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- New Job Responsibilities Needed to Flourish 📈
New Job Responsibilities Needed to Flourish 📈
New Job Responsibilities Needed to Flourish 📈
Your New Job Responsibilities
There is a way that you can bring alignment to your personal and professional life and enhance them both at the same time. I know it sounds crazy that you need to add responsibilities to your actual job descriptions for you to enhance your work and life, but this framing below has been very helpful to my coaching clients from all walks of life, and I know it will be helpful to you. This method works for all stages of your life and career guaranteed.
Cheers!
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Flourishing = Peak Well-Being
I’ve read a lot of books on positive psychology because it was all the rage in my formative years as a child and teenager in the 80s and 90s.* Positive psychology marked a shift from traditional psychology's emphasis on mental illness to studying positive emotions, character strengths, and constructive thinking.
We are in a somewhat new age of thinking in psychology, because being happy and positive is really a state of being and not a process for getting there. Happiness is a noun and not a method. The work we do day-in and day-out has an outsized impact on our state of happiness. So now there is a focus on personal well-being in work and life with the highest level of attainment being flourishing. Happiness is a competitive or comparative state, whereas flourishing is a creative state that is only self-defined. By focusing on well-being and the processes that enable well-being, we can truly enhance our personal and professional lives to the point of flourishing.
Bringing Alignment in Our Lives
I coach a lot of people who are working on maximizing their being as business leaders. What isn’t totally evident to my coaching clients at first is that at least 25-30% of the coaching focuses on being the best “CEO” of their personal lives. To flourish and have enhanced well-being, you need to be the best CEO in work AND life – both growing in balance – you cannot flourish by growing one without the other. Your mind, your body, your social relationships, etc. are either your best friend on your journey to flourishing or your worst enemy.
Both must grow together.
So, what should you do to enhance your well-being for your business as well as your personal life?
One technique that I use with my clients is for them to rethink their core job responsibilities at work, where we spend most of our waking hours.
So if there is only one take away you get from this “Mindset Moment” it is this:
“Anything that enhances and enables you to do your job better in all aspects of your life, professionally and personally, should be considered a core job responsibility from now onward.”
-Eric Mathews
I put this in quotes because I want you to know that I’m saying this to you. This thinking has been transformative in my life and my clients lives, and I know it will be for you. Further, maybe someone else needs to hear it and you will pass it along.
Saying it again in a different way:
“Anything that enhances and enables you to do your job better in all aspects of your life — at the office, at home, for your spouse, for your kids, for your friends and in your life generally on all levels — should be considered a core job responsibility from now onward.”
These are some of the new professional and personal responsibilities to add to your job description:
Sleeping Well is a Responsibility
Exercise is a Responsibility
Diet is a Responsibility
Reading is a Responsibility
Relaxation is a Responsibility
Add these job responsibilities as core to your professional life first.
By adding new professional responsibilities where you have the strong incentive of getting paid, you get the benefit of being rewarded monetarily for taking on these responsibilities, while at the same time enhancing both your professional and personal life simultaneously.
No, I’m not crazy.
There are two core reasons why these need to be added to your job description:
It enhances your professional life. Starting with the professional realm, when you observe high-powered and highly productive people like business CEOs, you see that they generally control their schedules and prioritize a fair amount of time toward themselves and the activities that they desire, even bordering on the seemingly selfish – like showing up to the office late and leaving early. What are they doing? Basically, being the CEO of a business comes down to being prepared to make 1 or 2 very difficult decisions each year. If you screw up those very difficult decisions, then you will not be a CEO very long. The rest of the job is preparing for that unknown time and place to make that decision. This goes back to being in the right position (place, time, energy, knowledge, skills, etc.) to make the right call. The best CEOs only must be 10% better at decision making to be the best. So, would sleep impact that position or ability to make the right decision? Or reading, exercise, diet, relaxation? The answer is yes.
It enhances your personal life.The second core reason why these aspects of life should be considered core job responsibilities is for the betterment of your personal life. Getting to a state of flourishing can only occur when you are showing up for friends and family in the right position to enjoy and support them. Would programmed relaxation be good for you? Your family? Would you have more energy for your spouse and/or kids if you exercised and ate right? How would sleeping well enhance your emotional regulation for friends and family? Would modeling a good reading habit help? Here again the answer is an emphatic YES.
How are you showing up for all the jobs in your life?
I think you know what you must do now: add these responsibilities into your job descriptions for work.
Yes, for work, because that is where you spend more waking hours and where you will see the monetary benefits and career advancement, and thus you will feel directly rewarded for the benefits and new responsibilities. Then you will bring these benefits home to your personal life.
Additionally, your eyes are opened now: you can no longer consider these activities only personal in nature, when they directly benefit your professional life in a big way. Working late instead of exercising is no longer acceptable when this is one of the core responsibilities of your job. It enables you to be better at your job, so you need to do it. You also need to evaluate yourself annually on how well you are doing this aspect of your job.
When you think about it, deep down, you need to prioritize these responsibilities first and foremost to flourish and be the best CEO in your professional and personal life.
I know this is hard to implement, so let me know how I can help you.
What are some other new job responsibilities that you want to add this year?
What things will enhance both your professional and personal life?
*In case you were wondering . . . Yes, as a family in the 80s and 90s, we did read non-fiction books on business and positive psychology as well as informational newsletters. Each item was passed along to each member of the family person-to-person over the course of the week for all to read and then check off that the reading was completed. Beach vacations especially enhanced the consumption of non-fiction books where sometimes three and even four were on the goal stack for the family. Do you have this experience? Or any other formative ones like it? Email me back and maybe I’ll write about it here too. Hopefully I’m not alone.
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