Not A Subscriber Yet?
Join the Letter to stay updated with the latest insights and never miss out on new discoveries!
Following your passions sounds cliché, but it’s a distant dream for many. Working unhappily drains all joy from life. These tips can help change that!
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. — Confucius
Finding Joy in Your Work vs. Dreading Each Morning
Finding joy in what you do isn’t a given for everyone. Picture this: the alarm rings, and you’re unhappy. Not because you’re still tired but because it signals the start of another day. Another day, you are filled with tasks you don’t enjoy. Tedious work, annoying colleagues, uninspiring meetings—you live from one break to the next.
Does this sound familiar? Exactly. It’s not good. If you frequently dread starting your day, it’s time to take action. Life can be different. You aspire to do what you love, and it’s your responsibility to make it a reality. No one else can pull you out of this situation. So, let’s get to work! It’s time to turn this around.
Great. You want to start doing what you love. Let’s begin with your current activities. You don’t have to change your life completely. Sometimes, little tweaks can renew your enthusiasm for your work. Turning a boring, uninspiring situation into a goal-driven environment can make your job exciting and enjoyable.
Figure out how you can improve at what you do. Suppose you aim to become the best in your field; what would you undertake? Think about studying, reading books, experimenting, reading trade journals, etc. You can make your work much more enjoyable by challenging yourself to improve your initiative.
Set challenging goals for yourself. For instance, complete all tasks for the day by four o’clock, achieve a minimum response rate, or continually surprise your boss with the quality of your work.
Do your best to improve your relationships with colleagues. Try discussing your frustrations openly and honestly, work on your social skills (like learning to listen), and spend time getting to know your colleagues better.
Let your supervisor know you’re feeling stuck and unhappy and need more (or fewer) challenges.
List what you enjoy about your job and what you don’t. Then, figure out how to reduce the “unpleasant” list. Can things be delegated, eliminated, or transferred? Discuss this with your supervisor if needed.
Sometimes, the problem isn’t the work itself but your approach. Work without a goal often becomes monotonous. Work on yourself. Get better at what you do.
The more you learn, the more enjoyable your work life becomes. It turns into a working experiment rather than a daily grind.
Discover What Your Ideal Life Looks Like
What does “doing what you love” look like for you? Sit down with a notebook and a good pen, and start dreaming. How would your ideal life look? How would your day go if you did what you loved? Make a mind map or write it as a story, whichever works best for you.
What do you do when you wake up? How do you fill your days? What do you want to achieve? What goals do you pursue? How do you feel? Who are the people in your life, and who aren’t? What kind of people do you surround yourself with? Where do you live? What have you accomplished?
Don’t ask yourself if it’s possible. Ask yourself what you would want. How would your life look if you did what you enjoyed? It’s funny because this exercise is more complicated than it seems. We always seem to know very clearly what we don’t want, but what we do like is usually less clear. You don’t move forward by always focusing on what you don’t want. You need to know what you want to change in your life.
So, get started. Find out what you want and what your gut feeling tells you. Dare to dream. Dare to write it down. There are no consequences for writing it down. Nothing is expected of you once you’ve written it down. So, start writing. Don’t know what you want? Keep the question in your mind and return to your notebook in a few days.
Also, try reversing things you don’t want. No nagging colleagues, so do want friendly and inspiring colleagues. See, you progress quickly this way. Once you have a picture of your ideal life, we can move on to the next steps.
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. — Steve Jobs
Set Your Sights on the Horizon
Your dream life is the direction. Now, it’s essential to determine which route you’ll take. This means setting a few concrete goals for yourself. Inspiring goals that help you move forward serve as a guide, as markers on the horizon:
- I will have enrolled in a course before I go on vacation.
- This week, I will finish reading that book.
- Next week, I will talk to that colleague about our conflict.
- I will be registered at the Chamber of Commerce by next month.
- By the end of this month, I will have reached three people to collaborate.
It doesn’t matter what your goals are as long as they help you move towards your dream life. They can be big or small, complex or very clear to you. The important thing is that you think of them and write them down. Ideally, write them down daily. This keeps the goals fresh in your mind, making it more likely that your daily choices will help you move forward.
So, imagine your ideal life becoming a reality. What steps would you have taken to make this happen? What goals would you have achieved? Set these goals and use them as a guide towards a better life.
Believe You Can
Believing that you can eventually do what you love is half the battle. The rest involves taking practical steps and maintaining your motivation. Success is nothing more than taking the proper steps. Making phone calls, conversing, writing texts, reading books, and convincing people are also important.
Believe that you can take these steps. You can learn everything you need to know. That if you want it badly enough, you can change your life. Because you can, and no, it won’t always go as quickly as you’d like. But that’s not the most important thing. What matters is that it happens. That you move forward.
If you keep that in mind and believe you can truly reach your ideal life, you can conquer the world—and that’s a great feeling. Are you finding it hard to believe in yourself? Then don’t start building your dream life yet. Start by creating your self-confidence. You can make it much faster once you have enough confidence in yourself.
The more confidence you have in yourself, the easier it becomes to change your life. It takes some effort, but it’s worth it. Putting on snow chains also takes effort (or so I’ve been told). But without snow chains, it becomes challenging to cross that snowy mountain pass. Keep that in mind!
Then, it’s time to be brave. Things are scary, that’s true. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do them. It means you need to be fearless. Doing scary things pays off. It would be best if you did scary things to change your life. And that’s great because once you prove you can tackle something scary, your self-confidence proliferates!
Make Sacrifices in Light of Your Dream
You’ll sometimes need to make sacrifices to do what you love. “Oh great, making sacrifices.” Well, don’t be so sarcastic. Making sacrifices is less harmful than it sounds, but only if you know what you’re doing it for. It’s not fun to skip a movie night when you hate your job and need something enjoyable. However, it’s straightforward if you’re working on your big “master plan” for a better life.
To make your dream come true, you’ll need to make sacrifices. This means sometimes trading fun, easy, comfortable things for complex, challenging, uncomfortable things. And that’s fine. Because as long as you know what you’re doing it for and know it’s helping you move forward, it doesn’t feel that bad.
If you know you can quit your job in a few months because your business is gaining momentum, it’s not wrong to do that lousy work. It pays the bills, and you’re looking forward to the day you can leave. You know it’s temporary, that a better future is around the corner. If you want to change badly enough, you can make many sacrifices with little trouble.
That’s why it’s so essential to design an inspiring future life. A life that’s truly worth it. One you believe in and ultimately feels achievable. It would be best if you kept yourself inspired to make sacrifices.
Do what you love and the money will follow. — Marsha Sinetar
Progress Step by Step
Sometimes, it might seem like you’re not moving forward, but when you reflect on the past few weeks, you’ll notice you’ve made significant progress.
Progress can sometimes be hard to see, like building self-confidence or expanding your knowledge. These things aren’t visible but are essential. Additionally, you do many things daily that help you move forward but are easy to forget. Once you’re excited about your goal, more often happens in a month than you think.
Accept that change sometimes will be slower than you’d like. It’s not about how quickly you move forward; it’s about moving forward. You’ll eventually reach your destination if you keep walking in one direction long enough. All you need to do is lift your foot and place it forward. Over and over again.
Keep moving forward. Step by step. With every step, you get closer to a more enjoyable life. It can take weeks, months, or even years. As long as you move forward, it feels good.
Enjoy the Journey
This is life—what you’re experiencing now, with the seconds ticking away. No matter how much you wish your life were different, it is as it is now, and that’s okay.
Life doesn’t start when you achieve your goals. It’s already started. It’s in full swing. Don’t forget that. Don’t forget to enjoy the good things you already have. Don’t be frustrated. Be relaxed, brave, confident in the future, grateful for the progress, and content with the good things you experience.
Want to spend more time with friends, children, or your partner in your dream life? Start doing that now. Make your life a bit-perfect now. Fully enjoy all the beautiful things. Enjoy the progress you’re making. Your life is already worth it and will only improve from here. Live with that mindset; don’t let these beautiful moments slip away.
You’re living now. Not later. Later is a new now, and another new now. If you think about later during every “now,” you haven’t experienced this moment consciously. And that’s a shame because every moment is valuable. Stop the frustration and get to work. Take control and enjoy every step.
Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive. — Howard Thurman
Personalized Guidance Available
Are you ready to sharpen your focus and achieve your goals with the power of simplicity? Schedule a personal consultation now. Discover how targeted guidance and strategies can accelerate your progress and enhance your success.
Take Action
Let this be when you focus fully on what truly matters. Book a Consultation and turn your clear vision into reality. Be focused. Be successful.
Stay Ahead of the Curve
If you found this article insightful and wish to master digital interactions and personal growth, subscribe to the Letter to Boost Your Mondays.
Catch My Daily Posts on Medium!
Explore daily articles on Medium, where I delve into personal growth, lifestyle design, and productivity. Each piece is crafted to inspire and provoke thought, blending practical advice with personal insights. Keep in touch with my latest reflections and join by following me at Medium