Living in Peru : your everyday companion

What cell phone company do you use in Peru?   Claro (America Movil) Movistar (Telefonica) Nextel I use two I use all three

Published in Aptitus
Translated from Spanish by Diana Schwalb

Do you hate going to work on Mondays? Join the club.

There are some obvious reasons that decrease satisfaction at work, like low salaries or excessive hours, but the globalized economy, with its focus on technology, is making it increasingly harder to find satisfactory jobs. Many of the most enriching aspects of jobs, like personal relations and human contact, are being replaced by machines or more efficient processes. Global competition often reduces profit for companies and they are forced to ask their best employees to work overtime. Most people, like you, have realized this; you work over 48 hours a week, which is more than what the Peruvian law allows. 

This is a piece of advice that I have heard more than once: “Wear armor and shield when you arrive at your workplace.” We should all learn how to create an imaginary shield. Imagine you are surrounded by a hard shell and nothing can get through it to harm you. Give yourself two or three minutes to put your “armor” on before you enter the office. 

But you should not have this attitude all the time unless you think that you will imminently leave the company. Think about these options.

Start with gratitude: An important step to escape unhappiness is the change of perspective, says Patrick Lencioni, author of “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job” (Los Tres Signos de un Trabajo Miserable). You must bear in mind that the sole fact of having a job is enough for some people. This does not mean that you should be content with the status quo, but you must acknowledge your position.

Determine what has changed: Most people who hate their job have never asked themselves why exactly they hate it, says Sylvia Lafair, author of Don’t Bring it to Work (No lo traigas al trabajo). If you don’t know why you are feeling so miserable at work then you might easily get a new job next time where you will find the same problems and situations.

Focus on your intuition: Before you decide what to do about it, make sure that you wishes and goals come from yourself and not from what someone else thinks. Find a counselor or someone who will give you good advice and make you trust your own intuition, someone who doesn’t try to impose their own point of view about what you should do. 

Think about the abilities that you are acquiring, not about the time that you are “wasting” there. Take every class offered that focuses on the abilities that may help you in the job that you want to have. You can learn for example, a new language, HTML, etc. You can do it in your free time, weekends, holidays, etc.

Focus on performing well in your current job. Use the time that you have outside of work to plan and build your new life. People often say: I have no time to do anything, I work 10 hours a day. In reality, if you want to make time for yourself, you will.

Look around you. If you hate your job, there is a good chance that other people around you hate it too. Negativity creates negativity. No matter whose fault it is, you can choose to be a part of it or you can walk the other way. Lencioni says: “You can go to work with the intention of making someone else’s job less miserable; use your work to help other.” In fact, there are other ways to reduce your unhappiness. For example, you can improve your abilities or delegate your work load. But deciding to help others depends only on your good will.

Help your workmates with three things. According to Lencioni, employees that feel miserable in their workplaces generally feel that way because of these three reasons:

• They feel anonymous
• They feel irrelevant, because they feel like their work doesn’t matter.
• They don’t know how to measure their success (they don’t know if their performance is good or bad)

You can help a workmate to feel less anonymous. Relationships at work are so important that those who feel appreciated by their workmates find it harder to leave their jobs, even voluntarily. Feedback is also crucial. Working without knowing that your contribution is important for the objective of the company can make your life miserable. Find ways to help others see why their work is important. If you are boss or a manager, let your employees know how their performance is measured. 

If you cannot leave, think about what you can learn from the experience. Often, people hate their jobs because of the bad relationships they have with their workmates or, more often, with their supervisors. It is important to realize why your mates are so frustrated in their jobs and then work on new ways to address this. Consider it a project, suggests Lafair. This feeling of experimenting can inject new energy into your daily routine. Sometimes people realise that what they hated the most about those relationships was the lack of will to talk about the conflict or having to avoid certain topics.

Ethics above all. If you are planning on quitting or have reasos o believe that you are going to be fired, you must start looking for a new job, but be ethical: you owe your company the work that you are being paid to do. And don’t be surprised if you start to accomplish more than you used to and get a promotion.

Lastly, here is one of the best pieces of advice that I have heard and it works for everything (write this down and put in somewhere where you’ll see it): “This too shall pass.” Success, as well as failure, is fleeting. Think that what you are going through, despite how unbearable it may seem, will pass too. 

This week, LivinginPeru.com begins publishing weekly articles on Peru's job climate an human resources from Aptitus, Peru's top job classifieds. Visit Aptitus online to search for jobs and upload your CV.

tags : unhappiness stress negatiyity workshops

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