Most people don’t hate their jobs. They hate how they experience their jobs.
In this week’s video, Roxanne Emmerich shares a powerful story from an airport bathroom—where one woman turned a routine, overlooked role into a moment of joy, energy, and human connection.
The difference wasn’t the job. It was the mindset.
Here’s what high-performance leaders understand:
– Meaning is a decision, not a circumstance — Florna didn’t wait for a better role; she elevated the one she had
– Complaining creates a self-fulfilling loop — the more you justify frustration, the more evidence you find to stay stuck
– Gratitude rewires performance — when you reframe your environment, your energy, results, and relationships shift fast
This is not about toxic positivity. It’s about ownership.
Because the moment you stop blaming circumstances… you start leading them.
If you want a stronger culture, it starts with how your people interpret their day-to-day experience.
Watch now
Florna, a fifty-year-old woman, was a bathroom cleaning specialist. I’m actually not sure what her title was, but that’s what she was doing when I met her, so that’s what I’ll call her. Florna was engaged in her work in an Atlanta airport bathroom. Now let’s be honest here—this is not the job that her mama wanted her to grow up to have. This job was an excuse to be bumming. But Florna was not bumming. She was doing this little thing.
Florna was humming—you know, like a bumblebee-type humming. I found that entertaining as I used the facilities while she cleaned. She made me smile. Then when I came out of the stall, she broke into song.
Okay, I’ll admit, I joined in. That was Florna’s game—to make people happy. Florna didn’t stop there. She shuffled toward me as she sang, gesturing for me to sing along.
Why not? As I washed my hands, she leapt to reach for a paper towel while she gyrated to Start spreading the news, I’m leaving today! That’s right—a woman who worked at the airport cleaning toilets was singing New York, New York to me as I came out of the stall.
And I wasn’t special. This, I could see, is what Florna does.
This is a human who has meaning in her work. This girlfriend is spreading joy as she’s mopping the grunge.
Contrast Florna with the millions of people who spend a good chunk of their day complaining. Nobody tells me what to do. Nobody appreciates me. Jeffrey got a bigger raise and he doesn’t even know how to do mail campaigns.
The more they complain, the more they need to look for evidence of why the world is treating them unfairly. Now they have an excuse for not giving their all. They need to find more complaints to justify their previous complaints. That’s how it works for complainers.
If they stopped complaining, they’d have to admit that they had the problem in making up their previous complaints.
So the question is yours: Do you choose joy or not?
So try this: Make a list of all the things you can be grateful for about your job. My boss isn’t a screamer. I get a paycheck every two weeks. I hardly ever have to work on the weekend.
I get opportunities to grow. My teammates tell me when I’m being a doofus, so I’m being coached to grow up as a person.
Make the list long. Just decide to keep writing for at least five minutes. Keep writing.
Now make a list of your five biggest complaints. For each complaint, reframe it. For example, “My boss micromanages me” can be reframed to “My boss cares enough about me to make sure that I’m out of trouble, and steps into my work to help.”
Stay in a state of gratitude and see if suddenly the world doesn’t miraculously seem to be filled with nicer people.