Every Friday, comments like “thank goodness it’s Friday”, or “we’ve made it through another week” or “it’s almost the weekend” begin to be exchanged across cups of tea and coffee, open offices, and waiting for meetings to start chitchat.  Then come questions like “what are you up to this weekend?” or “what exciting plans do you have?”.  If you work around others, you can’t escape some version of these questions.

What Do You Say?

How do you answer?  Do you look forward to your weekends?  Why do you look forward to your weekends?  Have you ever thought about it?  If you did, what do you think your answer would be?

Top Reasons to Be Excited

Here are some of the most popular reasons for people getting excited about their weekend:

• two days of break from work / work colleagues
• spending time interacting with family and/or friends
• time to spend on a new hobby, or a hobby they love
• opportunity to travel and visit somewhere new or different
• space to pursue a venture or interest
• space to be a contribution to society

Back to Reality!

Sunday evening arrives and grumbles of needing to be ready to go back to work on Monday get louder.  Monday morning office chatter quickly becomes all about what you got up to over the weekend and how it went too fast, and how depressing it is being back at work!

Sound familiar?  If you are living for your weekends and find them too quickly over, then it’s very possible you don’t enjoy your job as much as you could.  So what should you do about it?  Here’s a few tips for you to consider:

How to Build Excitement into Your Work

1. Figure out what you like about your job

Pull out a sheet of paper and divide it into 2 columns.  In one column write down all the things you like about your job.  In the other column, capture all the things you don’t like.  Think about tasks, responsibilities, co-workers, processes, management, business culture, office space, commute, opportunities, training etc.  Notice any themes?

2. Take a long, hard look at yourself

What skills, knowledge and experience do you bring to the table?  Are you able to work on the things you are best at?  How do you treat others at work?  Are you easy to manage? Do you share your ideas and opinions?  Do you get on with the job?  Do you waste time or use your time productively?  Are you organised?  Do you work proactively or reactively?  What do you see when you look at how you show up in the workplace?

3. Make some decisions

with these exercises complete, you can now take some important and powerful decisions for yourself.  How can you do more of what you enjoy about your job?  What ideas do you have to improve the bits that you don’t like?  Is there a way to change how you are working to make the tasks less painful?  Can you trade tasks with a co-worker who does it better than you in exchange for something you do well but they don’t like?  Can you shift your attitude so others respond to you differently?

It’s Up to You

You have the capability in your hands to change anything you want.  All you have to do is decide that you want it to change and let go of whatever you need to let go of to make the change happen.  Most of it starts from within. 

Every day is a new day and a fresh start.  Who you were yesterday doesn’t determine who you are today.  So make today worthwhile.  Do something different that will have a positive effect on your life.  What have you got to lose?

Need Some Help?

It’s not easy letting go of who you were or other things from the past.  That’s where working with a coach can come in useful.  If you feel stuck or are not sure how to give yourself a fresh start, contact me so we can see if coaching is the right option for you.

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