Can you grow to love your work?

Yes, but not if you show up every day and execute a job description.

​There is no inherent satisfaction in doing the bullet points of your job. Satisfaction is derived from bringing your best self to the bullet points and doing them in your unique way.

For example, I have a good friend who is a dentist. His job description may read like this:

• Clean teeth
• Do root canals
• Run business

He doesn't inherently love cleaning teeth or doing a root canal. But he does love this:

• Building relationships
• Teaching
• Giving advice
• Connecting
• Motivating and inspiring his team

He would tell you that he didn't love dentistry, but he's grown to love being a dentist. How?

He applied his uniqueness to the job at hand.

He connects with his patients, teaches his hygienists, motivates and inspires his team, and gives advice and counsel as asked. He prepares himself to do so everyday by meditating, studying, and serving people. And this method has sustained him in a career he doesn't inherently love for more than 20 years. 

So, before you leap from your current job in search of more fulfillment, check yourself against these questions:

1. Have you applied your best self to your work, regardless of the nature of the work?
2. When did you do so and what was the result? Can you think of at least three times you have done so in the past week?
3. What's stopping you from doing it more often? Be careful of the blame game. You want to say "my boss is unsupportive" or "my company doesn't value me" but that's often a premature excuse, meaning it may be true but only after you've exhausted all of your means to prove it. 

Note that my dentist friend didn't change the nature of the work to find satisfaction. Cleaning teeth still happened. Root canals still occurred.

​And neither should you.

You shouldn't have to stop lesson planning or filing people's taxes or creating law briefs or conducting geological surveys to love your work. But you may need to start bringing more of yourself to your work. And that requires self awareness. So get clear about this:

1. What three things do you do very best?
2. What core beliefs drive you every day?
3. In what environments do you do your best work, both physical space and socio emotional space?
4. What is your core purpose on earth?