Change My Job with a Thought
Ever hear someone talk about a brand new job? Whenever I do, it takes be back to those nice first day of school feelings.
Life seems light. The world is fresh. Even the kids that that we knew from last year start to look and act better. Everything is new beginnings — new desk, new paper, new pens, new problems to solve, new ways to solve them, a chance to see what I can do. New jobs are like that.
I bring myself back from the new job fantasy by recalling how long it takes to get familiar in a new place. Every new job takes time to learn the culture, the people, and how to get things done when I need to. That’s a lot to give up once you’ve gotten there.
New beginnings are wonderful and fresh, but being around a while offers the relationships, credibility, and support of a familiar place. I want the values of both without lose the downside of each.
I wanted that enough that I figured out how to make it happen. The trick is to blend the old and the new together.
All it took was a change in the way that I see.
Today, I start a new job, doing the job that I did last week. I let go. I wipe the slate clean. I imagine that I inherited this busy desk from the busy person before me. It’s a good feeling to put that distance between now and Friday.
All of the tasks on this desk held no romance for the person who sat here on Friday. But the new me walks into this job looking at them as filled with promise and so exciting.
Thoughts of someone who isn’t delivering turn from an ongoing headache into the challenge and opportunity that a fresh mind sees. That situation has just become information the person previously in this job shared before leaving. It’s simply a fact on my radar that has no past feelings attached to it. The problem solver in me knows that I’m more than ready to smile into a new approach.
A clean slate is like the first day of school filled with new beginnings– new desk, new paper, new pen, new problems to solve, new ways to solve them, a chance to see what I can do. I take a new look and my old job becomes new like that too.
The people I work with notice that I’ve got a new outlook and soon they have one too.
I’m taking a new job to work with me today. I can feel it already.
We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
