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.
