8 Ways To Love What You Do

Doing what you love and being paid to do it is how you win at life. But how many people are doing stuff they hate? Working for bosses they don’t believe in, for companies they don’t care about. Even some entrepreneurs see their work as a slog and can’t wait to sell or find another opportunity.

There is absolutely no point in spending your time dreading Monday morning, counting down the minutes until the weekend or the days until a holiday. Make your vocation your vacation. It’s possible. Here are eight ways to love what you do.

Gain awareness

Love what you do by knowing what you love. If you can’t differentiate between a great day and a rubbish one, if you don’t know what makes you happy, you might never realise when you are. Journal about your work. Journal about your days. Write down what happened and unpack your moods. Find your purpose. Cultivate heightened awareness of what makes you tick and what bores you stiff so you can do more of the former.

Delegate

Once you know what you do and don’t love to do, make a plan. Delegate, automate and eliminate your tasks until all that remains is where your unique skills lie. Question your assumptions about what is essential and overcome the trust hurdles of letting someone else take responsibility for processes. Life is too short to fill your to-do list with arbitrary tasks that you hate. Make the space to do more of what you love.

Practice gratitude

The more awareness you have of what you love, the more grateful you can be for its presence in your life. Make gratitude your superpower, its benefits multiply. Be grateful for the chance to serve an audience you care about. Be grateful that you’re solving problems that matter. Be grateful for your team, your desk, your email inbox. When even the little things become reasons to feel grateful, you’re on the way to loving what you do.

Love your team

Most things are about people. They make terrible trips great and they make hard work fun. Love what you do by loving who you do it with. Love your team members, clients and suppliers. Be happy to hear from them, interested in their lives and firmly on the same side. A challenge worked through together can be solved in seconds. Shared purpose, shared vision, each working towards a mission and helping each other to succeed is what strong teams are made of. Every daunting opportunity becomes a reason for celebration.

Find your support network

Not only is it lonely at the top, but loneliness might make you give up and return to basecamp. Happily set up camp at the summit by finding a support network. Find those on a similar journey, at a similar stage, who can be your trusted confidantes and your friendly advisors. Share your hopes, dreams and fears and talk them through. Feel guided, feel part of something bigger. Find your tribe to love what you do.

All be winners

There is no such thing as a competitor. Focusing on the so-called competition will keep you playing small and feeling unhappy. We can all be winners. Business does not have to be a zero-sum game. Loving what you do means finding your unique strengths, your perfect market, your unequivocal advantage, and playing to them. Instead of feeling threatened by a similar company, wish them well and leave them to it. Trust in your own path, no matter what.

Reframe challenges

A pre-meditation strategy is where you decide, in advance, what kind of day you’re going to have. You can huff and puff through the day or you can decide to own it. Challenges and problems will inevitably occur, and you can meet them with surprise and disdain or welcome them in. Decide you’re going to bring the best you to every minute of work. Remember that you don’t need easy, you just need possible. Reframe challenges to love what you do. Obstacles and blockers become solutions and breakthroughs when you choose to see them that way. This is your jam.

Make the choice

Do what you love or love what you do. The former is easy, the latter means choosing. Love every detail of your role and commit to excellence with every action. Love the ups and the downs, love the favourable or adverse news in equal parts. Reframe work as something you get to do rather than something you have to do and remember that you always have choices.

You can shut up shop, jump ship, or put in half the effort, or you can see what’s possible when you gain awareness of your preferences, delegate as needed and practice gratitude. Working on the same team as everyone whose path you cross and finding your support network can mean work takes a different space in your mind. Reframe challenges and choose your day in advance to love what you do.