Get up, go to work, go home, sleep, rinse and repeat. Every day starts to feel just like the last one –monotonous and BORING!!!

You’re not putting  your usual energy into your work and you don’t seem to care as much as you used  to. You just aren’t feeling it. What you do feel is burned out. So what do you do when you’ve lost your work mojo? 

Surprisingly, the answer is not a new job, but a new outlook. Being stuck in a rut is a frame of mind combined with a daily routine that doesn’t vary.  Here’s a newsflash – you can get your groove back in 3 (kinda) easy steps.

1. Change your mind.  When you’re feeling frustrated, your emphasis tends to be on things that bug you, even if you’re not typically a negative person. Instead focus on what you do like about your job. Maybe you really like your co-workers or customers. Perhaps you feel you’re making a difference in the world or in people’s lives. If that’s too hard, try to remember what it was like when you were new and excited about your work.
2. Change your attitude. Emotional peaks and valleys are part of being human. When you understand your emotions they lose their ability to wreak havoc in your day. When you are feeling upset try to reflect on the reason behind the emotion. (insecurity, self-centeredness and jealousy are nasty, but common culprits) Remember your feelings are your private domain and you alone are in control of them. (See Ms. Chatterback 2/5/12 for more on this subject)
3. Change your routine. You can only be predictable if you choose to do the same things in the same way every day.  Its small changes in your outer-world that add up to a big difference in your inner-world. These may sound silly but they are rut-busting dynamite!  Drive an unfamiliar route to or from work, give a someone an out of the ordinary answer, eat something different for lunch, change the order of your day if you can, plan to do something fun on your day off to give yourself something to look forward to. It doesn’t matter what it is, just change something!

When we  take time to pay attention to what is going on in our lives we realize how rich they truly are. Every time we choose to live in the moment we take another step toward taking back control of our life.