Do you have to love your work to be happy?
8 April 2008
Read by 1384 persons
There’s no doubt that those who can do a job they enjoy, especially in a rewarding and fulfilling environment, have ideal conditions. But to think that this is necessary for happiness is like saying that you need to be beautiful, young, rich, and healthy to succeed in life. These are undoubtedly big advantages. But if we start to believe that these are the conditions for success and therefore happiness, we might as well say goodbye to the planet for ordinary mortals!
Work, a means and not an end in itself
Work plays an important role in our lives, if only because of the time we dedicate to it. But we should consider whether we haven’t tended to exaggerate its impact, especially since we turned our backs on the Leisure Civilization to celebrate entrepreneurial culture and make ambition the new leitmotif of existence, or even the criterion of quality of life that we associate with happiness.
Have we lost sight of the fact that, for a balanced person, work is supposed to be a means of accomplishing things while earning a living, and not an end in itself? Happiness comes from who we are as a person, with our ability to vibrate and love, our openness to the world and the life around us, much more than from what we can accomplish at the office; this is what workaholics fail to realize.
For those who doubt it, I invite you to try the following experiment. Ask a young couple expecting a new baby what they wish for most for their baby.
How many, do you think, will reply that they hope to have a future bank director, or a brilliant lawyer, or that they wish their offspring to earn millions as a hockey star? None. Let’s bet that their first wish will be that the baby is healthy. Then, they will talk about their hope that the child will grow up well and be happy in life, whatever their occupation.
This shows that the equation between professional fulfillment and happiness is not systematically part of our values, at least not initially! And for those who believe it’s good to keep at least one foot on the ground, we must face the fact that it is possible to be happy in life without always being able to have our own way, or only doing what we like. The same goes for work!
Times change
We are no longer in the era when an individual could undertake studies and then work in the field of their choice and progress without any disruption to their career plan while being assured of a peaceful retirement, thanks to the stability and recognition of the company for which they worked. For many years now, many graduates (except those who have been directed into a cutting-edge technological sector) have only a tiny chance of working in the sector of their studies. Many of them have to cope with the available positions, often very different from what they wanted to do as work. And what about those who haven’t done university studies, although in many cases, it’s neither better nor worse!
Loving your work…
We know, thanks to a recent survey conducted by one of the world’s largest management consulting firms (Towers Perrin group), that more than half of North American workers are not happy in their professional lives. They are either overworked, undervalued, or worried about their future, while others say they are tired of doing the work they are given.
Think of the security guard who spends the night doing his rounds, or the stock clerks who, night after night, have to restock the supermarket shelves so that the displays are attractive and the products are available to customers the next morning. And this is true at all levels. Mathematics teachers have had to agree to teach English or Geography to supplement their teaching load.
The same goes for those notaries who, after having to close their office in the mid-1980s because the economic situation meant they could no longer make a decent living, tried to retrain in real estate or insurance, believing they saw a certain kinship with their former profession and therefore helpful conditions to facilitate this transition.
But God knows that not everyone feels in their place in this particular world of sales and prospecting. Certainly, they would never have made such career choices initially, given their personality. This means that many people find themselves doing a job in which they feel more or less in their place.
Obviously, it’s easy to say that they just have to change jobs if they’re not happy with what they’re doing. It would be so much simpler.
However, let’s realize that in many cases, they are on their second or third job in a few years. Let’s agree that there’s a limit to what we can enjoy, especially since they must ultimately deal with what is accessible to them. So, seriously, how do you think these people can feel inside when, during a training session or in "sales meetings," it’s almost always repeated that to succeed and be happy in life, you have to love what you do?
I’ve heard more than one say that they took this as confirmation that, once again, they weren’t in their place. Let’s agree that in the long run, this can end up being discouraging. Does this mean that we have to become defeatist? Absolutely not, quite the contrary. What we need to do is change our approach.
The important thing is to believe in it
First of all, we must stop relying on formulas that we would like to be magical and return to reality. Firstly, as already mentioned, we don’t only do what we love in life, and that has never killed anyone. Secondly, and this is what matters most to give meaning to our work or to cheer us up when we’re going through a rough patch, is that it’s necessary to believe in the importance of what we do. Of course, it’s quite likely that the stock clerk will never be able to love the act of filling shelves. We can also understand that, with all the upheavals that have occurred in the teaching environment, both in terms of academic subjects and in the climate of student-teacher relationships, many teachers have difficulty continuing to see their career path as they had envisioned when they were studying pedagogy.
So, what is needed to help them maintain the motivation to overcome certain disappointments and encourage them to do their job to the best of their ability is that they continue to believe in the necessity and value of the service they provide: educating young people, giving them the taste of developing their potential, etc. And the same is true of all other jobs that require effort and perseverance.
Obviously, it’s easy to love what you do when things are going well! But when everyday life seems harder to bear, we need to be able to hold on to something solid, and that’s when our convictions have more impact than mere wishes.
This is because we are then touching the heart of what motivates us to perform, namely the desire to be proud of ourselves, to feel satisfied and to vibrate. And isn’t that precisely what happens when we act out of conviction?
Posted on April 8, 2008
casafree.com
Work, a means and not an end in itself
Work plays an important role in our lives, if only because of the time we dedicate to it. But we should consider whether we haven’t tended to exaggerate its impact, especially since we turned our backs on the Leisure Civilization to celebrate entrepreneurial culture and make ambition the new leitmotif of existence, or even the criterion of quality of life that we associate with happiness.
Have we lost sight of the fact that, for a balanced person, work is supposed to be a means of accomplishing things while earning a living, and not an end in itself? Happiness comes from who we are as a person, with our ability to vibrate and love, our openness to the world and the life around us, much more than from what we can accomplish at the office; this is what workaholics fail to realize.
For those who doubt it, I invite you to try the following experiment. Ask a young couple expecting a new baby what they wish for most for their baby.
How many, do you think, will reply that they hope to have a future bank director, or a brilliant lawyer, or that they wish their offspring to earn millions as a hockey star? None. Let’s bet that their first wish will be that the baby is healthy. Then, they will talk about their hope that the child will grow up well and be happy in life, whatever their occupation.
This shows that the equation between professional fulfillment and happiness is not systematically part of our values, at least not initially! And for those who believe it’s good to keep at least one foot on the ground, we must face the fact that it is possible to be happy in life without always being able to have our own way, or only doing what we like. The same goes for work!
Times change
We are no longer in the era when an individual could undertake studies and then work in the field of their choice and progress without any disruption to their career plan while being assured of a peaceful retirement, thanks to the stability and recognition of the company for which they worked. For many years now, many graduates (except those who have been directed into a cutting-edge technological sector) have only a tiny chance of working in the sector of their studies. Many of them have to cope with the available positions, often very different from what they wanted to do as work. And what about those who haven’t done university studies, although in many cases, it’s neither better nor worse!
Loving your work…
We know, thanks to a recent survey conducted by one of the world’s largest management consulting firms (Towers Perrin group), that more than half of North American workers are not happy in their professional lives. They are either overworked, undervalued, or worried about their future, while others say they are tired of doing the work they are given.
Think of the security guard who spends the night doing his rounds, or the stock clerks who, night after night, have to restock the supermarket shelves so that the displays are attractive and the products are available to customers the next morning. And this is true at all levels. Mathematics teachers have had to agree to teach English or Geography to supplement their teaching load.
The same goes for those notaries who, after having to close their office in the mid-1980s because the economic situation meant they could no longer make a decent living, tried to retrain in real estate or insurance, believing they saw a certain kinship with their former profession and therefore helpful conditions to facilitate this transition.
But God knows that not everyone feels in their place in this particular world of sales and prospecting. Certainly, they would never have made such career choices initially, given their personality. This means that many people find themselves doing a job in which they feel more or less in their place.
Obviously, it’s easy to say that they just have to change jobs if they’re not happy with what they’re doing. It would be so much simpler.
However, let’s realize that in many cases, they are on their second or third job in a few years. Let’s agree that there’s a limit to what we can enjoy, especially since they must ultimately deal with what is accessible to them. So, seriously, how do you think these people can feel inside when, during a training session or in "sales meetings," it’s almost always repeated that to succeed and be happy in life, you have to love what you do?
I’ve heard more than one say that they took this as confirmation that, once again, they weren’t in their place. Let’s agree that in the long run, this can end up being discouraging. Does this mean that we have to become defeatist? Absolutely not, quite the contrary. What we need to do is change our approach.
The important thing is to believe in it
First of all, we must stop relying on formulas that we would like to be magical and return to reality. Firstly, as already mentioned, we don’t only do what we love in life, and that has never killed anyone. Secondly, and this is what matters most to give meaning to our work or to cheer us up when we’re going through a rough patch, is that it’s necessary to believe in the importance of what we do. Of course, it’s quite likely that the stock clerk will never be able to love the act of filling shelves. We can also understand that, with all the upheavals that have occurred in the teaching environment, both in terms of academic subjects and in the climate of student-teacher relationships, many teachers have difficulty continuing to see their career path as they had envisioned when they were studying pedagogy.
So, what is needed to help them maintain the motivation to overcome certain disappointments and encourage them to do their job to the best of their ability is that they continue to believe in the necessity and value of the service they provide: educating young people, giving them the taste of developing their potential, etc. And the same is true of all other jobs that require effort and perseverance.
Obviously, it’s easy to love what you do when things are going well! But when everyday life seems harder to bear, we need to be able to hold on to something solid, and that’s when our convictions have more impact than mere wishes.
This is because we are then touching the heart of what motivates us to perform, namely the desire to be proud of ourselves, to feel satisfied and to vibrate. And isn’t that precisely what happens when we act out of conviction?
Posted on April 8, 2008
casafree.com
