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Basic Need: Job Satisfaction by Rose Murdock One basic need you have as a human being is to receive
satisfaction in your work. You
need to feel that your efforts in life make a difference.
Starting with the hungry baby who learns that he can do something
to meet his basic need for food by crying, to the professional athlete
whose skill, training and perseverance finally pay off for him, we all
need to know that we can do
something to change things in our lives.
And we thrive in an environment where we feel that we are good at
what we do and are making a difference.
Of course there are
challenges in life and, believe it or not, you are not happiest when
there are no challenges. On
the contrary, as you overcome challenges you get an even greater
satisfaction because it wasn’t easy to come by.
You learned, you grew, you somehow became more skilled and able
to meet the challenge and overcome it.
The baby learns to communicate in a way other than crying because
of a desire to be better understood.
And he continues to develop in communication skills as he grows,
learning to listen as well as speak and discovering that there is more
to communicating then just expressing his own needs.
A greater satisfaction occurs as he overcomes challenges and is
able to communicate more intelligently with others. We
all have an inner desire to express ourselves through our personal
giftings—our skills and talents. And
when ‘it works’ you are most satisfied.
Whether you are a doctor, musician, or housekeeper when you do a
good job, make a difference or help someone then your basic need of job
satisfaction is met. If you
believed in fate in its truest sense then you wouldn’t be motivated to
do anything. The fact that
you can do certain things to make changes in your life is what keeps our
world going. That’s what
‘work’ is all about. But you need to understand
that even though you can experience great satisfaction from your work,
there are limitations. An
athlete has to work up to running in a marathon.
He can’t expect to do it on his first attempt.
And if he becomes sick or injured then that puts another
limitation on him. He must
remain patient with himself while he continues to train.
If he doesn’t allow himself to enjoy life until he reaches a
certain goal then he will constantly live a miserable life because he
will always be striving for something he doesn’t have yet.
And at some point there will be a limitation that he cannot go
beyond. In the same way, if
you feel you can’t have peace until you attain to a certain level of
accomplishment in your job then you can begin to feel helpless and fall
prey to fear, anger and eventually discouragement.
You need to remember that you are human and there are limitations
to how much you can do. Some
of these limitations are temporary and will move as you grow in skill
and experience but at some point there are limitations you cannot go
beyond. Ask
yourself how you define the limitations of your job?
Some of you will become angry at yourself for not being able to
do the impossible and others have accepted limitations more
easily. Many
of you will continue to push yourselves to the point of exhausting
yourself. Although
many great advances have been made by people who have not given up even
when told what they are attempting is impossible, the problem comes in
when the challenges are too great, and even humanly or technologically
impossible for one person. If
you are expecting too much of yourself then you will become irritated
and angry because you cannot reap the job satisfaction that you feel
contributes to your basic happiness.
And who do you think that anger will be directed towards?
It could be yourself , management, your spouse or children etc.
When that happens then the attempt to find happiness from your
job has interfered with the peace in your life. Your quest has
become a goal rather then enjoying the journey of life. If you’re looking to find inner peace from your work then you will put too much pressure on yourself to perform. You have made your job your source of self-worth. There is peace to discover that is not based on what you do to earn it. When you discover the peace that you haven’t earned then you will be able to flourish in your job because you are not being driven by anger or irritation. You won't be working to get peace, but working because you have peace and enjoy your life and your work. Are
you spinning your wheels? Will you not allow yourself to be happy
until you reach a certain goal? Do you think everything is not
O.K. the way it is now? If so, then you need the peace that comes
from outside yourself. And there's only one place to go to get
it. “I've told you all this so that trusting me, |
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