It’s all in how you look at it.
With a goal of career improvement on the list for many this year, I’ve been sharing ideas about job crafting—steps you can take to boost your satisfaction at work without necessarily changing positions. In the past 2 weeks, I’ve talked about tweaking who you work with, how you work with them, as well as shifting your job tasks to make your professional life more pleasant. This week, we’ll cover how to change your mindset to make the job you’re doing seem more meaningful.
As an example, in a former work role, I served as a customer service rep in the complaint department of a tourism company. Individuals who had trouble making travel arrangements, or who had already visited and weren’t happy with how it went, could call and share their experiences with me. My job was to attempt to turn their attitudes around.
But within just a few weeks, I was the one who needed an attitude overhaul. Hearing complaint after complaint was wearing me down. I started to lose my compassion, and hated going to work each day.
Then I received a thank you note from a visitor for whom I’d helped to resolve a sticky issue. “To be able to visit this part of the country was a lifelong goal for my elderly father, and you helped make it happen. Thank you for one of my life’s most precious memories,” she wrote.
It was then I realized that I wasn’t just solving people’s problems, I was helping them to create lasting family memories—something I place a high value on myself. From then on, when talking to unhappy customers, I’d attempt to learn more about the goals they had for the travel. This shifted the conversation away from the negative, and in most cases, led to easier, more successful resolutions. I didn’t need to change my job at all, just how I was looking at it.
Tweaking how you view your job to align with your priority religious or spiritual values may be just what you need to help you find more meaning in your work.