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BE CLEAR ABOUT JOB REQUIREMENTS:
It’s nearly impossible to do a good enough job at your work if
you don’t know what the requirements are. Unfortunately,
sometimes it’s difficult to know all of the requirements at a
job when those in charge are poor communicators. Some bosses
and supervisors are vague with expectations, assign new tasks
with little advance notice, request new tasks without
providing training, and inadvertently set workers up to fail
in other ways. While you can’t prevent things like this from
happening altogether, you can gain a clearer view of what you
need to do and help your situation quite a bit with assertive
communication skills. Learn to speak up for yourself in a
respectful way and you’ll improve your work life and your
relationship, and decrease your risk for burnout.
FIND REWARDS AND RECOGNITION:
We all need to feel recognized and rewarded for what we do. If
your job doesn’t have built-in opportunities for recognition,
or if rewards are infrequent, you may need to add rewards and
recognition to your own life. You may decide to take yourself
to a movie, have a home spa experience, buy yourself something
nice, or give yourself other small but nurturing rewards when
you complete a project or complete another month of hard work.
You can also team up with a supportive friend and agree to
listen to each other’s successes and provide support to one
another if you don’t get that support and recognition from
your job. These things can nurture you emotionally and remind
you of the importance of the work you do, especially if you
work in a job or field where these rewards are sparse.
MAINTAIN A BALANCED LIFESTYLE:
Keeping balance in your lifestyle is important; if it’s all
work and no play, you may find your ability to work beginning
to wane. In order to maintain balance in your lifestyle, the
first step is to take an overview of your current lifestyle
and see which areas are out of balance. Do you have enough
time for relationships, hobbies, sleep, self care, exercise,
healthy eating, and other important features of a healthy
lifestyle, in addition to your work responsibilities? If not,
the next step is to look at your priorities and make some
changes so that your lifestyle reflects them better. (You can
find tools for doing this at the end of this quiz, or with
this free e-course.)
THINK POSITIVE:
You can usually change your experience of your current
circumstances by changing your attitude about them. Developing
an optimistic point of view and changing negative self talk
patterns can go a long way toward helping you see the glass
half-full, as well as actually making you more productive and
less stressed! Assess your current state of mind, and make
some changes in yourself so that you see things in a more
positive light, and you may just find you’re much happier
where you are in life!
KNOW YOURSELF AND WORK WITH YOUR PERSONALITY:
Certain features of your personality make some jobs a better
fit for you than others. If you’re in a job that’s not
well-suited for your personality, you may be putting yourself
under unnecessary stress every day you go to work. The
following are some good questions to ask you:
• Do you like to work toward deadlines, or do you like your
tasks to come in a relatively steady stream?
• Do you like to work as part of a team, or independently?
• Do you like things to be structured and routine, or loose
and variable?
• Do you enjoy being a ‘big fish in a small pond’, or would
you like to be a ‘small fish in a big pond’? (Meaning, would
you like to be a small part of a large company or a large part
of a small company, or something else?)
• Do you believe in what you do, and is it important to you
that you do?
These questions and others can give you a better picture of
what kind of work would be best for you. If you find you’re
not in the type of position that’s ideal for you, you can see
if you can make additional changes in your job’s structure to
make it fit better with your needs, or you might think of what
jobs might be better suited for you and see if working toward
a change in jobs is a good idea for you.
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