How do you feel when you wake up and have to go to work? Do you love your job and are you excited, or do you dread the day to come because you hate it that much? It might sound obvious but it’s important to love your job and have passion in all that you do. According to Forbes, 53% of Americans are currently unhappy at work. 53%! That’s over half of working Americans! What the heck!

Over half of working Americans are missing the chance to live their life a little more through the jobs that they do. There’s an old saying, “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life”. It’s so cliche yet so darn true. Enjoying your workplace and what you do to pay the bills leads to better health, boosts your confidence, and will increase your motivation throughout life. Enjoying what you do is a crucial part of your life that you could be missing out on. You spend most of your waking hours working. When you don’t enjoy it, you aren’t able to enjoy most other things.

Leads to Better Health

Loving your job leads to better mental and physical health. Having to constantly show up to a job that you dislike can be draining; mentally and physically. This can cause stress in your life and make it difficult to enjoy days that you don’t even have to work. Having a job that you don’t enjoy leads to more stress and if worked long-term, can lead to detrimental health problems.

Stress is a good and bad thing. It helps us get things done and provides urgency and structure in our lives. Too much stress begins to affect our physical health though, leading to weight gain, heart attacks, weakened immune system, headaches, and lessened energy levels. It also can affect our mental health through depression, anxiety, insomnia, and PTSD. Don’t let your job weigh you down and impact your health so negatively. Working to pay the bills isn’t entirely worth it when it’ll lead to more health-related bills in the future. It’s okay to make less money doing what you love because the long-term rewards are much greater.

Boosts Confidence

Feeling positive and setting personal goals can be a difficult venture when you aren’t content in your day to day life. When you feel down, it’s difficult to feel positive and worthwhile but when you feel excited about life and have things to look forward to each day, life feels fun and your confidence levels improve. When you have the drive, you begin to tackle tasks that once seemed so difficult. As you cross things off your to-do list and bucket list, you begin to feel infinite, like you can do anything you set your mind to. Having confidence in your abilities comes from optimism. It’s a domino effect, when you do one thing and it makes you feel good, you want more of that feeling so you keep pushing to feel it again, leading to more accomplishments and more good feelings. This is also known as intrinsic motivation.

Having a job that you feel excited about leads to better self-confidence and optimism towards life. You will naturally work harder when you enjoy what you do. Little accomplishments reap big rewards in the way of work. When you begin to accomplish/create work that you feel proud of, you will likely want to share that. This will lead to high confidence levels and motivate you to work harder which leads us to…

Increases Motivation

When you love your job, you feel much more motivated to do the work. People assume that money is what will drive them but in fact, according to Harvard Business Review, there is a mere 2% overlap between pay and job satisfaction levels. Money doesn’t change how much you enjoy your job; it simply changes how much you get paid for being unhappy. Money won’t make you work harder and being unhappy won’t drive you to success. When you love your job, you will feel more compelled to work hard and push to move up, giving you something more to look forward to.

Love Your Job and Start Loving Life a Little More

It’s easy to get caught up in a job that we hate, especially when it pays well. Days pass us by and soon enough, we are so far in that we can’t (or don’t know how to) get out. Finding passion and love in your job is crucial to your health. When you love what you do, it’s easy to find passion and excitement in other areas of your life. If you are spending your days off dreading your next workday, chances are it’s time to start looking elsewhere.

It’s okay to leave jobs that aren’t serving you anymore. Time changes things. Maybe you used to love your job but you’ve changed, the position changed, or it just got boring to you. It’s okay and normal but finding something that fulfills you will make you feel much happier and content in life so go out and find it! The money will follow when you love what you do.