LA 081: What To Do When You Are Not Truly Appreciated

What if you could feel truly appreciated and deeply satisfied every single day? What if you could experience a more joyful, appreciative and considerate workplace and it only costs you seven minutes of a day? In an earlier podcast I shared about the seven most important minutes of your day. Well, here's another hack for your Joyous delight and satisfaction that could be an additional 7 minutes, or instead. It's up to you just how much joy you want in your life. Well you can. Encourage I'm going to take a wild guess here that your work and your life has become more demanding. Furthermore, I can be pretty certain that you feel under-valued. I'll even dare to suggest that your pay is not the main issue in feeling under-valued, rather it's because it seems that no-one truly appreciates the value you deliver. Something deep inside our pysche screams out to be appreciated. When we're not appreciated, then our satisfaction with life, with our job, with ourselves, is diminished. You might have quit a job to take another with more salary in the belief that you would feel better. And for a while, that might have worked well enough. But after the honeymoon was over and the realities of everyday started to take their toll, even the extra money began to seem insufficient. The offer of a higher salary felt good because it aroused your anticipation of pleasure (increased dopamine in your brain making the offer attractive). But dopamine is short-lived in making us feel good - so we seek another dose, then another and another and then some more (not necessarily a good thing!). Sadly, the extra cash doesn't (ever) deliver the anticipated long-term happiness. What we're really after is some oxytocin and a dose of serotonin - we want to feel loved (or at least a sense of belonging to a trusted tribe) from the oxytocin and a sense of delighted satisfaction with the serotonin. And what better way to feel valued than someone else to appreciate you for your contribution? You feel more loved (appreciated) thanks to the oxytocin, and you'll feel more satisfied thanks to the serotonin produced when you are appreciated by someone else. So how do you get your boss, colleague, staff, partner, kids, parents, customer to appreciate you for well, anything at all? You could be giving the very best possible service, providing the very best of you and yet still it seems to go unnoticed. You could yell and scream and beg them to appreciate you. Throw a hissy fit and stomp off telling them that they don't deserve you. You could just suck it up and think that life is like that and people are unappreciative. You could try and stop being so wonderful and find out of they even notice. Or you could try something radical that actually works. Develop So, you've tried one or more of the tactics everyone uses at some point in their life to get the appreciation you so richly deserve to no avail. Or was it? It is possible that they did try to show you their appreciation. They just used the wrong language. And by language, I mean your language of appreciation. Dr Gary Chapman and Paul E. White wrote a wonderful book called the "5 Love Languages" that has impacted millions worldwide with their love and marriages. And they've written a version for work (because it seems that "love" is a bit too squishy and personal for the workplace) called the "5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace" on how to effectively communicate appreciation at work using the 5 languages that matter to people. Essentially, each of us feels appreciated in different ways. That is, we have different "languages of appreciation". Typically, we will use the language of appreciation that matters to ourself. If you have a different language of appreciation, my appreciation of you goes unnoticed. It's as if I am speaking perfect French and you only understand Chinese. Most, if not all that I speak will just be non-sense to you. Similarly, you speaking Chinese will make no sense to me. The five languages of a