How do you wake up in the morning? Ready and raring to go? Or do you sit over coffee, delaying the inevitable?

I would venture to say that some of us sit over coffee once in a while… it might be once in a GREAT while, but it still happens. The work we do can be difficult at times, there is no question of that. But how do we know when the difficult work becomes too difficult to handle? When a vacation just isn’t enough to nurture our body and replenish our soul?

Recently, I received our annual Employee Satisfaction Survey and (as I do every year) I sort of rolled my eyes at the question, “Do you have a best friend at work?” I have always thought this is a somewhat childish and silly question to ask of an adult in their work environment and would often think, “Nope, don’t have anyone to go play on the monkey bars with.” But this time, when the survey arrived in my in-box and I came to the “best friend” question, I didn’t roll my eyes and have visions of the Roosevelt Elementary School playground. What came to mind instead was that I do have a best friend at work, and amazingly he just started working here two weeks ago!

That’s right, my best friend at work is our newest hire, our new MSW graduate, straight out of his master’s program….and here’s why: He challenges me to explain what we do and why we do it. He expects me to share with him the various, often subtle, ways to engage the least engaging among us. He asks why we do something and then asks if we might try it a different way. He forces me to think, to engage, to teach, to show and to share how to process, problem solve, adapt and care. And by doing so, he reminds me of how much I love what I do.

So, how do you know when the work has become too difficult to handle? When you realize you are not challenged, you are not connecting and you are no longer intellectually stimulated. But maybe, just maybe, you need to seek the challenges, recognize the connections, engage in the intellectual stimulation and find that best friend at work to do it with!

Happy hunting!
Ali