My alarm clock goes off every morning, I open my eyes and get ready to go to work. Why? What pushes me to do this? The first simplest and most obvious answer is what a friend of mine says, “I work because for now it’s the only thing I get paid to do”. That’s true. But that is not what I think about the minute I get up. From bed to shower many other reasons come to mind.
Over the last few centuries, authors in the field of psychology have asked themselves this question and they have come up with various theories relating variables that connect people’s behaviours with their jobs. In general, we could say that the drive or impulse is extrinsic or intrinsic: the former includes everything that is external, that is, outside an individual (promotions, rewards, salary, social status…), in other words, these are the consequences of doing our job. On the other side is the intrinsic part, which is more complicated to explain and which comes from the inside.
With eyes half open, half closed, I think about all the people who are hearing their alarm clock just like me, who are going to their jobs without thinking about it, who have been forced by monotony and reality to “park” in a company. Those people who spend parts of their lives that are unrepeatable and irreversible in jobs that don’t interest them, that they haven’t chosen by vocation, who are unhappy and who transmit their negative feelings of apathy and dissatisfaction, who have ended up doing something the labour market has led them to do; those who are unhappy about having to work, those grey people who no longer remember when they lost their colour.. and then I think, “I am so lucky!!!” I work and I do what I enjoy doing, something I have trained for and I have grown in my career, where my freedom is a feature of my past, my present and my future, where I feel that I am part of a team where we all push in the same direction; I learn something new every day from the people around me, I develop personally and professionally, I listen to different opinions than mine, and I reflect; I strive to do things as if it were the first time and I enjoy it. Being realistic, as in any profession, there are tasks and functions I like less, but I try to have this halo of positivism with me every day so it won’t fade.
All of this is an attitude, a way of approaching my work, a way of facing every new day, it is a way of doing, of feeling and of living, and this attitude is the one that sows the path towards that asset most valued by human beings…
And then, I open my eyes and life after the alarm clock begins.