We can’t always be feeling great, smiling at every customer and co-worker as we tackle every job with robot-like efficiency. We are human and our emotions fluctuate. Right now I don’t feel like writing, but my fingers and mind keep on going, so I continue for my future, to help you, and because tomorrow I will be glad that I pushed another good article out. That’s right I’m not working happy, but I’m doing my best with what I’ve got.

Now you know the truth. I’m not always working happy. Please don’t tell your friends.

We all have bad days and sometimes we need to fake it. Seth Godin is a blogging wunderkind. Okay, I guess he isn’t that young but he’s a great blogger at any rate. He wrote an article Pretending that you care that has some great insight.

No, you can’t always hire exceptional people for these jobs. No, you can’t always invest enough time to train them sufficiently. But yes, you can make, “pretending you care,” a barely acceptable alternative.

It doesn’t take much to take the edge off an encounter.

[Boy does this sound cynical. How inauthentic! How manipulative! Isn't it better to just hire people who actually care? Of course it is. But as far as I can tell, that's a lot harder than it looks--because so many organizations are organized around policies, not caring, and because so many employees have been trained not to care.

So, the essence of the lesson here is this: if people start out pretending to care, next thing you know, they actually do care. They like the positive feedback and they like the way being kind makes them feel. It spreads. It sticks.]

Read the whole article here.

Sometimes we need to fake it to get to where we need to be. I know that you don’t always feel like working on that boring project, writing that last email of the day, or calling one more sales lead, but no one wants you to pack it in because you don’t feel like doing it. Your company wants you to fake it like any good professional.

What was the last thing you faked? I’m not talking about what goes on in your bedroom. I’m wondering when was the last time you faked your happiness on the job and eventually became happy.

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