by Scarlett de Courcier

Created on: March 09, 2010   Last Updated: March 10, 2010

Having a good boss is a great starting point, but if a business’ employees mope around feeling lost and miserable, the whole thing will fail. As an employee, it can be difficult to muster up enthusiasm for a job you’ve possibly ended up in out of desperation, exasperation or just plain necessity. Yet it is possible. How? 

Bring your self to work

This may seem like an obvious thing to say, but note the space between the words ‘your’ and ‘self’. Many people arrive at work reluctant to be there, expecting to spend the day doing something they hate with no input on their part. This can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy; if you never volunteer ideas, why should your boss think of asking you for them? Everyone has something they can bring to the office, and there is a surprising amount of crossover between hobbies and work, if you just allow room for it. Try to think of ways you can use your hobbies and interests to make your office a more stimulating place to work. Encouraging others to do the same can lead to an exciting and really quite enjoyable day, with far less time spent clock-watching and more time spent working. Satisfaction all around. 

Do what you love

Easy to say and not so easy to do in the current climate; but if you really hate your job, work out why. If you’ve always hated maths and finances, how have you ended up as an accountant? What was your dream job when you were a child? Would you still like to do it? Why aren’t you in that job now? Working out what you’d love to do and why are the first steps in finding a truly fulfilling career path. Interviewers like enthusiastic candidates, sometimes even more than they like experienced ones, and working out why you’d love to be a teacher, surveyor or translator will give you a good chance of succeeding in finding your dream position. 

Love what you do

On the flip side of this is the fact that most of us don’t absolutely hate our jobs, even if we go through periods of wishing we didn’t have to work. Realistically though, what would you do if you weren’t working? Sit at home watching daytime TV and eating doughnuts? Surely even this would become boring after a while. So instead of wishing you weren’t heading to work in the morning, try to inject some spice into the inevitable. Work out which parts of your job you’d miss if you were to leave it tomorrow, and build on those. Also, it is surprisingly

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