How to Get Motivated and Love Your Job Again

Remember your very first day on the job? Your shoes had a shine like the tiles on the Space Shuttle and the crease in your slacks could have diced celery. The air was somehow fresher, the birds chirpier. You had been hired. You'd been given a chance to excel, a chance to make a difference. rnNow contrast that with this morning. rnAre you motivated to wake up every morning and go to your job with full enthusiasm? After a while, most people end up making one compromise after another until they've resigned themselves to mediocrity. It's darned hard to keep that first-day buzz going. rnBUT…there's no reason you can't choose to recover a good measure of that first-day feeling. You can motivate yourself to strive for excellence, and put it to good use in the service of everyone whose lives you touch on a daily basis. And, you can love your job again. rnIt's all about making the choice to do it. Why You Need to Get Motivated, Find Your Enthusiasm, and Love Your Job Again rnHave you ever met a two-year-old who wasn't enthusiastic? We come prepackaged with it. And then… rnWhat happens to us? rnWhat happens is that we make a choice. Some of us choose to make the effort to stay in touch with our inner enthusiasm and love our jobs. Others find reasons to lose touch with it--boredom, responsibilities, challenges, fatigue. rnBut here's the problem: Enthusiasm is the lifeblood of all success. Without it, nothing great happens. If you choose to lose touch with your inner enthusiasm, you are choosing mediocrity. It's really that simple. rnSure, there are plenty of reasons to curb your enthusiasm. But there are just as many reasons to find it again including celebrating your incredible good fortune. In the process you can make that fortune even better. Here's How to Find Your Enthusiasm Step 1: Start with the fact that you're not dead yet, that you were born at all, that you have a job, and that compared to a lot of folks, you have a pretty darn good job. Step 2: Now take a close look at the circumstances of this good job you have. Write down your five biggest complaints and spin them into positives. For example, "My boss micromanages me" can be reframed as "My boss cares enough about me to step into my work when I need help." rnIf you've truly committed to finding your first-day buzz again, you should be an awful lot closer to it now than you were ten minutes ago. rnAll this rethinking and reframing has removed a HUGE energy drain from your life--one you were probably unaware of. It takes massive amounts of energy to continually reinforce your own sense of victimhood. Excellence is MUCH less expensive. Now that you feel lucky instead, what on Earth are you going to do with all that energy? rnHow about playing the Big Game you signed up for? rnNow, you just filled yourself up with a lion's share of this precious thing called the human spirit, and it will not invest in mediocrity. So play the meaningful, bighearted game you always dreamed of playing, and leave the mediocrity to others. Get motivated and start loving your job again.