1. Improving Job Satisfaction: an Employee perspective

If you are looking for advice on poisoning or dismembering your boss, this will not be the place to find it. I have also chosen not to include tips on negotiation, boundary management, job hunting or dealing with difficult people. The only difficult person I will address in these ten steps is you. Believe it or not this is the best news you have heard in a very long time because the only person you will ever be able to change is yourself. The good news is you are the only person you need to change to have what Kenny Loggins described in his book as The Unimagined Life.

If the ideas make little or no sense or they make you angry, join the club. I have been studying these ideas for thirty years and continue to feel all of the above at times. If you would like to know more about the source of these ideas, read the personal section of this article. If you would like to discuss or debate the ideas add your comments to this blog, or contact me directly at randy@randymorgan.com.

Please don’t just discard these ideas. There are many easier, and as I have just been reminded by my staff, more commercial ideas I could share, but these are the ten I know can make the biggest difference.

1. LIFE IS A LESSON: It does not matter whether you believe there is a higher power or you are in this on your own, believing there is a lesson in all we experience is a powerful tool to opening your mind to new opportunities. Use this as a time not to take new action, but to create new understanding.

2. ACCEPT 100% ACCOUNTABILITY: Accountability is different than responsibility. Accountability has no history, no baggage. It does not matter how you got here, who your boss or coworkers are. You are the creator of your experience.

3. BE SELF EMPLOYED: Regardless of who you work for approach every day as if this is your own business. Whether your employer appreciates all the extra things you do is of little consequence. The important thing is who you become. Everything else can be taken away, but who you become in the process is by far your greatest job benefit. .

4. FORGIVE EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING ESPECIALLY YOURSELF: Resentment, remorse, blame, guilt, shame are on the very bottom of negative energy scale. Using these emotions to “motivate” change is like pouring gasoline on a house to heat it.

5. CHANGE YOUR LANGUAGE: We only have to listen in to any breakroom conversation to hear stories of how stressed, frustrated, bored, distracted, or 100 other _______ed’s people might be. Each loaded with negative energy and each blaming someone or something for their situation. The next time you are tempted to end your favorite adjective with a passive “ed” try an active “ing” for a more accurate description.

6. BECOME AN OBSERVER: Learn to observe your own inner dialogue. No one speaks to us more than we do, and yet most of the conversation goes on unconsciously and unchallenged.

7. TALK NICE: Studies have shown that more than 77% of our own self talk is critical in nature. We say things to ourselves we would never allow others to say, and then direct this dialogue to others as well. Every thought, every word has a resonance, and that energy that either builds us up or tears us down.

8. GIVE UP ATTACK: We never really attack others, but only the projection of ourselves within them. Consider this next time you are playing that mental game of mash the muggle. Is there a part of you that you see in this person? Also realize that when you get angry or depressed your hypothalamus releases peptides that stress every cell in your body. When you attack others you are literally attacking yourself.

9. VISUALIZE WHAT YOU WANT: See what you want in present tense in all the visceral detail possible. We are very good at picturing and feeling negative experiences, but each time we do so we draw them closer to us. Notice how many times you picture or “Fascinate” about a negative outcome. Then gradually catch yourself in the act, and replace the picture with what you do want.

10. BECOME A VORACIOUS STUDENT OF YOU: The average college graduate does not read one non-fiction book after graduation. We spend countless hours learning skills for everything from accounting to social networking, and yet little if any learning to understand how we think. Remember, “We feel the way we feel because we think the way we think”.