Love What You do

People who love what they do or do what they love at work aren’t lucky, they’re grateful.

Job misery costs employers almost US$300 billion a year in lost productivity. But going to work uninspired every day, costs employees their lives.

Many people go through life with what they call the ‘Monday Morning Blues,’ ‘Wednesday Hump Days,’ ‘Thank God It’s Fridays,’ and ‘Week-ends.’ That is not a very inspiring existence.

A recent study on US job satisfaction found that 75% of employees and 82% of executives are looking for new jobs, while 15% are actively working against their employers.

“People who are not doing what they love or loving what they do live lives of desperation, not inspiration,” says Dr. John DeMartini, the author of 40 self-mastery books and a featured philosopher in The Secret , a movie on quantum physics and the laws of attraction.

With a foot on the brake, instead of the gas pedal, they blame the world around them for the negative things in their lives. “They wear themselves down in a sense. This is how many stress-related health concerns start.”

But, “looking for a new job, when you hate the one you have, is the worst thing you could possibly do," says Group Harmonics CEO and co-author of the “Four Secrets to Liking Your Work: You May Not Need to Quit to Get the Job You Want”, Edward Muzio.

Changing jobs should not be your automatic response," he warns. Before you quit, it is important to identify and deal with the real underlying problem. “It's not about the people you work with or having a demanding boss.”

Change your attitude about your work first.
This allows you to make the most of— and possibly even liking your job again.
Bring your actions at work in line with your life's purpose.
Ask yourself:

Am I passionate about results, truth or helping others?
Do I feel more comfortable in the creative process or in an established structure?

Identify and balance your task-type personality
Someone who feels overwhelmed with too many long range tasks may say "we are focusing too much on strategy and not doing enough real work." Someone who feels overwhelmed with daily tasks may say "we do too much fire-fighting."

Muzio believes the four secrets to liking your work are rooted in self-awareness:

"Clarify your needs," he says. "The more you use your new perspective, the clearer it will be what kind of job and workplace best suits you.

The gratitude effect

DeMartini says there is a science to inspiration: the science of gratitude. The ability to stay grateful keeps you inspired.

“When we see things for which we are not grateful, we live in fear and guilt. When we see things with gratitude, we are appreciative; we live in love and inspiration,” he explains.

Fear arises when you assume that in the near or far future you are going to experience more pains than pleasures, more losses than gains or more negatives than positives.

Guilt arises when you assume that in the near or far past you caused more pains than pleasures, more losses than gains or more negatives than positives.

DeMartini says when you catch yourself thinking, “I really ‘ought’ to be doing this; I ‘should’ do that or I’m ‘supposed’ to do this; you are trying to live by someone else’s value system.

The challenge with values is that no two people have exactly the same value systems. They’re as unique as fingerprints and voices.
This means everyone has a different view of the world. We experience internal conflict when we question ourselves and try to please others by changing our values.

Morals pertain to you supporting and challenging your own values.
Ethics pertain to others supporting and challenging your values and vice versa.
Whatever supports your values you label good and are attracted to.
Whatever challenges your values you label bad and are repelled from.
You tighten your constraints and rules upon yourself when you appear to challenge your values.
You loosen your constraints and rules upon yourself when you appear to support your values.
You tighten your constraints and rules upon others and give ultimatums when they appear to challenge your values.
You loosen your constraints and rules upon others and give freedoms when they appear to support your values.
When you are infatuated with others, you minimize your own value hierarchy and unwisely attempt to live your life through theirs.
When you resent others, you maximize your own value hierarchy and unwisely attempt to have others live their life through yours.
Carelessness is assuming your values are more important than other’s values and projecting your values with expectations onto others.
Carefulness is assuming your values are less important than other’s values and having others project their values with expectations onto you.
Caring is honourably assuming that your values are as important as other’s values (neither greater nor lesser) and you communicate your values in their terms.

Since each event in life has a positive and a negative component or repercussion, we become stressed every time we misperceive such an imbalance.

When we unwisely exaggerate or minimise the daily pains and pleasures of life, we experience hormone related anxiety, guilt-ridden stress and feel our lives are momentarily spinning out of control.

“As long as you exaggerate and minimise yourself, you are run by illusions,” says DeMartini. “The moment you centre yourself, you are run by your heart and truth.”

We feel stressed when we only look at half of an emotional equation, not the loving and ordered whole.

“Drawbacks and benefits, negatives and positives, pains and pleasures, losses and gains all come in pairs,” says DeMartini.

Kipling called pain and pleasure the ‘two imposters'. Emerson believed that every excess had its compensatory defect and every defect its excess; every sweet had its sour and every sour its sweet.

DeMartini says the key to dissolving stress is to bring your sensory misperceptions back into balance.

DeMartini says you know you're stressed at any given moment, “when your mind is not present and certain, and your heart is not grateful and loving.”

Since fear involves a future imagined state of mind-body and guilt involves a past-remembered state, stress occurs when you're distracted from the present, wavering with uncertainty, ungrateful and closed hearted.

When you feel stressed, your muscles become tensed, particularly those of the jaw, face, arms and hands and your breathing and speech becomes erratic. The result is a disordering of your thoughts and a polarising of your mood.

“We all have two personas. One builds us up and makes us feel self-righteous and proud. The other beats us down and makes us feel “self-wrongteous,” shamed and humiliated,” explains DeMartini.
These two personas are the masks we wear to cover our true and centred hearts.

“Whenever you are exaggerating yourself by being self-righteous, elevated, proud and cocky or minimising yourself by being “self-wrongteous;” your intuition is the disowned/invisible part that tries to bring you back into balance,” says DeMartini.

In other words, intuition is the disowned part of the persona trying to speak to the owned part.

He says stress associated with fear and guilt arise primarily in the following seven areas of life:

Spiritual Stress	The fear of loss of communication or inspiration from your soul, or God
Mental Stress	The fear of loss of intelligence, imagination or memory
Vocational Stress	The fear of loss of success, clients or business
Financial Stress	The fear of loss of money or possessions
Familial Stress	The fear of loss of loved ones
Social Stress	The fear of loss of friends, or rejection and humiliation
Physical Stress	The fear of loss of wellness, or disfiguration, or death

DeMartini says stress associated with fear and guilt can occur in various degrees or arise from different ratios of perceived imbalance. These degrees of stress are socially revealed through various linguistic expressions.

The following is a scale of verbal expressions, we associate with varying perceived ratios of loss or gain:

Calm - Relaxed - Breakthrough
Balanced Loss 1 : 1 Gain	“I love to”
Loss 2 : 1 Gain	“I choose to”
Loss 3 : 1 Gain	“I desire to”
Loss 4 : 1 Gain	“I want to”
Loss 5 : 1 Gain	“I need to”
Loss 6 : 1 Gain	“I should, ought to or am supposed to”
Imbalanced Loss 7 : 1 Gain	“I've got to or have to”
Frantic - Stressful – Breakdown

The human nervous system has a sympathetic side for fight or flight challenges during the day, and a parasympathetic side for rest and relaxation at night. One is for challenge; the other for support.

“That’s why it is wise to set balanced goals, instead of goals with one-sided outcomes,” says DeMartini.

“We tend to grow most when we have goals, which have both supportive and challenging outcomes.”

This means everyone needs goals that challenge and support our values. If they are not challenging enough, we become bored. If they are too challenging and too many; we burn out.

Quantum physicists discovered that every event is neutral, until someone labels it with their value system.

DeMartini says, “All events have two sides. It’s like a magnet. For example, the event (rain) is neutral, until someone evaluates and labels it as good or bad.”

If it rains, a person who is about to have an outdoor wedding will think it is the worst thing in the world. But, a farmer experiencing a drought will think rain is the greatest thing.

“If you want the positive without the negative or assume that there are negative events without positives,” he says, “you are living in LaLa Land.”

Let’s say you have objectives in life that you think will have positive outcomes without drawbacks or challenges. As you pursue your quest, you discover the challenges that go with it.

So, now you also have things in your life that you think are terrible. But, a day, week or year later; you discover the blessings that come out of it.

Our mind maintains a perfect balance, but our awareness blocks events in our environment by labelling them positive or negative; good or bad.

We, therefore create this elevation or depression of feeling to cover up our hearts - the centred part of our being.

Follow your heart. Let yourself be grateful

“Think about everything in your life for which you are grateful. Think about all your blessings and all the reasons you can express gratitude. Every single day count your blessings.

Before you go to bed, and before you get up, count your blessings and ask for an inner message from your innermost being. Watch them come to you and act on them. When you follow your intuition and inspirations, you don't beat yourself up. You build your dreams,” says DeMartini.

When the inspired vision and message on the inside becomes greater than all the people's opinions on the outside, you've mastered your life.

“This is the secret to following your intuition and inspiration. Every single day train yourself to listen to your inner voice. If you listen to your inspirations with gratitude every single day, you'll live an inspired life,” says DeMartini.

The Earthmajik workshop Creative Beings deals with the principles of co-creation in-depth, to read more about this workshop click here.