I was talking with a woman recently and she told me that she was having a hard time with her job. I asked her if it was her job or was it “her” that was the problem. This made her think for a moment, she then stated that nothing had changed at her job, so she agreed that the problem must be with her.
She said that her work life reminded her of the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day” starring Bill Murray. Murray plays the character Phil Connors who is a T.V. news reporter who has been assigned to a job of reporting Groundhog Day, which he feels is below him, and he does not want to do the assignment. For some reason he cannot get past that one day, each day he wakes up it is still Groundhog Day. He repeats the same things and discovers he has many lessons to learn throughout the before he can move past this one day.
This woman said the she wakes up five days a week destined to repeat the same jobs tasks over and over. As much as she tries to keep a good attitude at work, she is bored, discontent and finds that she is grumbling about it when at home with her family. She knows that this is unhealthy, but is not quite sure of what to do to be content at her job anymore.
We reminisced about when she was first hired and why she took the job in the first place. She actually likes the company and her coworkers, it is just that she is tired of doing the same thing over and over. She wanted a challenge, something new to do that would excite her and make her have to really put her thinking cap on.
I asked her if she saw any projects at work that needed to be done or developing new ideas that would benefit the company. As she thought about this, she began listing several things that needed to be done that would make everyone at work happier and also be beneficial to the company. The more she talked about it, the more excited she got. I suggested that she write these ideas down along with a plan to complete them and then ask her boss for some time to discuss them.
I warned her that her boss may not be open to many of the changes right away, but then again, he may. I suggested that she be honest with him and let him know how she was feeling and that she wanted to help make the company better. When we parted she was pretty excited about the thought that her job actually could become fulfilling again.
I am looking forward to talking to her soon to see how her meeting came out with her boss. I can tell you that she was much more excited about her job after our talk than she was when we began it.
The links below have two good articles on things to consider when you feel tired or stuck at work. Sometimes it really pays off to reinvent your job instead of looking for a new one.
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