Create Your Best Life at Work with One Question

On ManagingWithAloha.com we have been talking about the Hawaiian value of 'Imi ola this month; it means to create your best possible life. Let's consider this; How do you accomplish 'Imi ola while you are at work?

The biggest bang for the buck strategy is to choose the right work to begin with. There is a lot of basic common sense in the notion that you'll never toil at a job again if you've chosen the right work for you in the first place. The “right” work is the kind you leap out of bed for each morning; work which makes your heart sing because you're fully engaged in getting each of your talents to fire on all cylinders. It's work that you'd do every single day if you possibly could because you enjoy it that much; getting paid for it is just icing on the cake.

What's that? You don't have that kind of job yet? Advertising

It's definitely something you can have; your first order of business is to go about making it happen. Keep looking till you find it!

Meanwhile, if there are reasons you've got to stick it out for a bit in the job you've got right now, how can you still make the best of it? How can you create your best life at work?

You milk it, by continually asking yourself, this one question: What's in this for me? Advertising

When I am called in to a company to coach, I study workplace behaviors. The one thing that saddens me most, is the amount of time that people willingly give away in their lives. They perform their work robotically, without energy or joy, in the most routine, blah sort of way because they are doing it for someone else or to pay the bills. Period.

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You shouldn't be so easily tamed.

When you create your best life at work, you milk it for whatever it can possibly mean to you and for you, even if it's not your best possible world - yet. You have the attitude that, If I have to do this anyway, I may as well get the most that I can out of it. Value your time and make it yours. Value your life and make it yours. How can you give away something so extraordinary? How can you give away something so uniquely yours and so precious? Advertising

Reinvent. Learn more. Go for the unconventional. Get others involved. Tweak and experiment. Do it louder, goofier, or fancier. Ignore boundaries or limits, and push toward edges. As the saying goes, Whatever turns you on.

Who knows? You just might find that ho-hum job of yours begins to reveal that job of the lifetime you've been looking for. You've experienced 'Imi ola; creating your best possible life instead of simply allowing life to happen to you.

Related Post: To Do and To Stop with 'Imi ola - a different approach to the traditional To Do List. Advertising

Post Author:
Rosa Say is the author of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawaii's Universal Values to the Art of Business. You can also visit her on www.ManagingWithAloha.com where she regularly writes about value alignment in business, as with 'Imi ola.