According to guest Beverly Jones, getting “unstuck” is as simple as taking small steps toward your happiness goals. In this episode of the Transform Your Workplace podcast, Brandon Laws and Beverly Jones discuss some simple strategies from Beverly’s new book, 50 Ways to Get Unstuck. It’s possible to take a small step that leads to big change when it comes to workplace happiness.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Beverly Jones — coach, consultant, and speaker — is also the author of Find Your Happy at Work: 50 Ways to Get Unstuck, Move Past Boredom, and Discover Fulfillment. She is passionate about helping leaders thrive in their careers and in the workplace. She also leads a podcast called “Jazzed About Work.”
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
THE GENESIS
Many of Beverly’s clients are leaders of large organizations, and she kept noticing that they were “trying so hard.” They cared so much about their employees, but they just weren’t happy. And, unfortunately, the leader’s unhappiness will trickle down to the team. After noticing the prevalence of this issue among her clients, Beverly began to grapple with the question, “how much control do we really have over our own happiness?”
“The more I played with the idea of happiness at work,” Beverly explained, “the more I realized that it starts with the leader as a person.” If the leader commits to working on their mindset, then they have a starting point to work from, and happiness can become a contagious force within a company. After all, “you can’t impose happiness on people if you don’t experience it yourself.”
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
You’re Somebody
“This fellow had some hard times and was working as a dishwasher. This was the first opportunity for him to be a waiter. And he had this voice in his head telling him ‘You’re never going to be anybody. All these fancy people in this hotel/restaurant, they’re all somebody, but you’re nobody.’ So then the leader of the organization who was respectful of the employees introduced him to the other guests and this guy thought, ‘He treated me like somebody’ and, in that moment, he went from being motionless to suddenly knowing his path in life.”
“In about eight years, he was manager, and he just kept telling people: ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about your employees, your team members, your colleagues, your boss, or your customers. If you treat everybody like they’re really somebody special, then everything else can be worked out.’”
Finding Your Purpose
“Having a constant sense of serving a purpose and connecting with that can make you happy. You can have a purpose and forget about it, and then you start to float. But as soon as you feel like you’re supporting your purpose, you’re supporting the mission. You start to feel better.”
The Effects of Detachment
“There’s a lot in the book about how we’ve evolved to be emotional, empathetic, and work together, and those skills are very helpful to us. But if we’re disconnected from people, it’s hard to be happy in work or anywhere else. And one thing that I noticed was that clients sometimes talk about being burned out or not respected, but sometimes a big part of the problem is that they’re detached from other people — they’re not connecting. And certainly, that’s been huge during COVID. People who normally had circles that they saw regularly or communities that they hung out with haven’t built the skills for dealing with remote work yet.”
Focusing on Gratitude
“Write down three things, maybe on a card or a chart or something like that, that you feel grateful for. Just three things. That seems to be enough to stimulate a sense of gratitude. When you experience gratitude, you can’t be anxious at the same time. It’s like our brains can’t process both of those states simultaneously. So stimulating a sense of gratitude is a great way to lower your blood pressure and slow down.”
Tapping into the Desire
“We tend to think that if we were more motivated, we would do more. And we talk about other people that way — ‘this person is talented, but they’re just not motivated’ — as though success in action always follows motivation, but actually, it often works the other way around. If you take a step, even if you do it kind of half-heartedly, that can lead to motivation. If you can just bring yourself to take a small, manageable step, then all of a sudden you’ll feel better. You’ll have a sense of accomplishment. You’ll feel a tiny bit more confident and happy. So the simple answer is that if you’re not feeling motivated, do something.”
Taking Back Your Time
“Now that other people can put dates and assignments on our calendars, it’s like the calendar feels like it’s a list of committed, to-do tasks that other people want you to do. And I think you can recapture the benefits of the calendar by changing it into something which is a contract with yourself about the commitments that really matter.”
LEARN MORE
Grab a copy of Beverly’s book, Find Your Happy at Work, wherever books are sold, or check out her website at clearwaysconsulting.com.