Tuesday 9 April 2013

H is for... Happiness


Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.

- Confucious

Bored of your job? Unhappy? Stuck in a rut?

One of my goals is to be happy in my job, truly happy. In my previous job I was happy. I had an enjoyable job, moderate pay, good set of work colleaguea. Yes, there were days I was down or frustrated, but I was happy. I woke up bright and early excited to go to work and spent most of my waking hours there. In my new job - I am still working towards being happy again.

I think one of the most frustrating things is knowing that I can be happy in my job, knowing that I have been happy and for some reason - I am just not happy anymore.

Looking back I realised it took me 6 months of " settling in time" to become properly happy even in jobs I have loved. I needed time to get to grips with the computer software, learn passwords and codes, make friends and remember names and to stop feeling like the new girl.

In my current job I have been waiting for this moment of happiness to wash over me. It hasn't and it has now reached 12 months in the same job and annoyingly I am still not happy at work. I have a great life outside of work - but given that I spend most of my hours at my 9-5 job I decided it was time to get pro-active about it and this is what I did in three easy steps.

Step One: Write 2 lists - almost like a pros-cons list. On one side write the things that make you happy and on the other side write the things that make you unhappy (or reasons that you think you are unhappy).
 
Step Two: Consider how to change the things that make you unhappy into things that make you happy. Work through your list one at a time (with a buddy if possible) and come up with a solution, compromise or alternative to each of the things that make you unhappy.

Step Three:  Do these things to get you one step closer to being happy.

Happiness in your career is not essential, but it does make it easier and much more fun.

This is an extract from Putting Pen to Paper's upcoming Career Development Workbook. 

3 comments:

  1. interesting, let us know how it goes.

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  2. Good luck! I feel for you. I've invested a lot of blood, sweat, tears (and $$$) into a career that I now realize is just all wrong for me...but unless someone else is going to pay my student loans, I'm downright stuck. Maybe I need to try to find some little joys to keep me engaged :)

    Happy Blogging!

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  3. This is a great post, thanks! I've been feeling so stressed at work lately, but I do actually love the work - when I get past all the rota writing and email sorting that's not actually part of my job. I'm going to do the pros and cons thing this weekend and see what I can do to improve that.

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