Yesterday, I received two calls. A young student, 8 months into his job, wanted to quit.
A young assistant professor, mother of a two year old, wanted to quit.
On asking the reason, both said, “I am not enjoying what I am doing.”
I posed a battery of questions to both:
- What are your expectations from a job right now vis-à-vis your competence and experience?
- What can you do to improve the current job?
- What is your definition of “enjoying”?
- Are you happy with your pay check?
- Do you have other options?
- Do you want to explore self employment?
To my surprise, they were both happy with their pay, had no other options and had not thought about self employment.
To my horror, they had no answer to my first three questions.
Enjoyment, Seriously?
Haven’t we started living for ‘enjoying’ only? At the top of it, we don’t know what we enjoy for long.
Can we enjoy our life the way we enjoy having an ice cream cone?
Can we enjoy every minute of our job the way we enjoy meeting our beloved?
Can we enjoy the drudgery of our daily routine the way we enjoy a short ad film?
I can see your head tilting sideways.
Does that mean our routine, our job, our life should be altered?
With patience plummeting, attention span dwindling, our sense of enjoyment has become sporadic and momentary.
Earlier, we could watch a three hour film but now, we can hold on to our attention till the popcorn bucket lasts.
We open a new tab on our laptop screens, while the previous tab is struggling to open.
A low battery sign on mobile phone is enough for us to feel like we have lost our dear most companion.
In a fickle feeling lifestyle, our enjoyment quotient changes at the speed of light. A good discounted buy cheers us up while staring at our phone for a message reply for few minutes puts us off. Routine, mundane tasks at workplace suck and clicks from short trips rock,.
Don’t we need to wake up, think and write down answers to the first three questions?
- What are your expectations from a job right now vis-à-vis your competence and experience?
It is very important for us to be SELF AWARE. Having a correct idea about our own competence goes a long way in objectively deciding about which job to leave and when? Actually, Self Awareness helps us in taking all the crucial decisions.
- What can you do to improve the current job?
Our current job and current life can be largely improved by our mindset. Criticizing, comparing and complaining will never help us in our workplace or life space but proactive action would.
- What is your definition of “enjoying”?
I think the trouble lies in starting with a wrong premise – The purpose of my life is to enjoy. Let us change this Short – Lived, fickle premise and move on. Find concrete reasons to make life altering decisions. Boredom is not a reason enough.
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Dr. Swati Lodha is an Author, Entrepreneur, Motivational Speaker, Parenting expert based in Mumbai. Having written Bestsellers like Come on get set go & Why Women are What they are, her book on Parenting will be published soon. Currently, she is running Life Lemonade which offers unique Training Programs on Life Transformation, High Performance Leadership, Women Issues and Parenting.
Connect with Dr. Swati Lodha on Linkedin, Twitter @drswatilodha & Facebook
Also read her best articles here!
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