I don’t know about you, but I definitely experience going through a honeymoon phase when I start a new job.

A honeymoon phase often begins when you start a new job and everything is so “oooh” and “aaaah”. You love almost everything about your new job; the snack bar, the game room and the awesome people in your company. It’s like there’s this company that seems to only hire cool and brilliant people. AND you’re one of them, which means you’re probably cool and brilliant too.

You love your boss. You love your teammates. You love love love the brand new laptop that you’d never have the audacity to buy on your own because it’s hella expensive.

Okay, you’re not that shallow. But you get my point.

More importantly, as you enter this new workforce, you begin to jive with the company’s beliefs, what they stand for, their mission in the world. You believe in and love working with the product.

The products are great. Their services are great. Everything is great.

Then…

After 6 months or so, you realize your favorite snack in the snack bar keeps running out. You get too busy to really play in the game room. You feel the frustration and pressure to be around cool and brilliant people because now you have to deliver that same level of excellence. The product now seems too hard to work on because there are policies within the company that you disagree with.

The honeymoon phase ends when you start to feel disengaged at work – the moment it stops getting exciting to go to work. It’s just not interesting anymore.

For some people, honeymooning may even happen repeatedly. For each company they join, they tend to be infatuated and elated in the first year. Then the next year they complain and bitch about how work sucks, management sucks and everyone can go to hell. They’ll eventually go back to where they came from before the alleged “honeymoon” phase – looking for a job.

Yep… the job hoppers.

The secret to being happy worker bees and not grumpy job-hoppers is figuring out how to extend the honeymoon phase. Happy workers get to be happy and look for jobs only when they want to, rather than from a place of frustration. Isn’t that grand?

Here are four steps you can take to extend the honeymoon phase which will keep you from being disengaged and just plain unhappy at work:

1. Self-awareness

Oh, I lost you. I just went woowoo there, but it’s not. Being aware as to when your honeymoon phase is just starting to wane is vital especially if you want to break the job-hopping pattern.

Whenever you find yourself disagreeing over a certain company practice or complaining (even silently), be curious and catch yourself in the act. What got you thinking that way?

2. The hallucination test

In the Hunger Games book, one brainwashed character uses the “Is this real?” game to check whether he’s hallucinating or not. Same with you. Check to see if whatever is triggering you is a legitimate concern or if it’s just you looking for evidence to dislike the company.

You know those moments when we have a fight with a loved one and it’s easier to stay committed to being angry or sulking?

No matter how amazing a company is, you’re bound to find something wrong with it if you’re committed to disliking the company. Even if you don’t mean to, be aware if you’re carrying this pattern.

Let go of small annoyances. Deal with the legitimate grievances.

3. Gratitude

This is easy. Remember what you loved about the company when you first came in. And be grateful. When you remember and cherish every single thing that you love about your work, career bliss follows.

4. Be interested

For true change to occur, it’s NOT what you do, but rather what you need to be doing that gives the biggest impact. While you obviously want to commit to doing your tasks in a timely and efficient manner, you don’t want to just be another worker bee counting the days ’til the weekend. When you become genuinely interested in what you’re doing, your tasks won’t feel like a chore.

With a 9-5 job, you spend most of your waking time in this job. How can you keep things interesting?

Are you still in your honeymoon phase? Or are you out of it? Today, I encourage you to think about you can extend or reignite that honeymoon phase.

xoxo,

Meema

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