My mother taught me a lesson very early on in life, one I have never forgotten and always (tried to) live by: ‘if you don’t enjoy what you are doing, stop doing it and find something else. You will never be successful in a job you don’t enjoy’. Wiser words have never been spoken (ok, not often!).

Of course the main reason we go to work every day is because we need to pay the bills, and if you don’t go to work (at least mentally if not physically) you might quickly find yourself superfluous to requirements. Like most people, I work to earn a living. But, following Mrs Boogaard Senior’s logic, I also need to enjoy what I do to make my day worthwhile. So what is it that makes work enjoyable to me?

Simple: the buzz I get from the little exhilarating moments. Not the big, ego-filled, public victory laps. The mental ‘punch your fist in the air’ moments that come in all shapes and sizes and at any time of the day.

Last week I did that overexcited ‘you da man!‘ scream in my head when I managed to set up a new website on my own after hours of fighting with the technology. The week before, I had crazy butterflies in my stomach when a Request For Proposal came in from a client I have wanted to work with for the last 6 months. No doubt those butterflies will be bouncing around like Tigger on acid when we actually win the pitch!

But, honestly, most of the time I can get genuinely excited about the little things; a new prospect accepting a meeting request; an email reply that I hadn’t expected; a meeting that went better than planned; getting positive feedback from a client.

Finding and learning to enjoy those little exhilarating moments makes it easy to get up every morning, ready for the work day. A word of caution though: once you start enjoying these moments they are addictive. Some days there are no psychological touchdowns to celebrate and that should be OK too.

Too much of a good thing isn’t good either…