Your alarm sounds and what’s the first thing that enters your mind? Not excitement at the promise of a brand new 24 hours on this planet, but instead a sinking heart and despair at the thought of yet another day in the office…
If only you could just turn it off and go back to sleep and make your responsibilities magically disappear. If only you could come down with a sudden virus (maybe you do a quick body scan to see if there is any niggling soreness or achiness you could latch onto) – but no, there’s no escaping it. There’s at least eight or nine hours of hell until you’re free again to flop, exhausted, onto the sofa, desperately scanning through job adverts on your phone.
Not an optimum way to live your life hey? As a career change coach, I help people to break out of unhappy work situations, but a career change takes time. And what I so often see in people who are seriously demotivated in their current roles is that the misery and exhaustion of getting through the working day can often impinge on their ability to make the shift they so urgently need. The result can be that they either they quit their job in desperation with no plans for the next step, or that this cycle of unhappiness runs the danger of going on indefinitely.
So what can you do to stay motivated and preserve the energy and positive mindset you need to make that change? Here are four suggestions:
Create a positive morning routine: The tendency, when you’re feeling demotivated at work, is to set your alarm as late as possible so you can delay as long as you can that feeling of “not another work day”. The problem with this is that we start the day tired and flustered, and don’t give ourselves the chance to cultivate a positive mindset before we reach the office. Instead, try giving yourself a bit longer in the morning and establish some routines to boost your mood. This may include meditation, a short walk around the block (there’s evidence that catching some early sun is important for keeping our body clock in check) and a nice home-cooked breakfast. You could even give yourself the chance to do a bit of inspirational reading: if you’re feeling uninspired by your current work, this can help ensure your brain is stimulated by what does inspire you.
Eat the frog! (Not literally): There’s a productivity technique by this name that follows the philosophy that if you have two frogs to eat – you go for the ugliest one first! In other words, if you have a big, unappealing task that you have to get done, it’s better to do it at the start of the day, rather than having it hanging over you. You could even decide the night before what that’s going to be so that you can hit the ground running and get it out of the way in the morning, leaving you feeling so much lighter for the rest of the day, riding the wave of motivation from having achieved that sticky task.
Tell yourself a different story: If we’ve spent a while hating our job, and complaining about it to friends and family, we can find ourselves stuck in a negative story that is very difficult to claw yourself out of. What this can mean is that even if our actual experiences in the office aren’t objectively all that terrible, the impression in our minds is pure misery and despair. Actually, our sense of wellbeing depends less on what happens to us and much more on how we react to it. We have the opportunity therefore to change the story to one that is more empowering and conducive to our happiness. When something happens to trigger a negative emotion at work, try playing around with some different perspectives in your mind. You could ask yourself questions such as – “What would the other person think?”, “Are there any other ways of looking at this?” or “How will I see this situation in a week/month/year?”
Do what most matters to you: We all have a set of core values that we want to live by, and the chances are, if you’re unhappy at work, that you aren’t getting the opportunity to express your values. You may even find that your job seriously compromises one of your very important values, such as wellbeing or authenticity, and that this is motivating your desire for a career change. Moving into a new career that will allow you to fully live your values is probably ideal, and something I help my clients with, but what to do in the meantime?
Once you’re clear on what your values are (there’s a useful list you could scan through in this article) and which ones you aren’t getting to express at work, you could think laterally and find ways to bring these into your work day – even in a small way. If, for example, you have creativity as a value, perhaps you could decorate your workspace or set yourself a creative challenge to innovate the way things are done in your team. If you have a value of connection, ensuring you book in regular social lunches with colleagues or friends who work nearby will give you a boost in the middle of the day. A value of adventure could mean you take a different route to work, or if it’s learning that’s your core value you could dedicate half an hour a day to reading up on some new developments in your industry or to learning a new skill.
Living our values feeds our spirit, so can mean we have more energy to apply to our current work and our career change, if we want one.