Don't be a hater ... how to love your job!

Do What you love.

Your profession is a big part of your identity. You should feel pride and satisfaction after every working day. If this is not the case, you need to change something, fast.

Not everyone has the freedom to just walk out of their jobs and start all over again.

But usually this isn’t even necessary, mostly its about your attitude and perception.

Erika Anderson who is the author of 'Growing great employees' and who contributes to Forbes.com has some great suggestions:

Stop hanging with the haters

In every organisation, there will always be some people who take great delight in trashing everything. Hearing only the negatives about your workplace makes it hard to see the positives that may exist, and it ultimately will make you feel worse about yourself. Spending time with colleagues who have a more balanced view can dramatically shift your emotional response to your job.

Ask for more of what you like

Think about whether there are some parts of your job that you like more than others. It may be that your employer would be open to your doing more of those things.

Change Your Boss

A poor manager – disengaged, critical, self-serving, untrustworthy – can put a real damper on anyone’s work satisfaction. In mid-size or larger companies, you can look for a job working for another manager – especially if your job skills are easily transferable to another part of the business. Even If this isn’t possible, you can sometimes change your existing boss. Most people, when they have a less-than-great boss, just throw up their hands and assume they have to live with it. But fairly often, a bad boss is not a bad person – he or she is just bad at managing others. If you get clear about the one or two things you’d most like him or her to do differently, and ask for those changes in a respectful and hopeful way, you might be surprised at the positive response you get.

Learn something

Often, not being happy at work just comes down to being bored. If you can do your job with one hand and half your brain – no wonder you’re not happy. Most people are happiest when they’re at an optimum level of engagement: neither under-challenged or over-challenged. If your learning curve has flattened out at work, think about what you might learn that would make your job more interesting and make you more useful to the organisation: learning new skills or acquiring new knowledge can increase both job security and job satisfaction.

Work harder

This may seem entirely counterintuitive, but it’s part of the ‘right’ degree of challenge. You may feel like you’re being clever to get away with clocking in at 9, leaving on the dot of 5 and taking a long lunch – but over time, only doing what’s needed and not a bit more is likely to backfire. think about where you could lean into your job to find more purpose, or to get more expert. Do you enjoy helping younger colleagues grow? Spend more time coaching people who report to you. Are you fascinated by the impact social media could have on your business? Talk to the folks in your business who are exploring that and figure out how to apply it to your work.

Often just making the effort to find more satisfaction at work can have a positive impact. Realizing that your experience is more within your control than you thought can be a very positive thing – and could be the start of a long-term shift toward more happiness at work. Just think: you could make it so that Monday morning is something you look forward to.