Falling out of love with your executive job is easily done. You can become tired and cynical especially when it feels like groundhog day. There is nothing new happening, nothing demanding or entertaining taking place and critically you feel like you have stopped making a positive difference.
However if you don’t want run the risk of changing scenery and a move up the ranks is unlikely as the C suite ranks are congested, then here are 5 suggestions on how you can love your executive job again and feel re-energised and refocused.
1. Remind yourself why you took the job initially
Begin with a healthy dose of reflection and remind yourself why you took this job in the first place. What were the reasons for accepting the role – the financial rewards, the responsibilities, the company, the flexibility? Are they still relevant and if not, why not? Sometimes understanding the bigger reason within the bigger picture helps diffuse your boredom because you know, for example, that this job helps your kids get through school and that actually it’s worth some occasional frustration to facilitate this. Even if things have changed since then this process of reflection will help you understand what’s important to you now and how to navigate your next steps to get you to where you want to go.
2. Take a break – refresh and refocus
Often you fall out of love with your job because you are just in ‘a rut’. There may be no one reason but more that you have been working too many long hours with deep focus over too many weeks and months. What you need is to take an extended break to refresh and refocus. It doesn’t have to be for long – sometimes a few days away can make all the difference.
You just want to be able to refresh both physically and mentally so ideally going somewhere new and doing something different to stimulate your senses is the ideal break. You want to feel recharged and ready to go at the end of the time away.
I recommend (but don’t always follow through myself) that you plan a mini break every ‘quarter’. This has the psychological benefit of you feeling within “touching distance “ of your next break as well of course as the physical benefit of taking the break too.
3. Nothing changes if nothing changes – how to re-frame your role
This is one of my favourite phrases because you need to make small changes for an overall change to take place. If you are in a rut and have fallen out of love with your executive job then you need to make one or several changes to become re-engaged.
Your job may feel the same every day but you can change how you think about, or reframe, your job.
Successful people are generally adept at positively reframing the way they think about their situation and not getting stuck with the problems in their life. It can always be worse than it is currently and if framed this way they can make the current situation not as bad as they first thought.
You can choose to ‘view’ it negatively or you can choose to ‘view’ it positively and the research shows that those who reframe challenging events and situations positively will achieve much more success than those who reframe negatively. In this scenario reframe the way you think about your job in a positive way not a negative way.
4. Upgrade your skill set
You can love your executive job again by re-equipping yourself with new skills or upgrading existing skills to enable you to perform at a higher level and add much greater value through the role.
If you can evaluate what output is required from the role and for those dependent on the role in the coming years for you then you can also identify what skills will be required to perform the role. If you don’t have them now you will have to develop them and learning them breaks the boredom
5. Use a coach to help you revive your love of the job
Using an external coach can help you revive your love of your job by reframing how you see it. They will be able to help you view things in a different way by asking objective questions and probing in areas recently untouched. They will find a way for you to rediscover the positive and the possible. They will work with you to set reasonable but inspiring goals that will motivate you and help provide structure and focus for each day. By achieving these goals you can create opportunities to negotiate a promotion or a salary increase or assume additional responsibilities.
Some or all of these approaches will help you become re-engaged and re-enthused with your executive job but the key thing to remember is that it is your responsibility and within your control to make it work for you.
For more on how to fall back in love with your job and executive coaching contact Mental Toughness Partners.