Monthly Archives: January 2019

How to Motivate Yourself To Do What You Don’t Want To Do

If you have trouble getting yourself to do unpleasant work, here’s what you can do. Think about what you’ll get for doing the unpleasant work, and how happy you’ll be to get what you want after you do the unpleasant work. Then realize that the happiness you’re getting from getting what you want is exactly what doing the unpleasant work for someone else would give to that person. That other person is going to be happy they get what they want, when you give them the gift of doing the work that is unpleasant for you.
It’s happiness for happiness. Reframing it as giving happiness instead of doing unpleasant work can help you swallow doing the unpleasant work.

You can change your perspective of the task. You can use empathy to understand the other person’s point of view. They want to give you item A in exchange for item B. If you were the other person, and you wanted someone to give you item B and they gave you item C, you would be upset and disappointed because you wanted B. You were willing to give A for B, but someone is giving you C and asking for A and you don’t want that. Don’t put someone else in that situation. If they ask for B for A, either give them B, or refuse and don’t participate. Or use influence and persuasion to find a pre-agreed upon C that you can give and they can accept in exchange for A.

How to Get Promoted

3 Perspectives for Promotion are Work, Relationship, and Business

Work Perspective
* Do your work well
* Do the work of the position you want to be promoted to well
* Make sure the work of the position you want to be promoted to aligns with the priorities of your manager and the company.
* Measure your improvements with written documentation that your manager or other authorities sign off on.

Relationship Perspective
* Get along with your manager no matter what.
* If you don’t like your manager, don’t lash out at the manager. Figure out a way to have a good relationship anyway.
* If your manager is incompetent or makes mistakes, don’t attack your manager for them. Protect your manager, Help and Heal your manager
* Become a strong team with your manager so that your manager will represent you well to the rest of the company

Business Perspective
* The company will only create a job for you to be promoted into if they want that job to exist. So do your homework to figure out what job your company wants to pay for before you start showing your ability to do that job.

PSA: Give Comfort when Possible

Comforting Cat

“He was only a cat, but he was human enough to be a great comfort in hours of loneliness and pain”

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/166163316/dewey
Pine Ridge Pet Cemetery Dedham, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, USA

I post this as a sweet image of the impact comfort has on the lonely and in pain, and how much appreciation and value is created in the act of comforting.

Photo Credit: Paul Koudounaris on instagram (From https://imgur.com/u0eG60J)