In this episode of the Zen Your Work podcast, I share a story about the most miraculous thing that’s ever happened to me and use it to provide lessons that you can apply to creating your ideal work experience. You can listen to the podcast in the player below, subscribe to it in iTunes, Podbean, or Stitcher, or read the key takeaways below.
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Key takeaways to create your ideal work experience
It might seem crazy to say “it’s all in your head”, but anyone who has ever experienced significant changed in their life started with one simple act: They changed their mind. They made a mental commitment to creating a new experience. This is true of any major life change – getting married, moving, ending a long-term relationship, quitting a job, etc. All of these acts start with a decision to move forward in a different way.
And if it’s true of the big decisions, it’s true of the everyday ones as well. If you want to create a better experience at work for yourself, it starts with a mental commitment to that new experience. What tends to hold people back from making that commitment is a lack of belief that change is possible – they look to their boss and their co-workers and the environment that they are in and it all feels like it is out of their control. However, the difference between people who create positive work experiences for themselves, and people who do not is simple: They take personal responsibility for it, and take the action necessary to make it happen regardless of the context they are operating in. There’s no secret sauce to this. You have to know what you want, believe that it’s possible, and then take action to make it your reality.
Here are some steps you can take to get you started:
- Know what you want. I want you to imagine a reality at your current job in which you feel perfectly fulfilled, content, and can’t wait to come into work each day. This might involve a bit of suspension of disbelief, but play along – if you can vision what success would look like, then you don’t have much open of achieving it.
- Know your contribution. Everything we do contributes to the experience we create. You can’t control other people, but you can control what you bring to the table. Once you have your vision, ask yourself these questions: What did you contribute to making that experience possible? How did you behave in that experience? How did you interact with your co-workers? How did you approach your boss? When you get a new project on your plate, how did you go about it?
- Focus on the good. How much time at work does the average person dedicate to focusing on all the things they don’t like? Quite a bit. Does that serve your goal of creating a better work experience? Not at all. So flip the script – look for reasons to be positive rather than focusing on the negative, and look for opportunities where you might have previously seen obstacles. The more you focus your attention in the right way, the more good things will pop out of the woodwork for you!
Learn how to Zen Your Work
If you liked this episode of the podcast, you’ll love my book Zen Your Work. It’s filled with exercises just like this to help you create an amazing work experience from the inside out.
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