Your bad mood at the office is from you, not the job

Your bad mood at the office is from you, not the job The mood you come to work with sets the mood for your workday. This is the conclusion of a study by Wharton professor Nancy Rothbard. (Shout out to Wendy for sending this link to me.) This study is a rallying cry for personal responsibility. Rothbard challenges you to stop blaming your boss or your co-workers for ruining your day: The mood you bring with you to work has a stronger effect on the days mood and on work performance than mood changes caused by events in the workplace. This is good news for people who accept personal responsibility for doing the things proven to create a good mood like a reasonable commute, a morning visit to the gym, and, in a more broad sense, cultivating a sunny outlook. For people who dont want to take personal responsibility for their happiness, you will have to figure out a way to discount this study in order to continue blaming other people at the office for your bad mood. This way of thinking works on the other end of the day, too. Keep your commute short so you are not a wreck on the way home, and say hello when you walk in the door to start the evening out right. This means, of course, that if your personal life is going well, you are likely to be happier at work. Because you are more likely to walk into work in a good mood: Start-of-day mood may come from myriad sources including persistent life challenges and opportunities, positive or negative family experiences before leaving for work, or even the commute into work, writes Rothbard. Non-work and work domains are permeable, and mood often spills over form one to the other. Specifically, start-of-day mood might affect ones appraisal of subsequent events. This is reason number fifty why the term work-life-balance doesnt work. Its not a balance so much as a synergy that we should aim for. Work and life have to feed each other rather than provide a counter-balance.