceptance of your current reality does not mean you accept this to be your reality for the rest of your life. Quite the opposite. What you resist persists, but what you accept transforms.
03: Aspire something greater
Now that you accepted your current reality; how would you like to respond instead?
Which one of the 5 different categories (😞😡🤗🥰🤩) would you like to step into?
If you feel extra frisky: bring in childhood hero. What would he/she do in this case? What would be needed for you to believe that that is possible?
In our example with the text message:
Let’s say you moved from being crazy angry at your boss, to accepting that you were disappointed that he did not show up. You were looking forward to show him (and the rest of the meeting) the progress of your project.
You realize you desired practice leading an important meeting for a while now and this is a great opportunity to do so. You believe you can do it and can even feel your inner Simba coming to the surface.
04: Act from your greatness
No greatness exists without action.
What action would be a sign of commitment to your aspiration?
In our example:
You decide to open the meeting with a statement and lead the meeting even though you were nervous. You even dare to ask for constructive feedback on how you did as it was your first time. You got some great tips on how to do even better next time.🤩 Win-Win!
To conclude
You now know the 3 steps to increase your work happiness so you don’t have to go through the trouble of quitting an actual pretty cool job (again).
Awareness
Choice
Ownership
Nobody said these steps were easy implement. Believe me, I know.
I quit 3 jobs (the easier choice for short-lived happiness) before I realized I could just choose to be happy at work.
Happiness is a choice.
Own it.
Need help owning your (work-)life?
No shame in that; that’s exactly what I am here for.
Go ahead and schedule a chat.
Ps: Of course I realize that your job may not be your ideal job if you are contemplating quitting. Rushing into another ones without awareness, though, may not be the most sustainable solution. So even in actually quitting and finding your dream role, these steps can help you make a conscious choice.
Let me know what you learned from this blog by commenting below. I’d love to hear from you as I keep spicing up my writing with more personality, memes and relatable stories.
