How To Improve your Working Life with 3 Simple Ideas!

It’s hard enough at the best of times if you don’t like your job but when there’s an economic downturn it can feel like a prison sentence. Good jobs are thin on the ground, and let’s face it, we’ve all got to eat and pay the bills. And so you stay put and try not to rock the boat too much but it’s eating away at you. Your enthusiasm starts to wane, you lose motivation,your joie de vivre for other parts of your life is affected and before you know it you’re well and truly fed up!

How to Improve Your Working Life

Here’s three tips to help you cope with the bad times and get ready for the upturn (trust me, this will pass).

1Don’t Take it Personally, Think Global

We women have an uncanny ability to personalise things. Thoughts like ‘Why me?‘, ‘I’m no good’, ‘I’m so unlucky’ start to morph into ‘I’ll never get a good job again‘, ‘no one will employ me’. It’s a downward spiral and doing you no good at all. I’m all for being realistic about situations and the reality of this situation is that there is a global economic downturn and ‘times is ‘ard’ for almost everyone. It is not personal.

2 Upgrade Your Spam Filter

Now about those little messages dropping unwanted into your brain as you sigh over yet another unrewarding piece of work you have to do. Believe me, they are making you feel worse. So if we want to feel better we need to deal with them. If you’re a regular reader you’ll know I’m very into evidence based research and using techniques that work. Well, positive thinking is not something off the wall; it’s a technique that works and is used in treatment models for all kinds of conditions.

First you have to identify your negative messages to self (write them down as the thoughts go in; I bet you’re really unkind to yourself sometimes). Then you have to harness that negative impact for a good and positive one. So turn your spam into something helpful, like ‘ I am good at what I do’, ‘this will pass’, and so on. I can’t write them for you as they have to be something that sounds like you talking and doesn’t make you squirm with embarrassment!

3 Find Something Fulfilling Outside of Work

When you’re not getting what you want from work try and get it from somewhere else! Work out what you’re missing: challenge, stimulation, new learning, team work, responsibility, money maybe, and see if there is a way of finding that outside your current role. You could offer yourself and your skills to a charity, maybe do an additional part time job (that’s harder but not impossible), start an online course, read a self help book and try out what it advises, sign up for an evening class…. Give yourself ten minutes to jot down all the possibilities, don’t censor anything. Or better still do it with a friend and make it fun.

I’d love to hear how you cope or have coped if you’ve ever been stuck in a job rut. And don’t forget my book ‘When Work Isn’t Working’ covers all of this and more.

Photo Credit: Kostas Kitsos

I Hate My Job!

Well, actually I don’t hate my job; I LOVE it. But there was a time when I was unhappy at work and really couldn’t see a way out. I was quietly miserable in a ‘good’ job that had ceased to float my boat and the only thing that was keeping me there was the financial security and the prospect of a pension. In time I would have become a sad and moany woman, muttering in corners about a mythical ‘them’ who set out to make life difficult for me (Bet you know someone like that!)

And then one day I woke up! Why was I wasting my precious life worrying about the future and wasting the now? Why was I assuming that whatever I did next would not be as good (and it has been so much better) Why did I think I should be grateful to have the job I had? And why did I think that because I was in my late 40s I was too old to do something different? None of that actually turned out to be true and fear was holding me back. Losing some of that fear literally changed my life!

Resolve to Be Fabulous!

I hear similar comments to those above from women at almost every organisational in house seminar I run. Usually followed by - ‘But you’re so lucky to be doing what you love’. Well, luck had very little to do with it. I worked hard and plotted and planned to get my dream job, and you can too!

I know the economic climate is not great at the moment and I am not saying that making change is easy. However, if you never make a start you’ll never get anywhere. Things will improve and you could be spending valuable time now making yourself fit and ready to grab the changes when they present themselves. You must have heard the phrase ‘Luck is a case of hard work meeting opportunity’

Resolve to put in the groundwork now! Work out what you want to do (my book will help). Make a list of all those who will support you. Plan to retrain if you need to, maybe nightschool, your own reading, or a sideways transfer. You could get get outside professional help like a good coach, or go on a course.  Whatever you do, don’t put it off until better times come along. Start to work on your fabulous future NOW!

A Funny Thing Happened to Me Last Week…

When Work Isn't Working

I got an email a couple of weeks ago which stopped me in my tracks. Let me explain the background.

Recently I published my 50th newsletter. I really wanted to thank all my readers who have helped it grow tenfold (by generously passing it on friends and colleagues), so I ran a  competition. I offered regular subscribers an opportunity to win a  free copy of my book ‘When Work isn’t Working’ and, as my readership is all over the world, I promised to send it anywhere in the world. All I wanted to know was how long people had been reading the newsletter.

I had responses from all over the world and printed the addresses so I could pick some at random. One of the enties was a South African email address. As I’ve had articles in South African magazines I have quite a lot of readers there so this was no surprise. What was a surprise was the address they had given – it was a two minute walk from my home in a village in the south West of England!

At first I assumed that I had somehow transposed the address from another email but no, it was genuine. I contacted the sender who told me she had applied on behalf of her daughter as she thought she could really do with the book just now. And so it was popped through her letter box, much to her surprise!

It’s an amazing coincidence, isn’t it? And I really hope she enjoys the book (I’ll let you know!) And it was great to have helped a Mum out who was concerned about her daughter half way around the globe; one of those little human connections that uplift you.

When was the last time a funny thing happened to you…?

What’s Your Perfect Working Day?

I wrote ‘When Work isn’t Working’ for all my coaching clients who came to me dissatisfied with their work. People were unhappy with the job they had, for all sorts of reasons, but just didn’t know what to do instead. They felt stuck.

And so I wrote a creative visualisation especially for them, which is in the book, and is now available for you to listen to right now completely free!

Free Download

Reading a visualisation doesn’t work as well as hearing it. Which is why I have recorded it and it is on the site, entirely free of charge for you! If you have the book already, you will find it enhances all the exercises you have already done. And if you don’t have the book, don’t worry – it works well on its own too!

Simply click on the link to the right of your screen called ‘Your Perfect Day’. You don’t need to enter any details. You can either listen to it directly from your computer, or, (recommended) down load it to a player and take it somewhere calm and relaxing for you, where you won’t be interrupted.

I hope you enjoy listening to it and that it takes you closer to achieving your ideal job! Please do let me know what you think! And if listening to the relaxation has whetted your interest in finding out more about your perfect job, you can download it immediately!  It’s available to buy in UK pounds and US Dollars!