By: Nina Spencer
Reviewed By: Glain Roberts-McCabe
The Premise: Re-quoting the popular song “love the one you’re with”, author Nina Spencer pens “If you can’t be in the job you love, love the job your in…” and provides some straightforward strategies to help you reignite your passion for your profession. Spencer asserts that loving your job can be a conscious decision and provides eight key ways to reinvigorate your relationship with your work. Strategies include: practicing positive word choice (think “challenge” versus “problem”), reconnecting with a “higher purpose” or meaning for your job, keeping a sense of humour and challenging yourself to look at situations through different perspectives. Like any long-term relationship, the one you have with your profession will experience its own ups and downs and it is your choice as to how you will work through each bump in the road.
The Bottom-line: This book is a terrific read for anyone who may be feeling in a rut with their current role. The strategies outlined are very practical, but more importantly, the perspective to think about how you can consciously reengage with your work is highly valuable. I found it interesting to parallel the idea of work being like any relationship that requires constant work and effort to maintain its vitality. We spend a great deal of our life “working” and to approach it with a more conscious effort seems to make an abundant amount of sense. As I read this book, I reflected on prior work experiences I’d had and realized how many missed opportunities there had been because of the perspective I had become stuck in. For those of you who, at the core, enjoy what you do but may be feeling trapped in a negative perspective, Spencer’s provocation that job satisfaction is a personal choice is one definitely worth exploring.
