Take This Job and Love It!

Terri Langhans, a Certified Speaking Professional, author and COE (Chief of Everything) at Blah, Blah, Blah Etc. Inc., was the featured speaker at our recent Sterling Bank Women’s Business Initiative Luncheon. She motivated and entertained our appreciative audience as she presented her marvelous message "Take This Job and LOVE It!"

It is abundantly clear that Terri loves her job and she shared tips for everyone to love theirs. She urges getting a new pair of glasses, which is a vivid way of reminding us that we always find what we are looking for. If we are looking for a mess, problem or boring meeting, we’ll find that. But if we’re looking for solutions, interesting interactions or success, that’s what we’ll find.

She outlined six things that can lead to burnout – workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values. And she offered a great twist, noting that in order to experience burnout, one had to have once been on fire. Rekindling the flame can occur by changing our perspective about the cause of burnout or finding a job where these factors are a match for us.

We’re all familiar with RDA in food and vitamins. Terri prescribes creating RDA for what we are looking to achieve.

And she’s a big proponent of using questions. We need to ask ourselves what a good mom or leader would do. When confronted with an uncomfortable question from another, she suggests responding with a question. Why do you ask? What is it that you want to know? And if someone is ranting it often works to add a question to their complaint. Her daughter came home from school and spewed, “I hate my math teacher. He’s an idiot.” Terri’s response was, “You hate him? He’s an idiot?” This allowed her daughter to vent about tomorrow’s test and her misplaced book, which were her real issues.

In order to love our jobs, we need to understand what is important and let the professional inside us shine.