How to Make Your Work Inspiring and Motivational
Find it hard to stay motivated for your work? Don’t feel like going to work because it is boring, mundane, and tedious?
If every morning you wake up without any zest because you know you have to go to work and repeat the same thing every workweek, then you have got to change something.
Either you will have to change something externally like your job, the environment, or the people (colleagues) you mix with, or you will have to work on yourself internally to make your work inspirational.
Yes, you read that right. You can work on yourself to make your work motivating and inspirational.
Let me share the 3 main factors how you can do that…
1. Find the Purpose and Meaning
Most people find their job to be boring and mundane because they don’t have a strong and emotional purpose for their work.
If you go to work just because you want to get paid, then you will never find your work to be satisfying.
In my blog post here, I shared a study conducted by Professor Adam Grant, who is also the best-selling author of Give and Take. In the study, Grant conducted a study about a fund-raising activity for scholarships in a university.
Grant divided the participants into 3 groups and discovered that the participants who are required to read stories from scholarship recipients about how the scholarships have changed their lives, tend to work harder with improved performance.
The participants saw a 155% increase in the weekly pledges and successfully raised 143% more funds for scholarships.
Not only that, but Grant also found that swimming pool lifeguards who read stories about saving drowning swimmers before they started their job were 21% more active at their job.
In other words, when you are working toward an impactful cause, you are more likely to work harder and stick to your plan rather than feeling lazy to act on your goals.
This is why you need to find the meaning and the purpose of your work if you want to feel inspired about it.
Ask yourself, why do you go to work? When you are doing what truly matters, you don’t have to be pushed, the vision pulls you.
This is why it is important to find the meaning behind why you do what you do, especially your work.
You’re going to spend one-third of your life working. If you are not working toward an empowering purpose or if you don’t find your work to be meaningful, it will be difficult to keep yourself going every day.
2. Tap into Your Passion
Do I need to explain this more? Your passion is why you do what you do, even when you are not getting paid.
Why do some people spend their weekends in their garages working with machines?
Why do some people are willing to wake up 3 hours early and travel 2 hours just for a game of golf?
The reason is simple — they are passionate about what they do.
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When you are passionate about your work, you will never have to motivate yourself to wake up every morning. When the alarm rings, you will just get up and can’t wait to go to work.
“Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.” — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
But how do you develop a passion for your work? Well, just dig deeper.
David J. Schwartz called this the Dig-Into-It-Deeper Technique. This is what he wrote in his best-selling book, The Magic of Thinking Big:
To show trainees how enthusiasm can be developed through Dig-Into-It-Deeper Technique, I sometimes used a greenhouse example.
In a deliberately casual way, I ask the group, “Are any of you interested in manufacturing and selling greenhouses?” Not once have I gotten an affirmative answer.
Then I make a few points about greenhouses: I remind the group how, as our standard of living rises, people become more and more interested in non-necessities. I suggest how much Mrs. America would enjoy growing her own orchids and orange blossoms. I point out that if tens of thousands of families can afford private swimming pools, millions could afford greenhouses because greenhouses are relatively inexpensive. I show them that if you could sell a $600 greenhouse to only one family in 50, you’d develop a six hundred-million-dollar business in producing greenhouses, and perhaps a two-hundred and fifty-million-dollar industry supplying plant and seeds.
The only difficulty in this exercise is that the group, 10 minutes before completely cold about greenhouses, now is so enthusiastic they don’t want to move on to the next subject!
Use the suggested Dig-Into-It-Deeper Technique to develop your passion.
3. Have a Grand Vision
What do you want to accomplish out of your work? Do you have a grand vision or an exciting mission you are working toward?
Think about why most people prefer to work in amazing companies like Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, SpaceX, and Google. The answer is because these companies have a grand vision.
Why do people want to work in SpaceX? Well, if they work there, they are on a mission to colonize Mars! That’s how interesting SpaceX is, don’t you think?
I remembered a story from President John F. Kennedy. When the president visited NASA in 1961, while touring the facility, he introduced himself to a janitor who was mopping the floor and asked him what he did there. And the janitor replied, “I’m helping put a man on the moon!”
You have to have a grand vision to feel inspired by your work. If you don’t feel motivated with what you do, probably it is because you lack a grand vision.
Just like the story of the 3 bricklayers…
A traveler saw 3 men working on a construction site. He asked the first man what he was doing, and the man said he was laying bricks. He asked the second man and the man said he was putting up a wall. When he asked the third man what he was doing, he said he was building a cathedral.
Can you see the cathedral in your mind’s eye?
That’s the power of a vision. When you see yourself working toward a grand vision, you will feel excited and are motivated to work on it.
That’s why you need to have the vision to make your work inspiring and motivating.
Conclusion
You can make your work interesting and exciting by working on yourself. Just follow the 3 strategies I shared above to spark your motivation again.
Remember, find the meaning and purpose for your work, develop your passion, and have a grand vision to drive you forward every day.
I suggest you read this book, The Magic of Thinking Big. This book will inspire you to think big, to believe big, and motivate you to achieve your goals and make your work an exciting journey.
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