We all spend a lot of time working or going to school. The time spent in these activities should support efforts to find happiness. Too often, however, we do work that negatively affects happiness, and then have to spend much of our leisure time undoing these effects. In this chapter, we’ll explore approaches to work and school that can enhance happiness.
Work That Precludes Happiness
Studies of depression in the population show relatively high rates of affective disorders in healthcare workers, social workers, and nursing home workers, among others.[135] Obviously, people in these professions are likely to experience both stress and tragedy on a regular basis. Some people can handle these situations emotionally, and some cannot.
If you are in one of these professions, or in any other kind of high-stress work, you may be carrying a lot of stress. If what you experience daily makes you sad, stressed, or anxious, you may spend much of your time and energy simply trying to cope with these reactions. They overwhelm your ability to learn to be happy.
To get an idea of the kind of stress someone may face on a daily basis, and its detrimental effects on happiness, consider the following scenario.
You are visiting the zoo with eight five-year-olds, all under your care. As you are explaining to the children that the panda cub in the enclosure is only three months old, you look around and notice there are only seven children standing around you. You count again, then you look around the area. When you realize that a child is missing, your reaction will likely be intense and overwhelming. Frantic, you may not be able to think of anything but finding this child. The stress and anxiety will stay with you until the child is found.
Imagine working in a profession where this kind of stress and anxiety is triggered in you frequently. Spending so much time at the mercy of your reactions, you may suffer insomnia, and have little chance of making yourself happy.
A high-stress job can be exciting at first, but after a time it wears you down. The excitement is gone, but the stress is not. High-stress jobs often pay well. However, can any amount of money compensate for your inability to find what you really want, which is happiness?
If your goal is to be happy, you need to think about what you do. Does it promote happiness, or does it keep it at bay? Does the job permit the calm and clarity needed for a healthy and happy family life, or is it a job for which you need to be unattached from any family or group that needs your attention? Can you do the job, then go home and get a good night’s rest? Can you relax after work and on the weekends without drugs or alcohol? Does the money you earn compensate for the negative impact of the job on your life? These are just some of the questions you need to ask yourself.
Work That Promotes Happiness
Finding work that fits your temperament and interests is important for job satisfaction, reduction of stress, work effectiveness, and success in life, both at work and at home.[136] It is also important for finding lasting happiness. You cannot find happiness if every step you take in its direction is countered by taking two steps backwards because what you do for a living is wrong for you.
Many books offer guidance on how to find the right career and what to study in school. Aptitude tests can determine what you are best suited to do.
My favorite book about finding a career is, What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Bolles.[137] It was first published in 1970, which is around the time I first read it. The book is updated every year. Right now, I am looking at the 2013 edition.
While happiness is not the focus of his book, he takes happiness quite seriously as one of the criteria for selecting a career. For example, in the section of his book that asks you to consider the amount of money you think you need to make, he mentions the 2010 study that I refer to in Chapter 2. This study suggests that once you reach $75,000 per year in income, more income does not make you much happier. Bolles says that the effort needed to earn more than this amount starts to negatively impact the things that give us conditional happiness, such as spending time with friends, and the other pleasures of life.[138]
Sections that follow will look into aspects of work that seem to promote happiness. Among these considerations are fundamental guidelines.
• Choose right livelihood (work that does no harm).
• Find work that meets your basic psychological needs.
• Focus on goals that are meaningful to you.
• Do what you love.
• Heed your purpose or calling in life.
• Serve others well.
You will notice that making money is not on the list. Of course, you have to earn a living. However, once you have found work that provides enough to satisfy your basic needs, you should then determine whether earning more money will further happiness.
You may not find all of these characteristics in the work that you do, but look for as many of them as you can. If your work does not have many of these qualities, and you cannot move to something better, then look for meaningful activities outside of work. One way or another, you need to fill your time with activities that are satisfying and promote happiness.
Choose Right Livelihood (Work That Does No Harm)
We have all heard the term “right livelihood.” This is an ancient concept from the Buddha’s first teaching. It generally means working at something that does not harm any living being. This is still good advice, because working at a job that hurts others will take a heavy toll on the psyche. It is difficult to find happiness if you carry a lot of guilt in connection with the job you do.
In the days of the Buddha, work was pretty simple. I cannot imagine any kind of work common to his time that carried the load of stress we find in some of today’s occupations. I believe that right livelihood today is work that not only does no harm to others, but also does no harm to you. If you are performing work that harms you physically, emotionally, or in any way whatsoever, this cannot be a right livelihood for you.
Find Work That Meets Your Basic Psychological Needs
Motivation is one of the principal requirements for success in any endeavor, including, of course, your work. Motivation can be driven by belief, expected rewards, fear of punishment, personal need, or anything else. Some motives contribute positively to mental health and happiness, and others do not.
About 30 years ago, Edward Desi and Richard Ryan came up with a theory about ways to encourage self-motivation. They called it Self-Determination Theory, or SDT. [139] This name is quite appropriate because it suggests that an individual’s activity is self-determined, and not determined by anyone else.
SDT says that success in pursuing goals depends, in large part, on people’s ability to satisfy their innate psychological needs as they pursue their goals.[140] While human needs are many and diverse, SDT identifies the three most important as competence, relatedness, and autonomy. These three needs have been shown to be essential for psychological growth, integrity, and well-being. [141] Satisfaction of these needs also goes a long way toward promoting one’s ability to be happy.
According to SDT, an individual’s experience of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in what he or she does fosters motivation, while also enhancing performance, persistence, and creativity. In other words, you perform better when you do work that you want to do have a talent for, and which allows you to relate to others in a meaningful way.
Competence of course refers to being capable and skilled at performing a particular activity. Relatedness is an innate desire and ability to feel connected to others in loving and caring relationships. Autonomy refers to volition, to the will or desire to personally launch, organize, and sustain an activity, and to integrate that activity with one’s sense of self. In other words, it means making what you do your own (i.e., owning the experience). Autonomy especially concerns the experience of freedom. This is the freedom to choose to do a thing, even if your choice is limited to what your boss is telling you to do. According to SDT, autonomy is an essential aspect of healthy human functioning. [142]
A woman decides to learn to play the piano for the pleasure she expects to derive. After some years of practice, she can sit down and get lost in the beauty and intricacy of a piece by Schumann or Chopin. Pleasure comes from a sense of competence, gained through many hours of practice. It also comes from autonomy. She is not paid to do this and takes pleasure in choosing what to learn and play. If friends come over, she takes further pleasure in that special bond that arises between a live performer and an audience. The experiences of competence, relatedness, and autonomy result in enjoyment of the activity, and contribute to her psychological health and ability to be happy.[143]
To be successful, humans need to be in an environment where they can experience competence, relatedness, and autonomy. Absent these conditions, it is difficult to sustain motivation and psychological well-being, unless the individual has sufficient inner resources to compensate for and override the lack. [144]
SDT also views humans as innately drawn to growth-oriented activities. If a person feels ineffectual, then that person will work to become more competent. If a person is lonely, he or she may seek out companionship. If one feels controlled or stifled, that person may seek out autonomy.
However, unmet needs are not the only forces that motivate people. When a person feels reasonably satisfied that his or her basic needs are being met, he or she will not necessarily remain idle. Instead of being passive until a need arises, the person may start to explore, without consciously intending to satisfy any basic need. One may start exploring out of sheer curiosity or personal interest.
Objects of curiosity or personal interest may be new possibilities for work, new leisure activities, new or refined skills, or a different environment. The woman learning to play the piano is a very good example of a person being motivated by curiosity, and personal interest.
Focus on Goals that Are Meaningful to You
Closely associated with the concepts of Self-Determination Theory are those of intrinsic and extrinsic goals. Intrinsic goals relate to the satisfaction of your personal psychological needs. Extrinsic goals, on the other hand, relate to earning X amount of money, or to the need to comply with the wishes of others. Pursuit of intrinsic goals is positively associated with mental health, whereas pursuit of extrinsic goals may be unrelated or even antagonistic to it.[145]
For example, an intrinsic goal may be the recognition of your competence by your peers. Satisfaction of this goal meets two basic needs: relatedness to others and demonstration of competence. Satisfaction of these needs promotes your personal happiness.
A common extrinsic goal is making a lot of money. Ordinarily, performing an activity mainly for money does not bring the kind of enjoyment that an activity performed for pleasure or to satisfy basic psychological needs is sure to deliver. [146] This particular goal may or may not promote happiness. Whether it does or does not, depends on what you must do to earn the money.
Do What You Love
Conventional wisdom holds that if you cannot do what you love, then you should at least try to like what you do. This sounds like it makes sense, but does it?
If you expect to be effective and successful in what you do, you need to be fully engaged. You cannot be effective when you are using only some of your resources. To be truly successful in your work, you need to love what you do. You cannot just want to do it, need to do it, or desire to do it. You need to love to do it. Love, in this context, means the motivation to do something at all levels of consciousness. If you are motivated to do something at all levels of consciousness, you may bring all of your available psychic energy to the activity.
Nobody knows all of the potentials that humans possess. However, I suspect that regardless of the power you currently have, if you love something enough, more of the needed power will become available to you.
For example, you can make yourself study a subject you do not like, but you will not learn it as well as someone who likes it so much that he or she “lives and breathes” it. Learning is a 24/7 activity. If you love something, your brain is working on it all of the time, even when you are asleep. Many learning activities are unconscious, and beyond your direct control.
When you work in a profession, your entire body-mind needs to be engaged for you to be successful. Such engagement is possible if you love what you do. If not, then you are using only some of your personal resources.
I have for a long time worked in a service business, but I never loved selling services. I worked with people who were selling all of the time, and it was just what they did — naturally. That made them successful at it. I compensated for my lack of focus on selling by pursuing my love of knowledge. I became an expert in complex technical areas of practice. Pursuit of knowledge was my 24/7 occupation.
Never Force Yourself to Do Something You Hate
If you do not like doing a particular job, or studying to learn how to do the job, you are probably not going to be as successful as a person who loves the job. You can push yourself to perform, and you can perhaps enjoy some success, but at what cost? Doing anything you do not like triggers stress, which in turn increases vulnerability to diseases such as high blood pressure and alcoholism. [147]
The opposite of love is hate, and if you hate doing what you do, you cannot expect to do it well. You can force yourself to do something, but you will surely resist at deep levels of consciousness. This deep resistance may sabotage the work. It may also sabotage your mind and body, expressing as poor psychological or physical health.
As we learned from Self-Determination Theory, you get the most enjoyment from what you feel competent in doing. Measuring success broadly, taking into account performance, sustainability, health, satisfaction, life balance, and earnings, you must at least like what you are doing to be successful. If you do not like what you do, you cannot perform well without pushing yourself so hard that you sacrifice health, and life balance.
You cannot force anyone to do something that he or she truly does not like doing. For example, when employees perform badly at a particular task, bad managers sometimes send them to training. Training in this case may be futile. Sending the underperforming person to training to do more of what he or she hates doing is counterintuitive. A great line from the movie, Chariots of Fire, comes to mind: “You can’t put in what God left out.” If a person finds certain work distasteful, for whatever reason, there is not a lot you can do about it.
Apprenticeship Periods
Many career paths have education and apprenticeship periods that may be lengthy, and not very enjoyable. The fact that you do not like what you are doing during the apprenticeship does not necessarily mean that you will dislike what you’ll be doing over the long term.
Where there is a long apprenticeship period, you need to look past what your are doing while apprenticing to see if what you will be able to do in the future is something you want. This is a kind of “eyes on the prize” approach to starting a career.
At the beginning of my career, I worked for a very large firm. I had a good education, but I just didn’t know how to do anything practical. It was five years before I really felt competent. Pushing myself hard doing things I did not always enjoy, and feeling incompetent much of the time, I was stressed nearly all of the time. However, I was always in close contact with people who had become expert at their jobs, and I could see that what they were doing was what I wanted to do. When my apprenticeship period was over, I was quite happy in my career. I can honestly say that I loved it.
Heed Your Purpose or Calling in Life
For some of us, our sense of purpose is so strong that we feel a particular calling, or mission in life. Ideally, the work that we do will align with what we feel is our purpose, calling, or mission in life.
In What Color Is Your Parachute? the author explores the idea of mission in life in terms of the question, “What makes you unique?” [148]
The message here is, if you feel you have a calling or unique purpose in life, do not ignore it. Do not push it aside and do something else, telling yourself that it makes more sense to do this other thing. There is a biblical caveat, “You cannot serve two masters.” If you force yourself to do one thing, while your heart is telling you to do another, it may be difficult to succeed at what you think you should do. When I say succeed, I mean enjoying success at work, success in relationships, and good psychological health.
Earlier in the book, in the chapter on purpose and happiness, I spoke about Mahatma Gandhi. I am sure he felt a calling to do what he eventually did. His was a hard road, which involved many years in prison for civil disobedience. For many, the sensible thing to do would have been to employ his legal skills in building a successful practice. However, I believe that he could not have ignored his calling and done the seemingly sensible thing.
Serve Others Well
Few of us have careers in which we are not serving someone. The CEO of a big corporation is beholden to the shareholders, the customers, and the stockholders. The president of a country serves its people (in theory at least). Even if you work anonymously in the bowels of a great corporation, you indirectly serve its customers, and you directly serve both your immediate supervisor and those who report to you.
I can think of few jobs in which you serve only yourself. Day traders (people who trade stocks for their own accounts) come to mind as people who do not need to please either employers or customers.
Happiness can flow from service. In Appendix 2, we touch briefly on karma yoga, the path of service. This seems to have been the way of Mahatma Gandhi. On this path, efforts are aimed at serving the needs of others. Focus is not so much on oneself or personal needs.
If you adopt an attitude of serving others in your work, you will probably become more successful at what you do. You will almost surely be happier, and happy people are known to be more successful than unhappy people.