We all hate Mondays, literally we hate the first day of the working week. In a way or another, it’s so hard to find someone who is really happy starting his/her working week.
Regardless of how different our jobs are, how the working environment differs, we all hate to go to work, one way or another.
How can we make the working environment a better place from an employee’s point of view?
To me the working environment is the most important key that could change the whole success of a company, enhance it or make it worse.
Here are some tips an employee can make to enhance his/her life at work:
- Make friends. Working with friends can be the best thing ever; you will find yourself laughing out in crisis, baring the overload of stress because you know that at the next desk, a dear friend is facing the same and knowing exactly how you feel. Moreover, it will initially mean that you wake up not only to do your job but, in a way, you will meet your friends too.
- Go out with your co-workers, even if you are not that much into them. Meeting them out of the working environment will literally break the ice, will let you see that the awful person at work might be just a normal nice human being outside it.
- Be professional. This entails having the sense to differentiate between emotions and work, which actually that doesn’t make you any selfish or unkind, it will just make you and others work better. There is always a thin line between personal relations and work, you should always differentiate and value that line.
- Build a career. If you have a job that is somehow stable, don’t be lost in that trap, always look forward, and think about your next step, your next title and the next knowledge to be acquired. Imagine yourself years from now; what do you want to be? Is this the job of your life? Build your own career and work to add a brick each day to it, no matter how small it is, never stop building.
- Get a life! Your life is not only about work. Yes, work is an important part of your life, but it is just a part of it, the more you will have a life away from work, the more you will work better. Play sports, go out with friends, travel, follow your passions, read, walk, write or listen to music, just live. And, most of all, don’t merge your work life into your personal life. I know that these are words we’ve all been hearing for years, but they’re so true. You will indeed give better at work when you give better to yourself.
- Never stop learning. Even if you have been doing the same job for years, there must be something new to learn. Maybe it’s not it’s not a very huge one, maybe a technique, a way of thinking, a planning tip, a different knowledge, a new concept, a change in handling things and more importantly, learn new spiritual stuff from time to time. Don’t make your working life just a dark block, know that what you will learn in it can enhance your life and vice versa, grow in parallel. If you don’t want your work life to turn into a dead plant you have to keep watering it all the time.
- Love your job. I know that we all might be stressed with routine, work load, problems with colleagues or our managers, life load itself and personal problems, but loving what we are doing, no matter how hard it is, will make everything better. Maybe the job , about which you are endlessly complaining, someone else would do anything to have it, because for him/her it is a dream, but for you it’s just something to complain about. Thus, whatever you are doing, love it, and find advantages in it so you can keep going. Nothing in life can be that dark, there must be a beacon of light within it, so find it and love it.
- Bring new ideas to the table, no matter how weird, just simple and different ones. Feeling you are a part of that job, you have the ability to make it better, to change it, to build it in a better way, will make it all better, even if those ideas will impact others not you specifically, it will just make you feel you are making a change and that’s one of the best feelings that can make you love the whole place.
- Speak up. When you are facing any problem with your colleagues, with your manager or with your work, then speaking up about it is the best way to get it solved. Keeping it in will only make it bigger and make your work life much harder. Stand up for your rights and never settle down for what is less than what you deserve. If you give your job your best, it should give you its best as well.
- Leave it when it’s time. If you have reached a blocking point and any of the above points can’t work anymore, if your job is becoming a burden on your shoulders or making you feel depressed all the time, then don’t listen to whoever is telling you to stay. Listen to your own inner voice, do what is best for you and you are the only one who is able know it. Get out of your comfort zone, make a move and change your life.
At the end of the day, we are all humans; we are here to learn, to change and to find the right path for us, even if that will happen after many years. We are here to live, so let’s put some life into our working life too.
By: Yasmine Lasheen
Photography: Dina Zayed Zayan