It’s not the job

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

I would regularly give seminars to company employees on how to fall in love with their jobs regardless of what job they are in.  Whether it’s being a call center agent, nurse, teacher, policeman, company president, or a trash collector you can love your job by finding the hidden gems embedded in it.  You need to see your job as a choice rather than a need, see the good side of it, see the meaning it gives to your life as a whole, derive satisfaction from a finished task, make it a school of learning, or make it a school of virtues, etc. These are just some of the points I talk about to see your daily job in a different light.

For those who are always hopping from one job to another or from one company to another because they can’t seem to find that “perfect fit” given that salary is not an issue, here’s my message to them:  the problem is not the job or the company, it’s you.  As Regina Brett in her book, “God is Always Hiring”, would advise, “The secret to any job isn’t to leave when you get bored or restless or irritable, but to stay and make it better.”  Your job will become better when you become better.

Some people change jobs every six months and always end up hating every job.  They think the solution to any problem is to move, such as moving to another partner will solve their marital woes, moving to another company will solve their employment dilemma, their financial mess, their lack of passion or their excess of boredom.  They need a fix in attitude.   When their attitude is fixed their job is automatically fixed too.

It’s the heart not the town as the old story goes. When a new comer of a town would ask an old-timer of that town, “What are the people like in this town?”  The old-timer would ask in reply, “What were they like in the last town?”  The new comer says, “Mean and nasty.”  The old-timer answers, “Then that’s what you will find here.”  The next day, another new resident walks into the bar and asks what the people in this town are like.  The old-timer would ask the same question, “What were they like in the last town?”  The man says, “They were kindhearted and generous.”  The old-timer tells him, “Then that’s what you’ll find here.”

The change in attitude is about loving the simple things in your job, being creative in improving your tasks, getting interested in the lives of your colleagues at work, enjoying and appreciating their different characters.  It’s like being a school kid.  You would not hear of a kid transferring from one school to another on a regular basis.  A school kid usually stays in one school until graduation because it’s not the school but the teachers and the students that makes school interesting.  It’s your attitude towards people more often than it’s your attitude towards your job.  It’s the heart that needs to get fixed not the job.