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| wholelife action area> getting to know myself better my working life personal relationships health - mind and body leisure, social and 'me time' mindercises |
my working life
Is
your work getting you down? Do you feel stressed out? Need to
find a balance between work and play? Have a browse through cosmic-cherry’s
working life section and see if you can throw some light on your
situation and illuminate some changes!
All work involves 'time' - your life time. It is healthy if you
regard work as a potentially enjoyable way to spend part of your
time. Your work can keep you involved and active mentally and
physically. It can promote feelings of self-worth which underpin
your self-esteem. It can give you a sense of accomplishment and
meaning in life. Depending on your position and relationship with
colleagues, work can also provide enjoyable social interactions.
The problem is that so many of us see work either as a necessary
evil, or as the be all and end all of our existence. Sadly, it's
quite rare to find someone who is not only happy in their work
but also spends merely an appropriate portion of their life time
working! The purpose of visiting this section of the website is
to find out how you currently relate to your working life and
how you can make changes, if you want to.
You could decide to re-think your attitude, behaviour and time
vis-à-vis your current work pattern or even make a radical
change and enter a new field of work. Always remember that 'the
you at work' is affected by all the other facets of your life,
so keep a WholeLife approach to your thinking.
Remind yourself how much of your life time is currently devoted
to work and whether or not this you think this is appropriate.
Are you nice to know at work? Is your job or career rewarding
for you? It not - why not? These may be some of the issues you
hope to resolve.
Know what you want and make that change!
Write a short statement about what you would like work to be for
you from now on – this is your Working Target. It is a very
general overview of your working life and does not include any
detail. It could be as brief as "to enjoy my daily working
time". It should always be stated as a positive, for example
"to spend less time at work" is negative. In this case
your Target could read something like "to spend a sensible
amount of time at work vis-à-vis my other life activities".
It can include more than one aim eg "to improve the quality
of my work by giving it 100% and to get on with my colleagues
better". Whatever your Target is, focus on this for a few
moments.
Next you need to think about all the things
that you would like to change to support your TARGET. To
identify these changes, choose to answer the questions which are
appropriate to your individual circumstances from the following
selection of work related issues and write your answers down:
>> Work
relationships
>> Work
effort, work-related stress & time management
>> Workaholism
or work out of proportion
You may find that a lot of your answers point to the need for
some minor or even radical changes to support your Target. Even
if ten or more items need to be appraised, you should be able
to deal with them using cosmic-cherry’s changes-choices system.
Simply divide a page in your notebook into two columns and head
them Create Changes and Action
Choices. List the things you need to change in the Create
Changes column. And the steps you are going to take, and 'within
what time span', to bring about the changes you want to make in
the second Action Choices column.
Sometimes it is obvious that the problem is not your problem but,
for example, that of your boss or the organisational culture in
which you find yourself. Once you understand that even if you
made changes yourself the problem would not go away, then you
may need to take more radical steps.
Perhaps you could ask to be transferred to another department?
Perhaps you should investigate the potential for leaving your
present employment and starting afresh? This is a time for diplomacy
and personal integrity. Think through all the options carefully
and do not jeopardise your present position by being loose tongued.
If you have responsibilities for financially
supporting other people then any changes must be particularly
well planned. Whatever you come up with, make sure it fits
your picture of what you want from your working time and, if necessary,
introduce a new Working Target.