Take control.

Are you satisfied in your work?

If yes, congrats. It’s likely because you’ve taken control.

If the answer is no, it’s one of three things:

1. Your values are misaligned. You care about things that your employer doesn’t seem to care about or believe things that your job description doesn’t value.

2. Your strengths are untapped. You do a lot of what you don’t do best everyday. In fact, you may actually be good at things that drain you and even praised for them. Meanwhile, what you actually do best lies dormant or underutilized.

3. Your environment is broken. You work in a physical space that is demotivating, or other factors such as your schedule and the amount of interaction you have are off.

Dissatisfaction from work stems from one or all of these three. Here’s the good news:

You control all three.

1. If your values are misaligned, you can have a conversation about it, insert your values more into your work, find opportunities outside of your work to tap your values, or change jobs. Step one, of course, is getting clear about what you value.

2. Missing strengths? First, identify them by tracking your energy. Energy always follows doing what you do best. Then backtrack the energy to identify the strength. Now learn more about it, add knowledge and skill to it, and do it more often.

3. Move! Do your work in a different space. Get up and interact. Find a quiet space and work. Change your scenery, the order that you do things in, and who you do what with.

You are in control. It’s not up to your manager or leader to create the perfect environment for you to thrive. It would be great if they did, but they generally don’t have the bandwidth.
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You, on the other hand, can literally change your circumstances overnight.