Do you have to love your work to be happy?
6 September 2013
Read by 1888 persons
There is 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 must be beautiful, young, rich and healthy to succeed in life. These are undoubtedly great 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 the average person!
Work, a means and not an end in itself
Work occupies an important place in our lives, if only because of the time we dedicate to it. But we should consider whether we have not tended to exaggerate its impact, especially since we have turned our backs on the Civilization of Leisure 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 results from who we are as a person, with our ability to vibrate and love, our openness to the world and to the life around us, much more than from what we can accomplish in 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 above all 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 child 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 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 all those who believe it is good to keep at least one foot on the ground, we must face the evidence that it is possible to be happy in life without always being able to do as we please, or only what we like. The same is true of work!
Times change
We are no longer in the era where 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 retirement with complete peace of mind, thanks to the stability and recognition of the company for which they worked.
For many years now, many graduates (with the exception of those who have been directed into a cutting-edge technological sector) have only a tiny chance of working in their field of study. Many of them have to deal with available positions, often very different from what they wanted to do as a job. And what about those who did not have university studies, although in many cases, it is 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 overexploited, underestimated 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 those 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 recycle themselves 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 it is not given to everyone to feel in their place in this particular universe 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 is easy to say that they only have to change jobs if they are not happy in what they do. It would be so much simpler.
However, let's realize that in many cases, they have reached their second or third position in a few years. Let's agree that there is a limit to what we can have as tastes, 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 is almost always repeated that to succeed and be happy in life, you have to love what you do?
I have heard more than one say that they took this as confirmation that, once again, they were not in their place. Let's agree that in the long run, this can become discouraging. Does this mean that we have to become defeatist? Absolutely not, quite the contrary. What is needed is to change one's 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 do not only do what we love in life and it has never killed anyone. Secondly, and this is what matters most to give meaning to our work or to cheer us up when we have a dry spell, it is necessary to believe in the importance of what we do.
Of course, it is highly 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 field of education, 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 necessary 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 render: educating young people, giving them a taste for developing their potential, etc. And the same is true of all other jobs that require effort and perseverance.
Obviously, it is 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 hang on to something solid, and that is when our convictions have more impact than mere wishes.
This is because we then touch the heart of what motivates us to perform, namely the taste of being proud of ourselves, of feeling satisfied and of vibrating. But isn't this precisely what happens when we act out of conviction?
André Gareau.
Lecturer, Author and Psychotherapist.
Boisbriand, Quebec, Canada.
Posted online September 6, 2013.
Psycho-ressources.com
Work, a means and not an end in itself
Work occupies an important place in our lives, if only because of the time we dedicate to it. But we should consider whether we have not tended to exaggerate its impact, especially since we have turned our backs on the Civilization of Leisure 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 results from who we are as a person, with our ability to vibrate and love, our openness to the world and to the life around us, much more than from what we can accomplish in 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 above all 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 child 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 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 all those who believe it is good to keep at least one foot on the ground, we must face the evidence that it is possible to be happy in life without always being able to do as we please, or only what we like. The same is true of work!
Times change
We are no longer in the era where 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 retirement with complete peace of mind, thanks to the stability and recognition of the company for which they worked.
For many years now, many graduates (with the exception of those who have been directed into a cutting-edge technological sector) have only a tiny chance of working in their field of study. Many of them have to deal with available positions, often very different from what they wanted to do as a job. And what about those who did not have university studies, although in many cases, it is 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 overexploited, underestimated 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 those 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 recycle themselves 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 it is not given to everyone to feel in their place in this particular universe 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 is easy to say that they only have to change jobs if they are not happy in what they do. It would be so much simpler.
However, let's realize that in many cases, they have reached their second or third position in a few years. Let's agree that there is a limit to what we can have as tastes, 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 is almost always repeated that to succeed and be happy in life, you have to love what you do?
I have heard more than one say that they took this as confirmation that, once again, they were not in their place. Let's agree that in the long run, this can become discouraging. Does this mean that we have to become defeatist? Absolutely not, quite the contrary. What is needed is to change one's 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 do not only do what we love in life and it has never killed anyone. Secondly, and this is what matters most to give meaning to our work or to cheer us up when we have a dry spell, it is necessary to believe in the importance of what we do.
Of course, it is highly 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 field of education, 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 necessary 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 render: educating young people, giving them a taste for developing their potential, etc. And the same is true of all other jobs that require effort and perseverance.
Obviously, it is 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 hang on to something solid, and that is when our convictions have more impact than mere wishes.
This is because we then touch the heart of what motivates us to perform, namely the taste of being proud of ourselves, of feeling satisfied and of vibrating. But isn't this precisely what happens when we act out of conviction?
André Gareau.
Lecturer, Author and Psychotherapist.
Boisbriand, Quebec, Canada.
Posted online September 6, 2013.
Psycho-ressources.com
