Work It!: Five Simple Steps to Loving Monday Mornings

Copyright © 2016 Sharon Hoyle Weber.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-7473-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7474-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015916970

iUniverse rev. date: 03/31/2016

CONTENTS

Acknowledgment

Introduction

Chapter One Do What You Love, and the Money Will Follow

Chapter Two Wake Up

Chapter Three Show Up

Chapter Four Shake Up

Chapter Five Speak Up

Chapter Six Follow Up

Join Up

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

One morning, I woke up with the Five Simple Steps, but then I needed to make it a book. As luck would have it, my dear friend, Cathy Corcoran, writer and novelist, was visiting and stepped up to give shape to my ideas. I want to thank her for her humor, candor, belief in the message, and hard work. You can learn more about her creations at www.cathycorcoran.com.

I would also like to thank Jeffrey Vale, Susan Downey Bolton, Alison McGuigan, Amy Tananbaum, Rani Pooran, Sabine Buhlumann, Gail Alofsin, and Peter Diestel for sharing their love of work and insights on how they sustain that way of being.

INTRODUCTION

The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between work and play, labor and leisure, mind and body, education and recreation, love and religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both.

---Lawrence Pearsall Jacks, missionary

Is work/life balance an issue for you? Do you live for the weekends? Are you dreading Monday mornings? When does the dread start? Sunday night? On Wednesday (hump day), is the worst over? Do you celebrate TGIF? Yeah! The weekend! Are you wishing away five days a week of your life?

You are not alone. Lots of people get the Monday-morning blues and live for the weekend. That's why we see all the humorous pictures of cats holding on to something for dear life by their claws, with the tagline Is it Monday already? It doesn't have to be that way. Loving work is a skill, just like playing golf or a musical instrument. You can learn it, practice it, and master it. In my research, I've discovered it has less to do with the job itself and more to do with how we show up to the job. In this book, we will walk through five simple steps to loving Monday mornings.

Over the last eighteen years as a training facilitator and business coach, I've worked with thousands of employees of Fortune 100 companies, like Deloitte, Liberty Mutual, Merck, Bank of America, Toyota, and Hasbro. People think of me as a work/life balance expert. What does that mean, exactly? That you have work and life? That when you aren't at work, you're alive, and not alive at work? Does it mean that real life happens only outside the cubicle? Eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year is a lot of lifelessness.

You want to know a secret? There is no work/life balance. There's just life! Your life, this life, your only life. It's all life. As in Lawrence Pearsall Jacks's quote, those who master the art of living live seamlessly, with no distinction between work and play.

So when Monday morning comes around and you're dreading going to work, you're dreading life---your life. People spend an average of two thousand hours a year at work, and you're wishing it away.

I look forward to Monday, says Sarah Risher, a business consultant. Sure, I enjoy having time off, sleeping late on weekends, spending time with my family, but I enjoy my job so much I think 'Oh, good, I get to go to work too.'

To me, Monday mornings are a fresh start, says Rani Pooran, senior manager of global operations at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Imagine the kind of impact it would have on your life if you felt like that. You would look forward to going to work. You would be engaged in the challenges. You would feel gratification in your success. You would enjoy the office banter. It is not just your experience that would benefit, but your health as well.

Did you know that the risk of a heart attack increases on Monday mornings? The stress hormone called cortisol peaks early in the day. When this happens, plaque in the arteries can rupture and block the flow of blood to the heart. If you're dreading going to work, you may be experiencing a rise in blood pressure and an increased heart rate too. Now that's a perfect recipe for a Monday-morning heart attack.

The dread of going to work brings people down, increases their stress, and decreases their innovation, creativity, and sense of vitality. Feeling this way five days a week becomes a habit that transfers to other areas of their lives, leaving these people feeling less engaged in hobbies and causing relationships to suffer. You know people like that; maybe you're married to someone who is so consumed by the misery of his or her job that he or she brings it home. The good news is that it doesn't have to be like that.

You can have a work life where you actually welcome Monday mornings. Having researched books and articles on work motivation, formally interviewing more than thirty people who love Monday mornings, and having had hundreds of conversations with employees in a variety of types of work, I see how loving work is a skill anyone can learn, practice, and master.

It takes intention and effort. It takes thinking and doing differently. In my research, five simple steps have emerged that will transform the experience of getting up to go to work, day in and day out, into a journey of self-discovery, making a difference, and joy.

Wake Up Starting out examining your beliefs about what work is, how it should be, and what it means will shed light on what is possible. Begin by paying attention to how you feel about your current situation and what you need to be engaged. Identify behaviors that will help to bring more of that into your life daily. From you new perspective and insights, you can make some executive decisions about your greatest and most important asset: your time.

Show Up With a mindset that empowers and excites you. Once your passion has surfaced, show it and share it. You will discover techniques to make powerful choices and respond to any situation that arises.

In order to be excited about going to work, you must be growing, developing, and becoming more confident and respected. Self-actualization is what stokes passion and excitement.

Shake up Strategically seek out what's next. What new role, responsibility, challenge, or skill do you want to take on?

You will learn how to express your vision, point of view, and needs. This will enable you to influence and persuade others to embrace your ideas and strategies.

Speak up Become fluent in powerful communication skills. Know how to be understood and foster genuine understanding.

Follow up Loving Monday mornings is a lifestyle, a way of being. Develop the practice of reflection, and ask yourself the following questions: What is working? With what am I still struggling? What should I do differently going forward?

Like driving a car, if you loosen your grip on the wheel, sooner or later, you'll drift off the side of the road or, worse, crash. When you let go of the steering wheel of life---when you are inattentive because day-to-day monotony sets in---you lose power. Every day is the same old same old---tired. The foot slips off the gas, hands let go of the wheel, the car veers off course, and eventually, you crash into a life that is exhausting.

Grab the wheel. Navigate your life with the gusto of a NASCAR driver! Be awake to what gratifies you, enlivens you, and stimulates your creativity and passion. Exercise your right to make choices and discover every day. Learn, practice, and master stoking excitement and energy in your life, even on Monday mornings.

Imagine how that would transform every day. Imagine how that would transform the experiences and perceptions of others---and the opportunities to make a real difference in your life and others' lives.

This book is about expressing your authentic self in the work environment and loving Monday mornings. Not only is it possible; it's rewarding and fun too. Let's work it!

Before we get started, I have a few requests:

Lighten Up

Oftentimes, when people talk about their work lives, they get very intense, defensive, and uptight. They refer to being stuck: It has to be done this way. There is no hope for change. I've thought it through, and I have to do it this way. It is almost as if they prefer their misery over making some new choices.

They say, I have no choice. I have bills to pay. My family relies on the benefits, and I have all this time in, and I have all these responsibilities. My manager expects ...

While reading this book, just slow down, relax, and lighten up. Think of your work life as something that swims. It's fluid. It's malleable. It's flexible. It's living, growing, and breathing. Don't think of it as something that's fixed. It's alive.

Open Up

Intentionally allow your mind to open, expand, and see things in new ways. Think of this book as an investigation, as something you're discovering about yourself in the work world.

What are you assuming that your work life should be? Sometimes those assumptions are true, sometimes they're partially true, and sometimes they're not true at all. Let go of assumptions for a little while, challenge your own beliefs, and open up to thinking about your work in a new way.

Buck Up

If you really want to have a work life about which you're passionate, and you are truly done spending Sunday afternoon dreading Monday morning, it is time to buck up. It's going to take some effort and some time. It's going to take patience. It's going to require trying things in a different way. Some of the new ways are going to work better than others. It's going to take perseverance, practice, and experimentation. And it's going to take you from ugh to ooh when you think of going to work.

As you think about creating passion in your work life, think about the two thousand hours that you spend in your work life every year. Imagine it being something you enjoy and feel good about. Imagine coming home every night, feeling a sense of gratification. Imagine saying on Sunday night, Ooh, I get to go to work tomorrow.

Ready? Let's step up and start loving Monday mornings!

CHAPTER ONE

Do What You Love, and the Money Will Follow

W homever said that, did not specify how little money would follow. I told my dad I wanted to be a dancer---not a ballet dancer (something he could understand), but a modern dancer. I wanted to choreograph dances and have my own company, like Twyla Tharp or Mark Morris. My dad looked at me as though he was afraid something awful had happened to me.

Here was a guy who grew up in the Great Depression. He worked his butt off for thirty years as an insurance salesman, and it never once occurred to him that anyone would love his or her job. He had to provide for his family, and he was going to do that. I don't think he was miserable, but loving his job was not a consideration for him.

But not me. I believe in doing what you love, and the money will follow. Love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life, Confucius said. It seems so right. I pursued a career in what I loved---dance---for fifteen years. And it was wonderful in many ways. However, no one said just how much money would follow.

Pursuing your passion doesn't always pan out exactly how you might have expected. You have to