Are you happy in your job? It’s a loaded question, usually accompanied by so many caveats people aren’t sure they know the answer. The reality is that finding and maintaining happiness takes work, just like everything else. In this episode, Kelli Frazier and Tim Lambertson sit down to talk about what happiness in work looks like for them and steps they take to maintain it.
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The Steps To Finding Joy In Everyday Work
What are we talking about?
It’s quite interesting. I’ve been excited about this episode for quite some time. I can’t get it out of my mind because it feels relevant with a lot of the conversations that we have been having, whether it’s talking to peers, to employees, and the general public. This comes back to one of the main focuses that we had when we set out to redefine what we thought the show could be. That takes us back to the conversation where we said one of the things that’s important to both of us is that we have to keep it real with the audience. We have to make sure that when we are addressing people that we are going to uncover and go deep on issues that are affecting everyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re in marketing or if you’re an entrepreneur. Getting up and going to work every single day is not always easy. We felt like we should be real about that. That segues into what the topic is, which is each of our three tips on how to find joy in everyday work. I don’t know if you agree with me, but I have to start off with, it’s not always joyful every single day.
That’s an important place that we should start, which is we are business owners, along with Denise, we are partners in several different businesses. At the rate that we’re moving at, I don’t anticipate slowing down. The point is that even though we work for ourselves, we are in business together. We are executives in every one of the companies that we work in and every single day is not joyful. If there’s anything that we’ve learned, 2020 is probably the least joyful year that we’ve set out. It’s affecting everyone and everybody differently. A great place to start is, “Audience, we get it, it’s affecting you, me, and all of us.” We can be real about that. That what we’ve experienced, no matter where you are, what industry you’re in, we have faced a global pandemic. In the US, we have faced a lot of furloughing, loss of jobs, unemployment. We are in a position where unemployment is still being negotiated in Congress as to which way it’s going to go. Some businesses didn’t get their PPP loan. There is political unrest, there’s an election coming up, there are riots in the street. It’s an upsetting time and that that’s not going to affect you at work is shortsighted. It would be shortsighted of us to assume that everybody out there is rolling around joyfully.
I have been thinking a lot about this as we started developing this episode. A couple of years ago, I was struggling with this concept of joy, finding joy and trying to understand why I was living the dream. I had achieved all of the things that I had been striving so hard for, which were being my own boss, being a business owner and having all of these things that I had been working towards, and waiting for this a-ha joy to wash over me daily and it wasn’t happening. I could not understand what the disconnect was. I did a lot of studying during that time of what is going on and why is this happening? I was doing some reading and remember finding this. I’m reading about when we’re children, joy is so pure. You eat chocolate ice cream and you experienced radical joy or you go to Disneyland and its immediate joy.
When you got older, they don’t provide that same sense of euphoric joy the way that you felt when you were a child. There are psychological and physiological reasons why. We level out and we mature. We don’t feel those highs the way we did when we were children, but no one tells us that we should stop comparing it to that. We are experiencing this like, “Why can’t we get back to the way we felt? Why are we not feeling that pure joy the way a child does?” Understanding that you probably cannot. On top of that, that’s not the goal. For me, the reset in all of that was to find a deeper sense of contentment and happiness that isn’t about these euphoric highs and the dips that come after this constant state of tralala joy. I don’t even think it’s reality, but we spend so much time trying to achieve it that I feel like it makes us unhappy. In this failing to find this unattainable level of constant joy, we are making ourselves feel unhappy versus having this moment.
For me, it was stepping back and looking around and being like, “I am living the dream. I wanted all these things and I have them. I need to look around, enjoy and find some gratitude for those things.” Some of those things are little things and some of those things are huge things. Instead of constantly striving for this thing, recognizing in my own life what does bring me a deep sense of contentment and happiness that doesn’t feel like a roller coaster ride at Disney World, but it does give me a sense of happiness.
I’m glad you brought that up that there is this yo-yo effect. There is this, “Why am I not in constant joy and what is going to bring me joy? How do I find happiness?” There are some deep philosophical discussions that constantly happen about that. There are new methodologies and there are old methodologies for finding happiness and joy. What we’re going to do now is what all that we can do. We have put in an incredible amount of time working on ourselves, working on what course our life wants to follow. Out of doing those kinds of drills, identifying what gives you an ideal life out of those, you have a number of experiences. What I hope is that you come away with several different realizations about yourself, about others and about life in general.
What we are going to set out here to do is Kelli is going to present you with the three tips that she uses in order to be able to find joy every day and specifically joy in her job every single day. I’m going to share with you three tips about finding joy in your job and hopefully, in your life every single day. My hope here is that we can share some tips with you. We can give a brief description about what it is that we do and identify what that has uncovered. Hopefully, you will find some examples or it might cause you to want to go out and explore yourself and find your own tips. We’re happy to share those. I’m going to turn it over to you, Kelli. I’m interested to hear what is your first tip?
[bctt tweet=”In failing to reach this unattainable level of constant joy, we are making ourselves feel unhappy versus having the moment.” username=”lmstheagency”]
The biggest thing when I think about this is that I spent a lot of time expecting other things to make me happy or other people to make me happy. I would find that in the letdown of that or in the disappointment of that, I was in this constant cycle of, “Why can’t I find happiness? Why can’t I feel happy?” Putting that responsibility on other things, whether that was a partner, a friend, a job, food or whatever it is. You look to a lot of outside sources to bring you what’s missing. When I started to turn that lens back towards myself, look in the mirror and take responsibility for that, it changed the way that I thought about all of it. I stopped acting or feeling like this victim to the circumstances I was living through or that I was subject to this life I’m in. That these things are happening to me, without me having any control over them.
It’s all about the lens in which I choose to operate and view things. It’s that shift of accountability in that. My first one is be accountable to yourself first. Taking the responsibility of your own happiness or joy and of your own day. A lot of us get in that cycle of like, “I don’t get to choose what my day is. Somebody else sets my work hours. Somebody else tells me what I have to do.” In actuality, there’s so much choice and all of that. Everything from what your morning routine is before you get to work, to how you set your desk up, to what you do on your lunch break. You have so much control over that and influence that you have to own it.
Often, we get a little bit stuck in, “I don’t get to choose what my day is. I don’t make my calendar.” In actuality, we have a lot of control over that. One of the things that we have done a lot is if we want to read more, then set a timer each day and read for 30 minutes. When you start to keep those promises to yourself, I know in my own life, it changed everything for me. When I started being accountable to me first, I felt I was operating with integrity. I also felt like if I could keep my promise to myself, in a lot of ways that would be I was having a hard time to committing to working out and I would find every excuse under the sun not to do it. There are a lot of excuses. I have a three-year-old, I am a busy working mom. There’s always something that I can prioritize over that and I feel justified about it.
I say to myself, “Get real.” It means I’m going to have to get up earlier and commit to doing something that I do not want to do, but at the end of the day, it’s important to me and I do want to do it. I had just gotten in the habit of making excuses. I’m 155 workouts in and I stopped BS-ing myself. I was accountable to myself and every single morning, I’m still. There are a lot of mornings I wake up and I’m like, “What can I do to get out of this?” I moved straight past it. I don’t even give myself time to do that and hold myself accountable. The thing about that is it sets forth throughout the rest of my day. It sets things into motion of me doing the things for me that make me feel good. That allows me to feel happiness throughout my day. I started off on the right foot. I’m doing something that I want to be doing that I made a promise to myself and I kept. It also makes me feel good.
When I get to work, I’m approaching work in a different mindset. My life is not very separate. It’s not like my personal life and my work life. It’s all an integrated thing. I take good care of myself and I’m happier. That doesn’t mean like at work or not at work, it’s all encompassing, which is important. My first step is being accountable to yourself and not making excuses. We all do that, we’re like, “My boss, my partner.” I’m stopping that self-talk and getting down to being real with yourself and being accountable for the things that you want to prioritize makes you feel good.
I’m glad that you mentioned all of the different layers of being accountable to yourself first. I like many of the things that you touched on there, especially planning for yourself. We have talked about that at length, which is if you want to prioritize working out, if you want to read before you go to work, if you want to prioritize cooking, knitting, yo-yoing, whatever you’re going to find joy, you have to put it into your calendar. You have to figure out how you’re going to divide up your 24 hours in your day, prioritize yourself and then be accountable to yourself. There’s a lot to unpack out of that.
My next one an extension of that one and it’s self-care. For this one, I think about it as an extension of prioritizing yourself. For me personally, that’s always been challenging. I am someone that throws myself headfirst into everything I’m doing and I put my whole self into it. When I do that, I often put myself as a secondary priority. I can feel justified when I don’t want to work out or don’t want to eat healthy or don’t want to take responsibility. You can’t convince anybody how busy you are. I got sick of that. It was at the end of 2018, my 2019 resolution was to lose the word ‘busy,’ to stop saying it. I was so bored of it and disgusted of it like having these conversations where you’re like, “How are you?” “I’m so busy. I’m so tired” You then out busy each other. I was like, “That’s it. I’m losing that from my vocabulary.”
I feel like we spent our twenties doing that. It was like, “You’re going to stay until 10:00 PM and work tonight? I’ll be here until 11:00 PM,” then, “You’re going to be here until 11:00? I’ll work on Sunday.”
That is one of the things that I started to prioritize where I did start getting up a little earlier. I did start morning routine and schedule things for myself. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about this. Even Michelle Obama on her documentary was talking about when her children were small, how she felt even a little resentful of Barack because she was like, “You’re going to the gym and working out. Here I am taking care of the kids. I could go and work out too.” We do it to ourselves and then we resent that we do it to ourselves. That was happening to me too. I have a young son. You start to think like, “Anytime I take for myself is taking away from him or taking away from time I could be spending on work or other things.”
You have to stop and put yourself at the top of that priority list, understanding that taking good care of yourself, recharging and making sure that you are feeling good, both mentally and physically only means that you’re better for everyone else in your life. That was a significant shift for me and it took me a long time to come to. It’s prioritizing self-care up there with everything else that I hold most dear in my set of priorities. To me, that is one of the most important things in being happy and feeling good is taking good care of yourself.
What’s interesting about the way you described self-care is it almost sounds like a sub-bullet of being accountable to yourself first. First, you need to be accountable to yourself and then maybe you could prioritize self-care and prioritizing how you are going to take care of yourself every single day.
I am a caretaker by nature and I always have been. I think about that in relation to other people and forgot to think about myself like that. When you do that, you’re depleting your resources to be everything that you want to be in your life. For me, self-care is everything from, I went a long stretch in my career where I never left my desk. I did not eat lunch. I skipped meals all the time. I did not even prioritize feeding myself.
It’s easy to do that. In terms of self-care, taking fifteen minutes and walk away from your computer, don’t eat in front of your workstation, get fresh air, sit outside, read a book or call your mom.
It’s funny to talk about that in relation to self-care because eating is a basic need. It’s not an add-on like a spa treatment. It is interesting for some and myself included, self-care needed to start with attending to my basic human needs in a way that you prioritize that, and going to the next level of doing those things, like treating myself to those extra things and taking that extra time for myself because it does make me feel good. It gives me an opportunity to recharge and it does allow me to regain perspective and enjoy the things in my life more.
[bctt tweet=”Be accountable to yourself first.” username=”lmstheagency”]
The last one and this speaks to what I was talking about that I was working through a few years ago. It was to take time to appreciate and have gratitude for the things that you enjoy or the things that you love throughout the day. To me, that’s anything from, I’ve started a little practice of jotting down things in my daily planner that bring me energy or I enjoyed or had a positive experience with every day. They can be small little things, but when I look back over the week and see them, the collective makes me feel good. A lot of times I will forget like, “I did enjoy that call.” It would be a part of my calendar and by Friday that would be long gone because I’m tired.
When I look back over the week or even on Monday and I look back over the previous week, I look at this collective list of things that I enjoy and that brings me energy. It’s not vacation only. Every day throughout the day, I’m doing things that I enjoy with people, that I enjoy and acknowledging that keeps that top of mind for me. On 10 or 15-minute commute to turn all of the radio and devices off and appreciate what I’m looking at while I’m driving. We live in North Carolina and it’s gorgeous. A lot of times just looking up and appreciating the things around you.
Nature and taking that moment in the morning or the evening to take a deep breath and appreciate things that are beautiful makes a big difference to me, versus there was certainly a time in my life where I would be on the phone from the time I got in the car until I got out of the car then straight into the house. My kiddo meets me at the door and there’s no moment that I would take to stop and appreciate. Even though it’s a short pause of appreciation, in my experience, it helped me bring it back to how much I do enjoy my life, how much I have to be grateful for, how much I am grateful for, and how much I love my life. We lose sight of it because we’re not actively intentionally appreciating it.
I am going to adopt that one into my everyday life and see if I can get that in there. I love turning everything off on your commute in the morning, regardless of where it is or how it’s being done and even just sitting back to enjoy. What an experience to take that time for yourself. My first tip is you need an outlet and preferably healthy. Although, drinking a fifth of whiskey might be some kind of an outlet. The next day is going to hit you over the head. You need an outlet and it’s got to be healthy. No matter what, during your day, there are times that are going to be stressful. There are topics that you’re going to cover that are going to be heated. You might get in a deep discussion with people and you’ve got to have an outlet. I prefer fitness. I have been a runner and I quite enjoy going for a run. That’s reminded me a little bit of when you say, “Take the time to appreciate and have gratitude.” I find often when I’m running, sometimes I’ll take the headphones out, turn the music off and soak in what I’m doing and where I am at the moment. It gives me a sense of gratitude to be out there.
For me, that outlet has been running, swimming, playing tennis, whatever it is. Even if you’re just going to be with some friends, you need some separation. You have to take your mind off of what you’re doing all day. I highly encourage people to find an outlet. I want to emphasize the healthy outlets are going to be better in the long run than the unhealthy outlets. We’ve all tried the unhealthy version. For some, they get caught there and for others, thankfully, we’ve grown out of it. You’ve got to find a way to blow off some steam.
That leads me into something similar again for tip number two was what you had said, and this reminds me a little bit of self-care and some of being accountable to yourself first. A meditation practice always helps me find more joy in my workday. I like to start my mornings off by waking up. The first thing I do usually is carve out some time and have some form of mindfulness practice. In my case, it’s meditation. For others, it’s finding a connection with your body and your mind by doing yoga or even if it’s restorative stretching. You need that mindfulness time or at least I do. There are lots of reasons for that. One, it gives me the chance to take some deep breaths first thing in the morning. I have tried immediately getting onto my phone, opening my email. Sometimes you open your email and immediately, you read something that you wish you hadn’t and it’s hard to restart your day after that.
All of a sudden, your day is now starting with stress, back sweat and armpits sweat. I have a meditation space in my home, I sit and start a meditation practice. Whether it’s taking deep breaths or having a dedicated mindfulness or meditation practice. Many things that are positive come out of it. An example of it might be you find that you’re feeling settled. You have some time. You start your day with focus. You might be able to address some of the things that are bothering you and be able to overcome them.
Mindfulness and meditation in the morning sets my whole day. If you want to take it another step further, you can set your intention during that period, you can focus on virtuous objects or objects of your meditation that have better things like gratitude, love for other people. All sorts of different topics, you can take into meditation. I find that once I’ve walked out of that space or come out of that room, my outlook is more positive. I’m more relaxed and it’s a great way to find some joy and take that right into your workday. I find that oftentimes even in the most stressful situations, I can recall my morning meditation practice and settle myself again. I’m a huge advocate for mindfulness practice and meditation.
Finally, the most important one for me is perspective. This is a highly debated topic. There are a number of different ways you can define what this third tip is, perspective. The most basic level and for the vast majority of people, if you stop and say, “I’m going to work. This is my job. This is my career. I’m going to make it a point to look at this for what it is,” and not feel this impossible level of stress or this overwhelming burden from your job and get some perspective on it. I always like to say, “I’m not saving babies.” What is the most stressful thing that I can possibly think of? Doctors, surgeons, nurses who are in the ICU and trying to save people’s lives, that feels extremely stressful to me and I’m not doing that. That’s some perspective at the most basic level.
I relate to that. We can talk ourselves in to being tired or overwhelmed, but we can also talk ourselves out of it. A lot of times it’s that shift we get in this habit of telling ourselves, “I’m tired. This is hard. These days are so long.” You can take a deep breath and be like, “I’m not that tired.” Get up and get energized. A lot of it is how we use our perspective and how we talk to ourselves.
There’s another layer to perspective too. For years, I’ve been a Buddhist practitioner. What I’ve learned through that process is also perspective and studied a lot about how our mind works and that we get to make our own decisions. What I mean by that is oftentimes you’ll hear somebody say and/or be at the receiving end of this, and I’m guilty of it too which is, “You make me feel. This job makes me feel. I’m upset because you did this. I am angry because you did this.” A lot of that is pointing the finger away from you as if others, as well as circumstances, are able and allowed to control how you are going to feel.
It’s a difficult road and it’s hard to wrap your head around it. Once you can start thinking about that, which ties back to the meditation tip, you can find perspective in that. That is I can either choose to get up in the morning and say, “My boss makes me angry. My coworkers are the worst. I don’t even like to be around them. This job sucks.” You can find that there might be accounts, clients, or people that you’re interacting with every single day. You might find yourself in this finger-pointing position. I find it useful to know and to live in the space that says, “You are acting like a jerk. This person is being an idiot. I am going to not let that affect me. That’s their problem.” If somebody is angry around you, that anger is their problem. They have to walk around with that anger.
You can take over and you can own the narrative. I think that’s important. I took coaching through somebody at one point and Kelli did too. She always said, “You’re the author of your life. If you’re writing yourself into your story, why would you write yourself in as miserable and upset? You have the opportunity to write your character as a happy one.” I found that to be nice. To recap, three tips from Tim. You need an outlet, preferably a healthy one. You need some form of meditation or mindfulness practice. I’m not going to tell you what you need. I am simply making a recommendation as to a tip. Meditation and mindfulness are very helpful for me and I hope they are for you too, and then perspective. You have the ability to be the author of your own life and author of your own story. Make your character a happy and positive one.
I feel more joyful already from this conversation.
[bctt tweet=”You have the ability to be the author of your own life.” username=”lmstheagency”]
I do too. I see the sunshine coming out and feeling this overwhelming sense of joy. Thanks, Kelli. I enjoyed that and appreciate your tips. This is a fun one.
I hope it’s helpful. I think it’s something you have to put into practice in your life. We’re here for questions and thoughts on everything we talked about.
You can always find Kelli and I on all forms of social media. Please send us a message @LMSTheAgency and you can find us on LinkedIn at our names. We are always happy to answer any questions. We love hearing from you. I want to know your tips. Please share your tips for finding joy at work every day. If you’re not there yet, and you’re feeling pretty down and low at work, I hope that some of these tips might be helpful for you. If you’re looking for any further explanation, don’t hesitate to ask us. We’re happy to help. We are always happy to have some time with you. Thank you for joining us.
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