Healthy Focus

Everyone says “you better love what you do” probably because we spend so much time doing it!
I think there’s something more and recently I’ve come to think that loving your work enables a healthy focus and this healthy focus can be protective – it feeds and sustains you when the chips are down. And the chips can really be down at work – low morale, frustrating interpersonal conflicts, you name it. But if the work is compelling to you, if you find kernels of meaning in your work, a healthy focus on the work itself enables a healthy distance from the vicissitudes in the workplace. This is of course complicated when co workers critique or worse disparage our efforts, but even then, if what we do has meaning it is protective.

So I’m not saying quit your job, but maybe nurture the aspect of it you like the best and cling to it when its shiny veneer gives way to a shade of dull grey.