According to Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, there are three simple questions you can ask yourself to help you find happiness in your work:
- What’s important to me? (Think about what you care about and what has meaning to you.)
- What is pleasurable to me? (Think about what you could enjoy doing on daily basis.)
- What am I good at?
He then suggests you make a list for each set of answers and look at the areas of overlap. It’s these areas of overlap that will most likely lead you to find work that you can truly feel good about.
Dr. Ben-Shahar teaches Positive Psychology at Harvard and has one the most popular classes there. His book Happier
While this isn’t going to solve every workplace problem, it’s a good way of checking where you are and what you really want. And, of course, Dr. Ben-Shahar also talks about what you bring to the mix. Your own attitude and way of looking at things can make all the difference. Even if you find the perfect career, if you come into it with a rotten attitude, you’ll never be happy.
With that in mind, he suggests finding ways to focus more often on the positive than the negative. This is not some new-agey gimmick. There’s a lot of unhappy people out there. And if a lot of our time is spent thinking about all that’s wrong in our lives, not only are we depressing ourselves more, but we aren’t spending that same time focusing on stuff that could make us happy – or at least happier.
The good news is, once we finally catch on and see how much we’re adding to our own unhappiness, we can choose to do something about it. First we can just notice our habit of mulling over hurts and failings ad nauseum. Then choose to replace those wasted moments – slowly at first, it takes time to break a habit – with more things we actually enjoy.
Not that we shouldn’t think about our problems and look for solutions. Not that we shouldn’t give ourselves permission to feel sadness and hurt. That’s just being human. But it can’t be our whole day! We also deserve to be happy. And with just a few small changes that we ourselves can decide to make, we can aim ourselves toward a happier life. And that includes a job we love. We deserve it!
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New Work Coach Cafe Policy:
Although I had to stop answering individual questions (to preserve my sanity), as always your thoughts and stories are VERY welcome here.
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Great post.. and it is all about your attitude. Thanks for the tip for focusing more on the positives at work. I will certainly make more of an effort to do that as I head off to work today!
SK
Thanks Speechie Keen! Appreciate the kind words. Great moniker, by the way.
For me even a slight re-balancing of the negative to positive ratio helps. I mean…we all need to complain sometimes, but it just doesn’t get us anywhere different unless we take action to make things better for ourselves.
Good luck at work today!
I don’t know what makes me happy???
You are not alone, Mandy! Many people struggle with this…but the good news is that once you start looking you eventually get there. I think I’ll have to write a post about that soon. In the meantime, one of the best ways to find out what makes you happy is by thinking about things you enjoy doing or reading about and then actually trying things on for size. Maybe a trip to the bookstore just to see what types of books call to you. Or think about where you might like to volunteer. Sometimes these things are hiding, so we need to help them come out. You might try one of those assessment tests you find in career section of a book store.
Then again, for some people happiness at work is more about the environment or how the type of job itself fits your personality. For instance, some programmers do that because they like to mostly work alone and solve puzzles of sorts. Salespeople are usually extroverts who enjoy jobs that offer public contact. Other extroverts might teach. Some people enjoy working with their hands or building things. Some people love to design. Others love to research. Or work with nature. Or work with food. Or books. Only you can find this out for yourself. I wish you much luck. It’s an adventure well worth taking!