How many of us lose sight of the playfulness and joy that can come when we do work that we love and work that stimulates us? Recently, I was facilitating a group coaching session and their leader talked about how she periodically forgets to bring joy and play into her work. She’s the leader of a sales group in which there’s a lot of pressure, deadlines, paperwork, stress, etc. She loves her work, she really likes and respects her team, and when she doesn’t sit in the stress, she has a great time doing her work. What can we do to prevent stress from sucking all the joy out of our work?
We are busy, stressed, overwhelmed, worried, etc. We get insecure and unsure of ourselves and then we’re not playing anymore. We’re not having fun and we’re probably not doing our best work. I’m not sure if we can remove the busy from our work place, but we can certainly change how we look at being busy. We can either stress over it, which changes nothing, we can see if it’s possible to be less busy, or we can own the busy and have a good time with it.
This may not apply if you don’t really love your work. Yet what if you could find some fun and play even doing work that you don’t love? What if we get to bring the playfulness for ourselves? How different would you feel about work if you could find some fun in it every day? I don’t really like invoicing and bookkeeping, but I do really like to make money. So when I’m doing invoicing and bookkeeping, I start to think about all of the fun I can have with the money that I’m earning. It makes the process so much more enjoyable.
How different would you feel about work if you could find some fun in it every day? #stress #work #joy #play Click To TweetIf you are feeling insecure about your ability to do your work, what can you do about that? Can you ask for help, more training, or a mentor? Or are you feeling insecure because you are telling yourself a story that you aren’t good enough to do your work? If so, how can you change that false story? The truth is, you’ve got this! What if you actually owned that and believed it? How much easier would it be to have fun at work if we really believed in our ability to do that work?
I vividly remember the feeling as a kid when I would finish my chores or my homework and my parents would say, “Go play!” We would run as fast as we could outside to be with our friends, to play a game, to let loose and have fun. Why not bring some of that joy into your daily life? Here’s the truth…You’ve got this! Go play!
Love,
Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC