Industrious

Defined: skillful, ingenious; persistently active: zealous; constantly, regularly, or habitually occupied: diligent. From the thesaurus we can relate industrious to being assiduous – marked by careful attention or persistent application.

For some the word industrious conjures up a scene straight out of a Charles Dickens novel where people toil away with soot on their clothes and faces in some factory setting. While this scene may have physically changed for most industrial settings within the United States, the mental scene may be about the same for the workers.

Less than half of the American work force is satisfied with their jobs, and nearly 70 percent would not keep their present job if it were financially unnecessary for them to work. People report low job satisfaction as one of the greatest sources of unhappiness in their lives.

I suggest that many of these unsatisfied people feel like they are making someone else’s dreams come true; the shareholders and owners of the company, or even their own parents who talked them into doing the work in the first place. The work they do seems to be a burden imposed upon them so that they can merely survive from day to day. Many people work in jobs that do not contribute to their long-range goals, interests or personal ideals. The time spent at work takes away from the time that they would rather be using on something they see as more valuable and worthwhile. The work they do feels like an infringement upon their personal freedom and they would rather avoid doing it altogether.

The way most people feel about themselves is heavily influenced by what they do for work and their attitude towards it. Many feel that their self-worth needs to be validated by society as doing something useful. If society gives the position some level of prestige then the worker tends to have a better feeling of self-worth, at least on the surface.

What society deems as prestigious may not amount to a hill of beans in the greater scheme of things. Yet many people work long and hard hours at these so-called prestigious jobs only to find themselves to be very unhappy, tired, stressed out and prone to disease, which actually reverses any real feelings of self-worth they may have gotten from the job itself.

It seems then that many American workers whether they work in prestigious positions or otherwise are mostly unhappy, lacking energy, often sick, and have low inner self-worth. Is this situation natural or something induced by circumstances that these workers find themselves in? I suggest that it is highly unnatural.

People with enough energy and self-worth are naturally industrious. They enjoy using their innate gifts and developed skills as a form of self-expression. Ideally they do what they love doing as their full-time work. If they cannot currently do what they love as their occupation then they at least do it as a hobby. Eventually many of these hobbyists turn their form of self-expression into their occupation thus becoming self-employed. These people are usually quite happy, full of energy, healthy, and have high inner self-worth.

While that is wonderful that people pursue hobbies and even make them as their life’s occupation, society is not set up for everyone to be self-employed doing what they love. Afterall, you can only have so many stained-glass and wood-working businesses being economically viable, for example. And some people do not want to work for themselves. They would rather focus their energies being industrious while someone else makes the business management decisions.

The next best thing is to match up your personality and developed skills with the ideal occupation and then locating an excellent company to employ you within that occupation. As many of us know, different personality types fit certain occupations better than others. For instance, if you are not a people person then you may not want to choose a customer service position.

Choosing an ideal occupation requires that one have a great degree of self-awareness. One instrument that has been created to determine the personality aspect is a test known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). This test may help you narrow down your choices as to what occupation may be just right for you. The more aspects of your personality you can match up to your occupation, at least in theory, the happier you will be doing it. Of course some of the happiness factor has to do with the company that hires you.

What makes for an excellent company to work for? Here are some things to look for within the company’s work environment:

• Encourages self-mastery of a variety of tasks.
• Peers and superiors give positive encouragement and feedback. Your work is respected and appreciated.
• What you do has a significant impact on other people’s lives.
• The work place has good lighting and fresh air.
• You have the feeling of control and autonomy in how you perform your job.
• The workload is not excessive.
• The work environment does not have conflicting demands.
• Being able to take part in decisions that affect your job.
• The work provides a challenge that is meaningful.
• You enjoy and respect the people you work with.
• Being able to connect with others outside the workplace via a phone call when necessary.
• Have adequate breaks.
• You feel optimistic about your future.
• The workplace has a union rep, board of enquiry, human resources rep, arbitrator, etc., where one can resolve personnel clashes.
• You are not penalized for failure, but instead given constructive ideas on how to improve performance.
• The work does not deplete your mental energy. Most of the time you feel energized by what you do.
• You look forward to going to work.

Now we have two ideal paths that one can take for those that actually work: being self-employed or being ideally employed by an excellent company. Wasn’t that easy? What? What about the rest of you? Oh, you mean the people that choose not to become self-employed or cannot find an excellent company to work for. Yes, that is a less than ideal situation for sure. Well, let’s see what we might do about it.

As wise people have known for ages, it is not important what you do for a living but your state of being while doing it. Being self-employed and working in an occupation that you love doing just gives you a large helping hand in having a happier disposition while living your life. This happy disposition may not be permanent and can quickly disappear if the self-employed person or employee working within an ideal company loses the work and/or employment.

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