Cassandra Dunn - Crappy to Happy: Love What You Do

Cassandra Dunn is a clinical and coaching psychologist and an experienced mindfulness educator, workshop facilitator and keynote speaker. Cass is the expert psychologist for trainer Tiffiny Halls online health and fitness program, tiffxo.com, and she regularly shares her insights on happiness, mindfulness and wellbeing in print and digital media. She also hosts the wildly popular Crappy to Happy podcast, which has reached over 2 million downloads. Cass lives on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland with her husband, daughter and a menagerie of rescued animals. This is her second book.

Connect with Cass online
facebook: cassandradunn.psychologist
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cassdunn.com

For Mel

who has unconditionally encouraged and
supported me to do the work I love

CONTENTS

Given how much of our time we normally spend at work, and how much of our sense of identity is tied up in our jobs, it should come as no surprise that being happy at work is strongly linked to being happy in life.

Whether you work full time or part time, are studying, full-time parenting, running a home or running a business, your life will be infinitely more enjoyable if you find pleasure and purpose in what you do every day. Even if youre not doing the job you want, or you consider your current occupation to be temporary, or a means to an end, there is absolutely no need to be miserable while youre doing it.

Weve all heard the saying, Love what you do and youll never work a day in your life. In other words, if you look forward to doing your work, it wont feel like work at all. Being able to make a living from doing the things you love is a goal many people aspire to, but one that relatively few achieve.

Perhaps you tell yourself that loving what you do is just a fantasy. Maintaining a civilised society requires people to do unpleasant jobs, even if nobody loves doing them, right? After all, someone needs to clean the streets and the toilets, and work in the factories and abattoirs. Maybe you feel like all the hype about aspiring to live an extraordinary life is just making people unhappy with their perfectly satisfactory, ordinary lives. Or you might have made the choice to sacrifice personal interests or passions for the sake of stability and a regular income.

Dont get me wrong. Its absolutely possible to be content doing a job you dont love. Financial rewards, career progression, flexible hours, social connections and the personal satisfaction of a job well done can be all the motivation you need to keep working in a job that you arent necessarily passionate about. In fact, many people just want a job that meets their basic needs and funds their lifestyle, enabling them to pursue their passions in their own time. And that is a perfectly valid option.

But if you are looking for something that lights you up and makes you feel alive, being able to find that in your work is all the better. If you are wary about the idea of finding your passion at work, Id encourage you to keep an open mind. Experiencing joy and meaning have as much to do with your mindset as they do with the job itself. The way you choose to think about what you do, and whether you focus on what you can change or what you cant, can make a profound difference in your level of satisfaction and the impact you have on the people around you.

Id encourage you to take a moment to reflect on the beliefs you hold about work and its role in your life. Growing up, did you observe your parents gaining joy, meaning and satisfaction from work, or did they complain about being tired, stressed and having to work to pay the bills? Did your mother work? (And whether she did or she didnt, how did that influence you?) What did people tell you about work? Many of us grew up hearing things like Work sucks and then you die, or When are you going to give up [insert passion here] and get a REAL job?

All of these ideas, opinions and observations bury themselves deep into our subconscious minds and influence the decisions we make in our lives. There is gold to be found when you start digging around to uncover the messages you have internalised about work and its potential (or not) to bring you happiness.

Whats more, the ideas we hold about work tend to become our reality. Consider for a moment that you have made many decisions based on what you believe to be true about work and what is possible for you. So lets start right now with recognising and letting go of the stories you are telling yourself that are keeping you stuck.

Take an honest appraisal of your working life and ask yourself if it might be in your own interest to expand your perception about what is possible for you and what you have the potential to create.

When I was in my twenties, having completed an undergraduate psychology degree, I meandered through various jobs that often sounded good on paper but left me feeling dissatisfied. Sometimes this was because the work itself was pretty intense and stressful for a new graduate; for example, my first full-time job was in child protection. The days were highly unpredictable and crisis-driven, and I am someone who likes to be able to plan what my day will look like. I know people who thrive in unpredictable environments, but Im absolutely not one of them. (This kind of self-awareness is essential for finding what makes you happy at work.) In some jobs, the tasks I was required to do didnt seem interesting or meaningful to me. And in another job, which I quite enjoyed and was very good at, the sheer volume of work was overwhelming, so I constantly felt inadequate because I could never seem to get on top of it.

If you look back over your own working life you may recall similarly unsatisfying situations. It can be helpful to identify exactly what it was about those jobs that didnt work for you. Was it the people? The nature of the job and the actual tasks you had to perform? Perhaps your personal values didnt align with those represented by the organisation. Knowing what doesnt work for you is a great way to start figuring out what kind of work might suit you better.

To be fair, in every unsatisfying job I did, there were aspects that I enjoyed, such as the friendships I formed, or particular tasks that tapped into my strengths. I got to travel overseas and I earned a good income. Often theres nothing really wrong with the job itself, which can make you feel like you should be happy.

When I was asked, If you could do anything at all, what would it be? my immediate response was that I would go back and complete my postgraduate qualifications in psychology. No matter what job I did or how successful I became, I couldnt shake the instinct that I was supposed to be a psychologist. I had no doubt that this was what I needed to do, but I didnt think it was possible because of time and money constraints.

Meanwhile, I enrolled in a Bachelor of Business and later an MBA, because getting management or marketing qualifications seemed like a sensible option, given where my career was taking me. But I quit both those degrees, because studying management was as exciting to me as watching paint dry. Sometimes we really need to forget what is sensible and trust our instincts.

Shortly after we got married, my husband was offered a job interstate and we took the opportunity to move to a new city. It was exactly the break I needed I was able to take stock and reassess my direction. I trained as a life coach, because I thought it was the next best option if I couldnt be a psychologist. Once I was back on my path of working one-on-one with people, I went on to achieve two Masters degrees one in Coaching Psychology and another in Clinical Psychology.