We all have a different idea of what we think a healthy relationship with work is, right?
That can encompass a good work-life balance, a healthy work environment, good work relationships, liking what you do, having a good leader and not commuting for hours and hours.
While working from home and recovering from severe burnout, achieving a good relationship with work turned into a major goal of mine and something I needed to better understand within myself. It had to mean more than what it meant before because of the toll it took on my mental and physical health.
So what does a good relationship with work means?
I think that, to answer that question, we need to take a step back and define what each topic that makes the relationship good means. To me, they are the following:
Good work-life balance
Healthy work environment
Good work relationships
Liking what you do
Having a good leader
Not commuting for hours and hours
Good work-life balance
I went to Chat GPT to get help defining this because it's so subjective, right? What I objectively got is the following:
Having a good work-life balance means finding the sweet spot between your job and your personal life. It's about juggling work responsibilities with spending time with loved ones, pursuing hobbies, and taking care of yourself. When you have a good balance, you avoid feeling overwhelmed by work, stay healthy, and make sure you're enjoying life outside of your job too. It's like having the best of both worlds!
Let's get real here for a moment: finding that sweet spot is one the hardest things to do, especially at a young age and in a corporate environment. Bonus points if you work for tech start-ups as I did. Don't get discouraged if you don't feel like you haven't got there yet. It takes time and self-work.
Healthy work environment
I guess this one is a combination of respecting and being respected. Having a good HR area, a leader you can trust and close teammates makes everything flow better. Having a healthy work environment also means having space and feeling safe enough to expose ideas, get honest feedback, and make mistakes. You shouldn't ever feel humiliated for making a mistake, especially at work.
In my experience, this tends to happen more in smaller companies and/ or new teams but it can happen in bigger ones if that is part of the culture (which it should be).
Good work relationships
To me, that starts with a few basics: being able to be open and honest with demands, feedback and general conversation, respect (boundaries, background, you name it), and trust. Here, I'd like to get into trust a little bit more. Trust is not simply trusting someone randomly.
It's trusting their skills and capacities to perform a task, trusting that they trust you back, trusting that they don't mean harm. Trusting that they don't do things to impact you and bring you down to compete with you.
I am WELL aware that those people exist in all areas, but I cannot coexist in a work environment where people like that are working close to me. I would change teams or companies completely. If that is not an option for you now, I'm so sorry, I hope your HR is somewhat helpful in that case.
Liking what you do
I cannot begin to tell the glow-up my life has been having when I decided I would start working on things I'm actually passionate about. As you might already know, the company I'm working for is a small fashion company that makes garments on demand with a very technological fabric, being as eco-friendly as they can be.
Do I think I didn't like what I did before? Absolutely not. But I wasn't passionate about it. It was a job that brought amazing skills, I made amazing friends, had good mentors and good references of knowledgeable leaders, and got to work in a corporate tech company in a beautiful building, in an amazing city. But it wasn't the job itself, it was the rest, you know?
Now I'm getting to work with a fashion company, from the inside. I don't have the same job title or payment as I did before, but I feel like I'm on a path to a more fulfilling career.
Having a good leader
This is one of the main ones for me and the one that had the most impact on my life. The best leaders I had in my life really lifted me up, but the worst ones put me down on my burnout path. Having a good leader means having a person I can trust with problems and ideas, a person that cares for the evolution of each team member more or as much as showing off their accomplishments to their managers, and someone that doesn't make others scared or belittled.
Most important of all, is having a teacher and a mentor. I feel extremely lucky to be able to say I have two, who I was extremely close with and later became personal friends. And I wish that on everyone.
Not commuting for hours and hours
This is an obvious one, but going to work should not be the worst part of your day or the part you dread when you first wake up. If getting closer to work, switching companies, or working remotely is not a possibility for you, try looking at your commute from another lens.
See it as a time to listen to your music, prepare yourself for the day ahead, and notice the details of your everyday way. In my first corporate job, I used to have an hour-and-a-half commute and loved catching up with my Spotify playlists and looking at the many paintings and graffiti of the city.
If all else fails, do it for me, I miss it, ok?
What about you? What do you think makes for a good relationship with work?
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