Episode 155: Is It Work If You Love What You Do?

PodcastSelf-DevelopmentWork
Written By Naomi Nakamura

Do you love your work right now? How is it affecting you physically? Mentally? Emotionally?

Continuing on with the discussion of work-life balance, is there such a thing as “too much” work if you love what you do?

Join me in this solo episode as I explore this topic, as well as hear me discuss:

  • How to approach your work if you don’t love what you do?

  • The difference reframing your mindset and finding little joys on the job can make

  • How I was able to turn things around in my day job and make it enjoyable once again

Listen to the Episode:

“I firmly believe that because we spend so much time at and on our work, it’s such a huge part of our lives, and if we have any distress, tension, or stress associated with it, has a tremendous impact on our health and well-being.”
— Naomi Nakamura

Read the Transcript:

Well hello there my friend, and welcome back to The Live FAB Life Podcast.

I’m your host, Naomi Nakamura.

Over the past, oh I don’t know, almost a year? I've done a number of episodes on work, how we approach our work, how we conduct ourselves at work, and what is our mindset towards our work?

This might seem odd for a health and wellness show, but I firmly believe that because we spend so much time at and on our work, it's such a huge part of our lives, and if we any distress, tension or stress associated with it has a tremendous impact on our health and well-being.

I know not being in a good place with your work, you know, where you spend 40+ hours a week if you have a full-time job, is pretty common. I mean, I see the Sunday Night Blues posts on social media posts every week, week in, week out.

You might be sacrificing sleep, not making the best choices with your diet, feeling irritable and being short with others. This can affect your working relationships and how you communicate with and treat others.

Being unhappy at work can really affect every part of your life.

I recently had a conversation with a friend about work, which is what prompted this episode.

She made a comment about how I have so much work between my full-time day job, health coaching, this podcast and Beautycounter.

And my first response to her was, “But it doesn’t all feel like work because I love it so much!” which led me to thinking, “Is it “work” if you love what you do?”

If no one, or no one thing is compelling me to work, does it constitute “work?” Let’s take this podcast for example. I don’t get paid to do this show. I’ve intentionally kept it sponsor-free even though it takes a tremendous amount of effort and resources in time and money. Yet I genuinely love bringing you episodes every week. So do I consider it work?

At some point when we were kids, we had ideas of what we wanted to be when we grew up. I remember wanting to be a dentist because I liked pressing the buttons on the chair at the dentist office and I thought, “how cool would it be to get to do that all day?”

Another time I wanted to be a cashier because I wanted to use the cash register. Apparently I have a thing for pushing buttons - shocking I didn’t want to be an elevator attendant.

In college, I remember thinking about becoming a teacher. But ironically enough, my dad, who is now a retired teacher, talked me out of it because knowing my personality, he knew I wouldn’t have the patience to deal with all the red tape that comes with teaching and well, working for the government.

So I started thinking about how I fell into the work that I do now. And how some of my friends have fallen into the work that they do. Most of us aren’t doing what we imagined, or what we studied in school.

Through one circumstance or another, we somehow landed in the roles that we do for work. And some of us may love it, and others may not.

So, I actually got my degree in Geography, specifically Travel and Tourism with a minor in Business. You see, I was born and raised in Hawai’i, and I thought that if I ever end up back there, it would be a useful degree to have.

And now I’m not doing anything remotely related to geography, or Travel and Tourism.

Instead, right after my college graduation, my roommate at the time had gotten a job at a management consulting firm. They happen to be looking for client managers, so my roommate gave one of the hiring manager's my resume and I started working there a week after my college graduation.

A couple of years later, I transferred to a sister company in downtown San Francisco, that’s how I ended up in the Bay Area. After working there for a couple of years, I made the natural transition into the tech world with my physical proximity to Silicon Valley, working at a couple of startups, in fact, the first tech company I worked at was named Startups.com (which btw, doesn't exist anymore).

From there I jumped to a few other startups and then I ended up at a large tech company. Somehow along the way I went from client management, to professional services, to managing technical training programs, and now doing program and project management.

I’m sure you have your own story about how you fell into the work that you do now, especially if it's not what you envisioned, or even what you might have gone to school or training for.

Which is how we may end up really loving what we do, or really not.

So if you don’t love what you do, how do you deal with the parts of it that you don’t like?

We all have parts of our work that we don’t like to do. That doesn’t necessarily mean we hate our work, but when it becomes insurmountable and detrimental to your health - your mental and emotional health, your physical health, all of it - what can you do?

At the time of recording this episode, which is the first week of January, this week marks 13 years at my current company.

While I love what I do now, my role has evolved over the past 13 years. There was a time in the early years where I was extremely unhappy in my job. I hated it so much that my stomach would churn every morning with dread as I drove to the office. I would literally count down the hours until the weekend.

It wasn't that I didn't love my actual work because although I've had different roles, the nature of the roles I had were always pretty closely aligned.

What I didn't love about my work back then was, well a number of things actually, from the people that I worked for, a few of the people that I worked with, a lack of structure because I'm a very structured person and I need to understand what is the process of things and how an organization is organized.

Not having structure makes things very ambiguous for me which then makes me nervous and unsure about how I fit into the picture and how everyone and everything else fits in.

Because as a program or project manager, when you're trying to bring moving pieces together, having that lack of structure is really stressful.

I also didn’t love my work because of poor communication, and probably a few other things that aren’t coming to mind at the moment.

The point here being, we all have different things, and you might relate to some of, or all of these things that might be going on and why you're unhappy with the work that you do.

You might have anxiety and depression because of it, your digestive system might be disrupted, have trouble sleeping, headaches - everything is affected when you’re unhappy 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year.

What do you do?

Well, its easy to say, “just get another job” because let’s be honest, the process of trying to get another job is also stressful.

And if you do find one, you then have to reestablish yourself, all over again. That’s another stressful experience.

So it’s not so easy as to say, “just quit your job.”

I certainly couldn’t afford to do so when I was super unhappy but I knew I couldn’t continue to function with all that constant anxiety and nervousness. I had to find a way to find little joys in what I did because the alternative, showing up every single day, unhappy, stressed and dejected was making me a very resentful, very unhappy person. I was a bitch to be around - I know this. I was super short and grumpy all the time. I was aware of this and I hated it. I hated who I was becoming - I didn’t recognize myself at all when I looked in the mirror.

This was about the time that I started working with a health coach and I thought, Wow she has such a cool job, I would love to do that too someday.”

It took a few years for me to come around to it, but about three years later I finally enrolled in nutrition school to become a certified integrative health coach.

During that year-long program, I started thinking about how I was going to go about and start my health coaching practice. That’s when I realized that, “hey, there’s a lot of resources out there offered by my corporate job, professional training that would really help me start my side business.

So I started taking those trainings and just as a byproduct of showing up at work and feeling excited about something, having something to look forward to, it changed my energy that I was putting forth. That changed how I communicated and collaborated with my colleagues which made a huge difference. It shifted my attitude and reframed some of my negative views about my work.

It also made me try to put myself in other people’s shoes, especially the more unpleasant ones to work with and to try and understand, and essentially see, why and how they were unhappy with their work too. It made me feel empathy towards them.

All these shifts led to positive changes - in my work environment, moving to other teams - all these things happened that made work feel more cohesive and made me come to appreciate the people that I work with, and ultimately re-learning how to love what I did again.

It’s not sunshine and roses every day, but reframing and reshifting my mindset around the things that I didn't like, made life overall start to feel more manageable, and a lot more enjoyable, where now I really enjoy the work that I do.

I shared about this in the last episode, but I get so much fulfillment from the nature of the work and aligns perfectly with my Human Design as a Projector.

The parts that I like heavily outweigh the parts that I don't like. It’s funny, I recently got a new manager and he and I had a conversation about the team and we both agreed that there isn’t a single person on the team who's a jerk or has their own agenda. Our team is made up of high quality people, who’s company we genuinely enjoy being in. people with integrity and without egos.

I can't tell you what a difference it makes to feel this way about your work. To be able to login every day just knowing that it’s going to be okay. There’s nothing to dread. It’s not doomsday every day.

When I think back from those early years, 13 years ago, you know, I didn't change companies. I didn't change the nature of work that I do - yes some of it has changed, but really, what’s different is my shift - my reframing of my mindset. I think when you are happy at work, you have a better chance of being a healthier, more grounded person.

I want you to know that you have the power and opportunities in you to make whatever changes you need to, to find happiness in your work.

Maybe it is reframing and mindset shifts.

Maybe it’s finding another opportunity or completely changing your career.

Maybe it’s starting a side hustle. My side hustles bring me a sense of freedom and fulfillment. They fulfill needs that I have that aren’t necessarily met in my full-time job, so it’s a good balance for me.

The point I want to make and leave you with is that if you are in despair with your work, and your health is suffering, you can do something about it.

You may not be able to walk into your bosses office and quit today, but you can find little ways to find fulfillment, and maybe those little ways can lead to big changes.

You probably still gonna work hard, but most of us don’t shy away from hard work.

You still might get tired, but if you love what you do, and you feel excited about it, it makes a huge difference.

I do a really pretty good job about keeping devices out of my room. I don’t have a tv in my room, for the most part, I keep my devices out of there too, but I tend to do my best thinking in the very early hours of the morning.

So sometimes I’ll put my laptop on the floor next to my bed so that when I get up in the morning, I open my laptop and start letting the energy flow - maybe on a project for my full time job, or a project for my side hustle or on an idea for this podcast.

That means that some days I start my day super early, and sometimes my days may go super late, but again when you love what you do, there’s a different kind of energy - one that doesn’t drain you and it doesn't feel like work.

Work doesn’t have to be doom and gloom. You don't have to have the Sunday night blues every single week.

And like I said, even if you can't quit your day job tomorrow, can you find aspects of it that you enjoy?

Can you reframe some of your mindset and your perspective towards your work while you figure out your next steps?

Maybe your job isn't something that you see yourself in the long term. That’s fine!

But if you can't change your situation today, can you put a plan in place so that three months, six months, or a year from now, you can make the change that you want?

I also want to point out that you may find that the grass isn't always greener and you may realize that you might actually like what your work after all. That’s definitely what happened to me in those early years that I was so unhappy.

I I interviewed at other companies. Some of them didn't hire me, probably because they felt like I was running from something which is always a red flag. That’s the energy I probably gave off.

I always want to be running TO something.

There were other situations that I knew weren't right for me.

But I stuck it out and here I am 13 years later now really enjoying my work that’s so aligned with my Human Design as a Projector,

So, that's it for today.

Now I want to hear from you. Do you love the work that you do?

If so, how does that feel? Does it feel like work?

And if you don't, how is it affecting you, and what can you do about it?

Come on over and leave your comments on the show notes for this episode at www.livefablife.com/155 for Episode 155, or find me on Instagram at @livefablifewithnaomi.

Thanks for listening and I’ll see you back here again next week.

Naomi Nakamura is a Functional Wellness & Human Design Coach. She helps women who struggle with stress, fatigue, and burnout find freedom and empowerment by optimizing their health, finding balance, and upgrading their energy so they can live life on their own terms. 



Combining her diverse professional background, and her unique approach integrates Functional Nutrition and Human Design she guide clients on a highly individualized journey of self-discovery, observation, and integration by removing physical, mental, and emotional confusion and overwhelm, simply taking them back to the very basics of health through their Human Design.

She believes that when our bodies function optimally, our personalities and souls can shine through everything that we think and do with empowering clarity and ease.

Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!

Connect with Naomi on: Instagram | Pinterest

Naomi Nakamura

http://www.livefablife.com
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