Ah, it’s that time of year when the cynic in us scoffs at the over-priced flowers, the impossibility of booking a table in a decent restaurant and queues of last minute card buyers filling up the car parks…yes, Happy Valentine’s day! But let’s not be cynical, why not embrace this day watch Sleepless in Seattle and remind ourselves of that emotion we sometimes forget called ‘Love’. Remember the way it makes you feel when you’re head over heels for someone, the dizziness of wanting to be with them 24/7 and then how quickly that passes and makes way for the equilibrium of life?!
Well, that’s pretty much how we feel about our jobs right? When you start, the motivation to impress and perform is high. You want to be the person that everyone likes, so you smile more and go above and beyond to be helpful. You want to develop and learn as much as possible to make sure that they made the right decision in hiring you. And then the inevitable happens. You get comfy and you’ve got your feet firmly under the desk. Suddenly, you may not smile as much as you did, maybe you are so snowed under that you can’t help others any more and perhaps that developing yourself to perform better becomes a ‘nice to have’ instead of a ‘need to have’? ……remind of you anything in your personal life?
Let’s look at Neuroscience. When people ‘fall in love’ they produce higher than normal levels of the neurotransmitter Dopamine which is often referred to as ‘the pleasure chemical’. This is because as well as being linked to people with obsessive compulsive disorder, it is a hormone that produces euphoria and explains that ‘butterflies’ feeling we’ve all experienced. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no neuroscientist by any stretch of the imagination, but why wouldn’t we look at scientific research? After all, Dopamine is our own internal reward system and it’s addictive! Do you know that simply being curious about something also increases high levels of dopamine? Yes, that’s right, learning something new can be just as butterfly inducing, euphoric and addictive as falling in love and who said love and romance is dead?! Learning and developing yourself can be our new love. We all need to learn and develop, its even a basic survival need!
Neuroscience also tells us that the pre-frontal cortex responsible for our thinking and creativity is fuelled by neurotransmitters such as Dopamine. How great is it for you and your organisation when your creativity and thinking is firing on all cylinders?! So, how do we increase our levels of this pleasure chemical? By being the best we can and continue to develop and grow in our roles of course! We all know how to, it’s just we may have just forgotten to look up from our screen for a while or been bitten by the daily grind. I bet this pulls a few chords outside of work as well, I know it does for me!
So let’s use this time of year to get back the motivation, energy, passion drive to develop and grow in our careers. We found the same motivation, energy, passion and drive to find our special someone in the first place but do we always develop and grow our relationships? If you’re like me then that could do with a bit of work! Let’s go in on Monday with a new focus as after all, simply being curious about something and wanting to grow and develop triggers the same ‘feeling as being in love and it’s addictive!
