Do You Love What You Do?

When you do what you love, you succeed. You have more passion, more joy and more support.

For example, when you LOVE caring for patients, you learn what helps them the most. You are thrilled when your appointment book is full. You get great pleasure from happy patients.

When you love your job, you look forward to Monday mornings. Your days fly by. The money flows.

Your joy is contagious. Your staff members get along and do better work. Patients stop missing appointments and start giving referrals.

Work enjoyment improves your marriage. You are happier. You live longer.

The Good Must Outweigh the Bad

Every profession includes distasteful aspects; the complicated, dirty or difficult parts of the job. Yet conquering these difficulties is how you pay the bills.

Difficult professions pay the best. For example, a criminal attorney’s job is very tough, but pays better than a contract attorney or tax attorney. If the criminal attorney loves the trial game, he or she will tolerate unethical clients and personal attacks without losing sleep.

To get rich, just do a job most people can’t do or won’t do. As most people can’t or won’t treat patients, you are on the road to wealth. But big money is rarely enough to make you love your work.

The healthcare profession is tough work. You endure years of school, grueling internships and giant education debts. You then put up with nasty patients, rude employees and disgusting smells.

If you have no love for the job, the difficult parts become unendurable. You start to hate your patients, hate your staff and hate the profession. The losses seem greater than the wins.

Yet when you love the purpose and results of your work, the hard parts are easier. You are rewarded for confronting the difficulties. The benefits of the job outweigh the liabilities.

Five Steps to Loving Your Job

1. List what you like about your work. What makes it worth doing? For example, working with good people, improving a patient’s life, doing a technically perfect job and so on.

2. List what you dislike about your work. What makes you want to quit? For example, working long hours, patient complaints, insurance denials and so on.

3. List your purposes. Why do you do this work? Why did you start?

4. Review and add items to each list. Continue until you feel a surge of joy. When the first and third lists significantly outweigh the second list, your passion takes you out the top.

5. If the lists do not give you a surge of joy for your job, its time for some changes. Examples:

• Change your profession. Change your procedures. Get other types of patients.
• Get a partner or associate. Replace difficult employees. Surround yourself with happier people.
• Join a new group or leave an old group. Change your advisors. Consider new viewpoints.
• Master a new subject or technique. Change a negative attitude. Learn to accept help.
• Create a new practice. Make it bigger or smaller. Buy a second practice.

Make changes until the joy of your job is greater than its difficulties.

Love your work and your success will follow.