Do you love your job?

This being the week of love, it may be interesting to know that on average, only about 15% of people love their jobs. Yet overall, only 33% of people love their lives. And while aging can be a downer for many, turns out that the older we are, the happier we’ll likely become: 36% of those ages 50-64 are happy, as are a whopping 41 percent of adults ages 65+. This could be because they don’t have to go to work!

But if hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work you must go, Meg Selig, MA-Ed., author of Changepower and a regular writer for Psychology Today, offers tips on how to up your on-the-job happiness quotient. She explains that our brains are hardwired for negativity with the intent of helping us to survive. Yet it is possible to re-wire our brains to feel and seek happiness more readily, through behaviors such as these:

• Label your unhappy feelings. When we give a name to the dissatisfaction we’re feeling, it shifts the brain from progressive emotional distress to a state of thinking, which is less painful. So the next time you recognize frustration at work, name it: sad, discouraged, angry, incensed.
• Take a deep breath, or three. This simple act can take us out of a fight-or-flight response to what Selig describes as rest-and-restore.
• Smile and sit up straight. Try it! You’ll see that instantly you feel better. That’s because smiling releases endorphins to the brain, and good posture improves feelings of well being.
• Appreciate what did and didn’t happen to you already that day. You were able to bike to work, the weather is lovely, and the cup of coffee hubby made you was fantastic. Additionally, no one in your family is sick, and it doesn’t look as if your job is in danger of being cut. Identifying positive happenings and non-happenings can up our contentment.

Appreciate things about yourself, too. If you finished a report or solved a sticky customer issue, love what you’ve achieved. You may end up adding more love to your work in the process.

Photo credit: © Kornilovdream

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