Beating Drudgery and Dejection Part 2

How Practicing Choice and Gratitude will Help you Stay Motivated

(click below to view the video or read on if you’d prefer!)

In the preceding article, I was discussing Drudgery at work and its boon companion Dejection. With Drudgery, all sense of fun is lost and with Dejection motivation goes out the window. I gave you tips to spot Dejection and shared with you how you can use ‘what’ questions to beat it.

For more on spotting and beating Dejection, click here.

Now to Drudgery and giving it a good kick up the backside!

Since Drudgery is about the loss of any sense of enjoyment, then beating it means gradually bringing back some measure of fun in your life and starting to usher out Drudgery. But how to have fun, even a small tiny bit of fun when everything around you seems to be going wrong? Well, be true to yourself. Would you agree that, when you are being yourself, being natural, that’s enjoyable? So being authentic is one way of bringing back a bit of enthusiasm and reducing the drudgery in your life. When you’re authentic, you do what you want. You decide. You are in charge. So one way to be true to yourself is to use Choice as the way to recover some joy in your work life.

When I want to increase Choice in my life, I ask myself: “what do I choose to do today?” because deciding my agenda is empowering and helps me fight the feelings of  annoyance, pain and weight which come when Drudgery is sitting on my head. The reasons for the choices I make only need to make sense to me like “I choose to return this client’s phone call even though I have nothing to say to him because I am a professional” or “I choose to write this article because I enjoy sharing my knowledge with others”… Whatever you stand for, whatever you value, use it to justify your choices because these reasons will speak loudly to you and act as motivators. When you choose, you are turning the table back on Drudgery: it’s no longer life imposing its drudgery on you, it’s you choosing to do even painful things for reasons that speak to you.

OK, so you used some ‘what’ questions and you feel less dejected and you’re using Choice to push back Drudgery. There’s another thing you can do: take some time to practice Gratitude. Remind yourself of those parts of your like which are not painful, heavy or depressing. I hope you have many – like your partner, or your best friend, or your family, or a hobby you love or a great book that’s inspiring you or simply providing a nice chance to escape for a moment. When you practice Gratitude, do it slow: really take the time to think about how wonderful it was when you played with your son or hugged your wife.

I hope that these tips are helpful to you in keeping your spirits up in the current climate of gloom or if you’re worried about completing your work objectives and starting to wonder ‘why bother’. Asking ‘what’ questions, empowering yourself with Choice and practicing Gratitude should help you stay motivated to do your best even when things around you don’t seem so positive and Drudgery and Dejection come knocking on your door.

Next month, I’ll talk to you about feedback – giving it and receiving it. And notably how to handle negative feedback – how to constructively give it if you are manager as well as how to effectively prepare to discuss it if you think you might receive some. I hope that the techniques I will share will make for productive yearend conversations around your performance and that of your team.

If this article resonated with you, don’t hesitate to contact me for a complimentary chat where we would explore what is going on for you and what you would like to have happen. To contact me, click here.

If you don’t have it already, get your copy of “5 Gear Shifts to Accelerate your Career!” and learn about the five building blocks of any successful career! Get it here now!

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