IS YOUR job good for you?

YOUR’ WORK AND YOUR HEALTH

This is no rhetorical question. First of all, obviously enough, a job should provide reasonably adequate earnings to enable you and your family to afford good diet, good housing, health care, recreation, and other essentials. It should do more. Ideally, it should be interesting to you, should offer some challenge, should provide opportunities for advancement, and should provide an emotionally healthy rather than emotionally toxic environment. Physicians are increasingly aware that how a person feels about him- self or she heavily influences health as well as recovery from illness -and that high on the list of important feelings is self-esteem.

As one wise physician has put it, the man who is able to regard himself highly believes himself, capable of mastering the vicissitudes of life. He adapts by attacking his environment constructively and shaping it to his needs. He who has low self-esteem struggles valiantly but pessimistically, some- times passively accepting fact, sometimes destructively attacking. Self-esteem is the partner of hope, and hope is the chief agent of occupational mental health. 

More and more men and women now earn their livelihoods in organizations-companies, government agencies, educational and other institutions. And as their social and economic status becomes more dependent upon their roles in their work organizations, how they feel about themselves is related to a significant extent to what happens to them in those organizations. It is not always possible to fully achieve an ideal. Yet many of us could come much closer to it in our work than we do if we took real inventory -a hard look at our work, its satisfactions and dissatisfactions, specific possibilities for improving the job we have or finding something more satisfactory.

If your job does not pay you enough for your needs, is it possible for you to get a raise in salary? Are there courses you might take or other things you might do that could lead to promotion? If not, is it possible that you might find a job that has more to offer? Is there helpful information and possibly sound advice and guidance, you might get from a foreman or supervisor? In particular, perhaps these people or others could help you with an objective view of your situation, capabilities, and opportunities. Some cities have job counselors or provide other means to help you determine how to fit yourself for a better position. Vocational guidance has made considerable progress in studying the "square peg in the round hole" problem.