Are You Choosing To Hate Your Job?

In life, that way that we choose to see things has an absolutely huge impact on how we feel when we experience them. Mindset is literally everything.

If we go into something expecting it to be boring and dull, then it’s extremely likely that’s how we’ll perceive it. Our subconscious minds look for clarification of the thoughts that we serve it all around us.

If we believe something is scary, our subconscious will highlight all of the reasons that we should feel fear. And then we feel fear. But if we believe the same thing is exciting, our subconscious will highlight all of the reasons that we should feel excited. And then we feel excited.

We have the choice

So this means that we can literally choose the emotions that we feel. For example, if we “hate” our jobs and we tell ourselves repeatedly every day that we hate our jobs, our subconscious will highlight all of the hundreds of reasons that we should hate our jobs.

Then we feel dread on Monday mornings, we feel bored at work, we associate everything to do with our job; our boss, the place, what we do when we’re there… with very negative feelings. Then because we feel bad, we tell ourselves about how much we hate our jobs some more. It’s an endless cycle that feeds itself.

But imagine if we changed that talk, and told ourselves about how much we love our jobs? How much different would our entire perception become?

The issue though, is that you can’t just tell yourself that you love your job a few times and expect to undo weeks or months of subconscious programming. It doesn’t quite work like that, your subconscious is far too used to picking out all the negatives and will still be sticking to those existing habit patterns.

So your subconscious needs a bit of a helping hand. It needs repetition, and it needs guidance. It needs a kick start to push it into a new way of thinking.

Here’s a really powerful exercise. First, write out a list of all the things that you love about your job.

But wait a second, what if there isn’t anything that you love about it? Well, that’s your subconscious’ old way of thinking, blocking you from seeing what’s in front of you. You’re just not looking hard enough.

Do you like that you get money in exchange for your job?
Do you like that you get the weekends to spend that money enjoying doing things with your family?
Do you like that it’s close to where you live?
Do you like that you get to work in a warm office instead of in torrential rain outside?
Do you like that you are given promotion opportunities to better yourself?
What about the work you actually do, do you like that you have some freedom to be creative? Do you like that you have a voice and can influence the work your team does, should you choose to?
Do you have friends where you work? Do you like them?

(I get that many of these might not apply to where you actually work, but you get the point).

If we think hard enough, we can come up with many, many reasons to be grateful for what we have. We’re not in a third world country, our human needs are met, we have opportunities in front of us. From a different perspective, we are living the dream right now.

How to use this list

Once you have a list of what you love, stand in front of the mirror and read each one out, starting with the phrase “I love my job because…” every time. For example, “I love my job because it pays me good money that I can use to enjoy time with my family”, and so on.

Doing this one time will give you a little flutter of gratitude and probably a very slight breath of fresh air, but then as you go to work that day, the boost you had will likely quickly disappear. Again, it takes a little longer to reprogram your subconscious.

However if you do this every single morning for a couple of weeks or a month, and you read the statements with energy and enthusiasm, you start to pick things up at work that reinforce this new belief.

You notice a little gesture of kindness from a colleague. You notice your boss being lenient, instead of only noticing when your boss is critical. You notice opportunities to have a positive impact, instead of only noticing the negatives. Your subconscious starts paying attention to the positive side of the coin instead of the negative.

And that’s when the magic happens.

Everything suddenly looks much brighter.

But what if you don’t really fancy writing out the list and doing this exercise? Well, if you’re still dreading Monday mornings… it might be worth giving it a shot and seeing the change it makes. Better to invest 2 minutes each morning reading a list, than going through life unhappy, right?

You feel happier, you feel grateful, you feel excited to go to work, you feel that you have opportunities for growth in front of you (And growth is the second most important of the six human needs). Suddenly your perception of the world starts to change.

Realizing that we have the power to create the world around us that we want, and realizing that we’re not a slave to our circumstances, is one of the most empowering beliefs that we can create for ourselves.

Once we can really start to make this belief a part of us, the power that we create within ourselves is incredible. Suddenly everything becomes possible, nothing is out of reach, and best of all we realize that we are the ones who can make the choice right now to go for what we want, and create the lives that we want.

Make the choice to change your thinking. Make the choice to take control of your life. Make the choice to be happy. Today.

If you enjoyed reading this and want to know when my next post is live, like my page on Facebook here.

If you want to find out more about what I do and how I can help you, check out this video on YouTube

I’ll speak to you soon,

Dan