Your best work represents you.
Joyful work makes you feel alive, energetic, and happy. It makes you curious about learning new ideas, approaches, and skills to enhance your work and excited to try out new ideas, approaches, and solutions to challenges you face.
Most essential is that with joyful work, there is no difference between you and your work. Your work fully represents you, your values, and your authentic self. With joyful work, there is no such thing as switching jobs, getting promoted, and building a career since your work is who you are. There are no jobs to switch, no careers to make, and no need to compare yourself to others or be someone else. You are enough.
When you do joyful work, you will always find an audience for it, a niche that benefits from what you do, appreciates you, and even pays you for your work!
When we are young, we take our first jobs to make money and satisfy our parents or those close to us. We usually take jobs that have nothing to do with what we studied in school or what interests us.
While this is normal, one should be careful, as this initial job can lead to 20 years of working at things that can lead to unhappiness and feelings of isolation and emptiness. The sooner one can find work that represents who they are and what they stand for, the sooner work will no longer be something to do just to make money but instead form the nucleus of an authentic life filled with purpose and meaning.
The benefits of joyful work
You will never have to WORK again because.
You no longer see the difference between work and play.
You feel authentic.
You want to pinch yourself to ensure this is real
You are happy.
Each email, text message, and phone call you receive is exciting to answer.
Your relationships improve.
Your health improves .
There is no longer a reason to retire.
You would do this work for free but figure out how to make the income you require.
Your kids, if you have them, will also grow up to find work they love.
You stop wasting time on areas of your life that no longer add value or you enjoy.
You sleep better.
You start to take better care of yourself .
People will feel good around you.
I could go on, but you get the idea! By now, you are thinking, “How do I find work that I enjoy? “Start by seeing what matches your abilities, motivations, and deep interests. Think about what motivates you the most and why. Then, imagine you visited an old-fashioned physical bookstore for two hours. What part of the bookstore would you hang out in? This tells me where your deepest interests are RIGHT now.
Then see where your matches are?. Your joyful work can be found in the alignment of your abilities and your deepest interests.
The path to joyful work will be the most challenging job you will ever have, but it will also be the one most worth it!
And, as you go, I’ll be cheering you on each step of the way.
Joy at work, what is it?
Let’s delve into a topic we rarely discuss at work-joy. It’s not an everyday conversation, but if you’ve ever experienced it, you know it’s unforgettable. Joy at work is a subjective feeling, and the best way to understand if someone has it is to ask them. In my research on joyful work over many years, I’ve identified 5 common qualities many people share.
A deep sense of focus and concentration about one’s work.
There is a feeling that work is blissful. One can’t distinguish between work and play, vacation and vacation, or Monday or Friday.
There is a sense of urgency about this work. One is unsure how long this will last, so they work hard and are always productive!
The rest of life improves around the person doing the joyful work. Relationships, happiness, health, and the ability to earn income from what one enjoys increase.
Deep knowledge, creativity, and a sense of purpose emerge; one realizes that joyful work is the best choice.
Often, the path to joyful work is challenging but worth it!