How To Fall In Love With Your Career All Over Again.

Fall in love, a photo by ` TheDreamSky on Flickr.

The day may come when the weekly marching orders you get from your bosses start to sound more like nagging than directing. It will dawn on you that the aspects of your job that whispered accomplishment in your ear have suddenly stopped, and now sound like nails on a chalk board.

While this isn’t the inevitable outcome of a long career, it’s likely to happen at some point along the way.

Some of you might consider changing jobs. Others might decide to leverage your expertise and trade  bosses in for a set of your own clients in a consulting gig. But a career on your own, versus working for others, won’t make the problem of career malaise go away--not if you carry the same old problems with you.

All of us need to find ways to fall back in love with our work.

First, recognize what well-aligned work looks like.  You should feel liberated by the work you do, not confined by it. Work should feel natural and flow easily without feeling contrived. The nature of the work itself (as well as the people you work with) shouldn’t leave a knot in your stomach all the time, crippling you from doing your best.

Reconnecting to your work isn’t that hard. Here are a few things you can do:

--Slow your pace. Breathe. Take your time and put more thought into your key projects, instead of running on automatic pilot. Be more deliberate as you navigate through your day. You’ll appreciate how the job simply could not be finessed without the addition of your unique talents.

--Connect to others. Take the opportunity to nurture the novices in your field. This gives you the opportunity to deepen the lives of less-experienced people, with the added bonus of absorbing their enthusiasm.

--Stop competing. Let’s face it--there will always be someone smarter, faster, more charming or more politically savvy than you—it’s a vicious circle that you can’t escape. Any focus on besting coworkers or competitors in your field will zap your energy and your love of the role. Accept that your career is not a pissing contest. Instead, allow it to enrich your life while you’re earning a living.

Like the beginnings of a romantic relationship, the early infatuation you had with your career was intense but fleeting. What you want now is sustainable love; the kind that will last a lifetime. You may discover that rekindling a romance with your career isn’t about changing your job after all; it might be more about working through how you feel about it.