Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself. Charles Baudelaire
It is very rarely that you come across people who say that they thoroughly enjoy what they do. If you probe that further, you will realize that most of us are working to earn a living and not working because we enjoy what we are doing. The reasons for frustrations strangely enough have less to do with the nature of work itself, but more to do with our attitude, our pre conceived notions and our personal failings in terms of envy, jealousy, ego etc.
In the rat race of life, most of us do not follow our heart and instead are guided by well meaning parents and elders who push, goad and pressurize us into academics and careers that they perceive offers the best job prospects. Unfortunately, the overwhelming large majority of us, in our formative years are clueless about our real passions, risk averse in exploring opportunities that interest us but are far removed from the family history or the social norms and even more bound by family expectations and values to assert our independent views. Work therefore is not a choice but thrust on us and we often find it difficult to reconcile to the monotony and drabness of our work.
In reality though, the ideal thing is to follow our hearts desire and chart out own course. In practice though we might be stuck with a job or career that can in theory be thrown to the winds and a fresh start made but we lack the courage to do it. Then the best option is to find motivation in the work we have, make creative allowances to love what we do and accept changes in work as being for the best. Once we have changed our mental frame of reference to our work, you will discover new pleasures in mundane tasks, gladly take on challenges that others refuse, wont make monetary rewards the focus of our work, we will revel in team work and the fruits of team success and wont be envious of others or jealous of their apparent successes.
More importantly, it will dawn on us that not having anything to do will bore us to death and if retirement is what we pine for when stressed at work, how much more stressful will it be when we have nothing to do and a life time ahead. How often and how long can you amuse yourself doing just daily chores and keeping busy with trivial pursuits? The lucky person is one who has a passion to pursue and all the time and resources in the world to do it. Of course then it becomes our daily work that we enjoy and embrace, proving that Charles Baudelaire was absolutely right!
Remember: Take up a profession that is your passion and you will never have to work a day in your life!
Try these:
-
Look back a your childhood- what were the dreams you had when you were 7 years, 11 years, 15 years, 17 years and 21 years old. Did these dreams change over time? Have you pursued any of these dreams? Are any of these dreams still a passion? Do you have it in you, to risk everything to peruse that passion?
-
Ask yourself if you enjoy Monday mornings. Do you enjoy the job profile, the work environment and the job itself? If you got an opportunity to choose your job what would you choose?
-
It is never too late to follow your passion provided you know what you want to pursue. Identify that today. Then fix a time slot on a daily or weekly basis to pursue it, It could be learning something new, maybe teaching someone, maybe a creative pursuit like writing, photography, painting etc, maybe a social activity like helping the less privileged, maybe traveling to explore nature, new destinations, etc.
This post is courtesy www.actspot.com
You are also invited to visit our weekly inspirational and motivational blog www.poweract.blogspot.com
