Fall in Love With Work (Again)

Are you in love? Perhaps it’s that special someone you’ve chosen to share your heart and soul with for the rest of  your life. Or maybe it’s that favorite caffeinated beverage you must consume each morning to jump start your day. I’m sure others (not me) are completely in love with one of the two teams who will be pursuing the BCS Championship on Jan. 7^th.

What about your work? Are you enjoying the daily grind of your career? That’s a tougher question for many people to truthfully answer.

For most, college is where career aspirations really begin to take shape. After some deep inner soul searching, we choose a major that fits our personality and desires. Four years and hundreds of study hours later, we graduate with a degree we hope will lead to a fulfilling and financially rewarding career. Those initial days, after we secured that first job in our chosen field, were filled with excitement, joy and complete fulfillment. We had finally made it. We loved our job!

However, at some point in the next 40 years of working everyone thinks this thought, “I hate my job!” (!!!!…Add extra exclamation marks depending on the intensity of your hate.) It may get so bad that a complete and utter dread of going to work develops. Just getting out of bed each work morning makes you emotionally ill.

The dwindling passion for one’s career can result from many factors. It may not have been as financially rewarding as we were led to believe. Perhaps it interferes with starting and raising a family. Relationship issues at work or a lack of quality leadership in an organization can certainly affect your thinking. Maybe you’ve just found something else you enjoy more but can’t figure out how to make a smooth transition.

Here is where it gets dangerous though. Once these feelings surface, how do you handle them? As I see it, there are two options. You can either Fall in Love (with something else as you go find another career) or Fall in Love Again (rediscover why you once loved your current career and work through the issues that led to your bitter feelings). Sadly, I believe, many people choose option #3.

Option #3 is continuing to hate your job and then sticking with it…for the rest of your working life. What a miserable existence.

This is not the way God intended it to be. In the Bible, King Solomon wrote this in the book of Ecclesiastes:

“Here is what I have seen: It is good and fitting for one to eat and drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labor in which he toils under the sun all the days of his life which God gives him; for it is his heritage. As for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, and given him power to eat of it, to receive his heritage and rejoice in his labor — this is a gift of God. For he will not dwell unduly on the days of his life, because God keeps him busy with the joy of his heart.” (Eccl. 5:18-20)

This one passage may revolutionize how you think about work. God’s desire is for us to busy with the joy of our heart. He wants us to rejoice in our labor and enjoy all the good that comes from it. He has ingrained this desire deep in our spirit – it is our heritage. It would be inconsistent then to fight against our naturally given heritage by staying in a job that we hate. Doing that would eventually crush our spirit and lead to no joy or fulfillment in our life.

So, as I close out this motivational New Year’s Goal series, I’d like to ask you again – are you in love with your work? If not, you have three choices. Please don’t choose choice #3. God never wanted that for your life.

What about your current job do you love? If you have changed careers, what steps were the hardest to take as you made the transition? 

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