What's the difference between being interested in something and being invested in it? We all recognize that they’re not the same.
When you are interested in redoing a room in your home, you scroll through ideas on Instagram or Pinterest. When you are invested, you buy paint, enlist some help and start moving furniture.
When you are interested in moving, you look at houses on Zillow, you drive through neighborhoods noticing colors of front doors. When you are invested in it, you meet with a mortgage guy, you look into school districts, and you save your money for a down payment.
When you are interested in losing weight, you watch reels about new approaches and look up new recipes. When you are invested, you make an exercise plan and change the way you eat.
Being invested means taking action to move the needle forward, using the app, not just downloading it.
So, it brings up the question, are you interested or invested in feeling better at work? Does it sound like a nice idea, something that promotes scrolling TikTok for self-care videos, or is it a call to action?
Do you really want to invest in feeling better? Have you thought about it that way—that your well-being is within your control, that taking action can affect your day in and day out experience?
Notice the goal that is put forth is feeling better, not being happy. This is an important distinction. If our goal is to be happy all the time at work, we will become frustrated. Much of the work we do is physically and emotionally demanding. It doesn’t really make sense to be “happy” all the time.
But the truth is we don’t have to be happy to feel BETTER at work. We can invest time and energy in other positive emotions, emotions like calm, productive, purposeful, loving, content, and successful.
Any one of these emotions are within our reach if we decide to invest in feeling better.
Feeling better takes action. Are you willing to take action?
What is the first small action that you think can help you feel any one of these emotions? If you aren’t sure, what would you guess? Are you willing to try that?
If you can’t change the whole culture at work, are you willing to create a micro-community for positive change? Are you willing to brainstorm with one coworker? Are you willing to give yourself credit at the end of the day for the good that you did? Are you willing to try finding things about work that you are grateful for? Are you willing to see the perspective of the coworker who is struggling too?
It’s not a character flaw if you aren’t doing these things now. It’s totally normal. We often don’t invest in these activities because it honestly doesn’t occur to us that we can positively change our experience at work if the work itself doesn’t change.
Little intentional actions can have a profound effect.
You can feel better at work if you aim for emotions like purposeful, meaningful, and compassionate.
You are meant to do this work. You can do it without great personal cost.
I hope you are invested in your own contentedness, I promise it is within your reach.
If you want to be invested in feeling better but are struggling with knowing how or with following through, please reach out so we can figure it out together. It only takes 6 weeks to love the job you can’t afford to leave. I hope you will give yourself that gift. Email me at Megan@nursingbeyondthejob.com or just schedule a time here.
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