day 1087: Job Satisfaction

"Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives."

It's hard to identify something that is more top of mind than how satisfied someone is in their job. Job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction can be big drivers for influence and impact in the rest of our lives. Consider the high that we feel and carry home on the days when we are most satisfied with our jobs.  It could be driven by a promotion, salary increase, positive performance rating, recognition or just the knowledge of accomplishing something that was hard and seemed unattainable until we got it done.  These are great mountain high days.  Conversely, there are the valley low days too when all the above have a flips-side, or as simple as the wrong word being said to us that can make us feel like we have been dropped emotionally like a rock.  What really impacts job satisfaction is in itself a mystery. Recently there was an article in the Wall Street Journal where writer Sue Shellenberger referenced a 2011 study from the Journal of Applied Psychology that stated "that inherited traits may be responsible for about 27% of the variance in people's job satisfaction."   She goes on to say that these traits can be things like the type of dopamine receptor gene we have that is "tied to risk-taking, weak impulse control and attention deficit disorder, and thus tend to be less satisfied with their jobs",  Shellenberger referenced from a study from the National University of Singapore.  I am not surprised with these findings as I have watched the variable high highs and low lows of so many people who all work in the same place, sometimes doing the same jobs. Job satisfaction is tricky and complex and any of us who have any responsibility for someone else being satisfied in their jobs should be thinking holistically about the factors and how to manage this critical area of business.

As believers we can approach each day with the King giving us all we need to receive to find satisfaction.  God's love is waiting us when we wake, when we leave the house, when we clock-in, when we get to that first email or meeting. The challenge is to keep that first and foremost as the driver of our satisfaction on and off the job and to not let any other swaying words, influences, or reactions to take us off the satisfaction track.  If we are truly working to bring glory to God in all that we do, how can we really not be satisfied?

Reference: Psalm 90:14 (New Living Translation)