Managing your career is more important than you may think

You may love your job, as I do. Or maybe you’re merely tolerating a currently less-than-fulfilling job, hopefully for a good reason.

Either way, what you do for a living has an effect on you that you may not fully realize.

As we progress through our working years, we can’t help but ask ourselves this question: Does my workplace make me a better person, or not?

Recently, I read an interesting article by Joseph Liu, host of Career Relaunch, a podcast aimed at helping listeners navigate the ups and downs, and the how’s and why’s, of making a career transition.

In his Forbes article, Liu used himself as an example of becoming a person he did not want to be. He was working on a project that was changing him, and he didn’t care for who he was becoming.

As C.S. Lewis, the British author of “The Chronicles of Narnia,” wrote, “Day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different.”

I’m also a believer in Desmond Tutu’s famous quote, “How do you eat an elephant? Bite by bite.”

Well, sometimes an environment at work can take bites out of you so slowly that you don’t even realize it.

The reason we have a job is to earn a living

For most of us, the reason we have a job is to earn a living. And doing work that’s meaningful tends to make the workday much more fulfilling. Thus, having such a job likely has a very positive influence on your life and how you feel about yourself.

We all know how much our mood when we leave our workplace influences our mood as we arrive home or prepare to socialize with friends or, more challenging, people you don’t feel like socializing with.

I often worry about friends who say they don’t mind their long commute home because it gives them time to decompress from their workday. Should we have to decompress before we meet back up with our spouse or children or friends?

As one example, I have a good friend who was once a Marine drill instructor.

Before I go any further, you need to know that I’m a ROTC Army dropout. In college, I couldn’t deal with the structure of saluting senior cadets and officers.

Looking back, I also realize that I had an innate fear of entering the military after college and being yelled by people like my friend.

I digress, but not too far. How does a hardcore Marine drill instructor whose daily job entails yelling at young adults all day leave that job to go home and play peek-a-boo with their 1-year-old?

I think it would take me much too long make that psychological transition. Guess I wouldn’t have made a very good drill instructor.

The impact that your current job has on your life

We all invest a lot of effort trying to make an impact at work — hopefully, one that’s positive. If it’s not, now might be a good time to consider the kind of impact that your current job and workplace has on your short-term and longer-term life.

Given the amount of time we spend at work, our projects, company culture, and team dynamics can’t help but play a huge role in influencing who we are and who we’re becoming.

So, let’s just agree that our work environment does have an impact on us. That impact can be positive or negative, depending on the days, weeks, months or years you spend doing the same thing over and over.

Per Mr. Liu, don’t underestimate the impact the people around you can have on your own personality, your perceptions of acceptable norms, and your ways of working.

With the New Year approaching, it’s a good time to ask yourself whether your workplace is moving you away from the person you want to be — or toward that person.

If your workplace is moving you away, what are you doing about it? If it’s making you a better person, then how can you share that glow with others?