Joy and happiness are two different things. Both impact things like creativity, individual productivity, and the company’s bottom line (yes, it’s true). But joy is more sustainable. Here’s a 5-minute per day, one-week plan for kickstarting your path to getting more joy out of work.
Are you missing joy at work? Or maybe, you’ve never even put the two words joy and work together in the same sentence. May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Joy is important to mental health. Finding it at work is very challenging for many of us. However, finding it may be more important than ever.
Isn’t joy just another word for happiness? Not really. According to Merriam Webster dictionary joy is the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune. Joy comes from being connected to our uniqueness, authenticity, to others and to something meaningful. Joy is something we create and more intrinsic. Happiness is sparked by an external event or situation. Research shows both joy and happiness impact our creativity, energy, productivity, health, ability to handle stress, and the company’s bottom line. Joy is more sustainable.
Interested in (re)gaining joy at work? After all, we do spend most of our days working. Creating joy needs to be an active pursuit made up of small steps we take every day. I challenge you to take the 5-minute, 5-day challenge to (re)gain joy at work. It works best when you implement it over 5 consecutive days and jot your answers down somewhere so you can look back on them.
Day One: 5 minutes: Reconnect to your North Star. What is your big why? Why do you do the work you do? How is it helping you live your values? How does your work connect with other important things in your life? What about it is driving you right now?
Day Two: 5 minutes: What is one thing you can influence or change at work that will allow you to align with your North Star more completely – even if it’s a small thing. What is one task you could do? Or stop doing? What is one opportunity you could take to give yourself a few minutes to focus on something more meaningful? Or to laugh? Or to take a deep breath?
Day Three: 5 minutes: What colleague could you help? Maybe you’re thinking you don’t have time to help a colleague because you have so much on your plate. What if you grabbed them a cup of coffee when you go to grab one yourself? Could you have a walk and talk to help them think through a challenge while you both go to pick up lunch (that you may be eating at your desk so you can keep working!)
Day Four: 5 minutes: What are your strengths? What energizes you? What is one way, in the next week, you could more fully use that strength? How could you craft your job so that you are able to do this more consistently and frequently?
Day Five: 5 minutes. Reflect and reward yourself. What accomplishment are you proud of this week? How did you live your big why? What one thing did you influence or change? Who did you lend a hand to? How did you use your strengths more fully? Do you feel more joy today than you did 5 days ago?
Integrate this challenge into your daily routine every week. Assess the impact at the end of 3-weeks and 3 months. Let me know what happens.