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Thursday, March 4, 2010

Pathways to joy in work













One of my classes this semester is Leadership and Management in Nursing (or something like that). As I studied a lecture on Motivation for my midterm I found a slide about Pathways to Joy in work. Our book covered Manion's work on personal pathways that individuals used to find joy in work.

Three of these pathways to joy (the love of work pathway, the achievement pathway and the recognition pathway) were pretty average. People find joy from loving their job, people find joy from praise, blah blah blah. But my favorite pathway was the connections pathway. It identifies that relationships were the primary source of joy for all participants in the study. The relationships were with colleagues, patients or families and involved caring for, talking with, relating to, or helping others. All these aspects exemplified the pathway of connections that leads to joy.

I've always known this. I've grown up hearing my dad say "relationships are everything" and have firmly believed in cultivating friendships over dedicating hours to working. Jesus talks about this too, after all He tells us to love one another. And to hear this verified by legitimate study in my textbook is pretty exciting. You can find joy in any job because of relationships. One more thing to look forward to in starting in the real world: finding more joy.

photo link: http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh253/SUZIEPEREZ/jumping-for-joy-6-1.jpg

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