Love Your Job

CHAPTER 2 Creating the Blueprint for Your Dream Job ■ ■ ■

To find out what will make you love your job again, you need to do some homework. It all begins with some inner soul-searching. The best way to get down to the nitty-gritty is to pull out a notebook, or open a new Word document on your computer, and devote it to your Job Remodeling project. I find that the process of writing these things down in a journal gives them meaning and a focus that you can’t get by talking about it. Meantime, it allows you to capture a snapshot of your job that’s hard to get any other way.

This is your personal journey, so store the information in a safe place. By keeping the journal private, you’re free to write without feeling that someone is judging you. This is your vision. You may want to share it with a career coach or a consultant down the road to help you draw conclusions or develop an action plan.

As management consultant Peter Drucker wrote in his book Managing in the Next Society: “The most effective way to manage change successfully is to create it.”

To go from merely surviving in your job to thriving, you need to find meaning in your work or to accept it for what it is—a paycheck—and stop complaining. (I hope you don’t fall into this latter category.)

My goal for this book is to provide an interactive path for you to start your passage to a happier work life that is more than an income. The simple action of putting it all down and letting it out provides clarity. You begin to connect ...