Monday, April 15, 2013

Finding Your Happy Place: Part 13

Play to your strengths.

I have a confession to make, I have had trouble staying motivated at work lately. Being unmotivated makes me bored. Being bored makes me sad. Being sad makes me unmotivated. And, it's a vicious cycle. So this week, I decided I needed to snap out of that cycle and play to my strengths. My most usable strengths at my current job are discovery of new information, customer engagement, and infusing fun into dull situations. I made it my goal to use each of these on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. How did I do that?


On Friday, I had a meeting, so I asked probing questions of my coworkers to learn more about what they know. I learned more than I ever needed to know about Minecraft, but it was interesting and I stayed engaged the whole time. On Saturday, I mixed-it-up at a customer's birthday party.  We established a fun, interesting and engaging race for the kids to participate in, rather than the usual chaos that is produced by hundred of thousands of Lego. On Sunday, I found some sticky eyes and made a game with my coworkers, searching for hidden eyes all over the store. It kept us entertained and moving the whole day, which meant we were able to get more done without realizing.

What can be gathered from this is becoming absorbed by a task or activity we are naturally good can make you feel motivated, and motivation breeds happiness. Play to your strengths. If your strength is logic puzzles. Work on solving problems, not just crosswords, but also real life problems. If you strength is word play, pick a word and try to fit it into as many conversations with as many different people as you can throughout the day. If your strength empathy, do more than listen, help out without being asked.

 I have a ton of other ideas but it would take a million years to type them all out. If you have a strength and don't know what to do with it, comment or email me and I will get back to you.


~Daisy


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