Can we truly achieve happiness at work?

“Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it” Ferris Bueller

A recent research report published by Gallup suggests that the worlds happiness levels are at their lowest level in over a decade. Well that’s a depressing concept to start this blog post off with but unfortunately that is a reality. Gallup surveyed 154,000 people across 146 different countries, proving that happiness is a worldwide issue.

Recently, I was fortunate to discuss this very topic at the Natural HR Conference at Monkey World in Dorset, and the session centred around trying to get people to realise where true happiness came from and if we keep looking for it (at work or otherwise!) then we simply won’t find it.

When it comes to happiness, it can be affected by a variety of different pressured and combined with high expectations, is it any surprise that the number of people suffering with stress and worry is increasing too?

With such staggering figures on a worldwide scale, it shows that happiness is not just for those in richer countries, for many various reasons ranging from civil unrest through to the costs of living, it is difficult to pinpoint what needs are required to fix the problem and create a happier world. That would be quite a task to achieve.

When it comes to being happy at work, ask yourself, what are the barriers preventing you from being happy in your job?

I think we’ll all agree that we love that feeling of firing on all cylinders and accomplishing a full day’s work, but if we are happy in our jobs then we are unlikely to utilise ourselves to our fullest potential. This leads to a lack of motivation, affected our performance and hinders our productivity.

Then there’s the dilemma on how we prevent ourselves, do we fake happiness at work so that we can just do the  bare minimum and get the heck out of there? Or do we become a mood hoover and suck the life out of everyone who crosses our path? How we handle things is crucial to our happiness at work, so taking time to listen to yourself and how you respond is essential to your development and your happiness overall.

A lot of people rely upon their employer to create happiness at work, but the fact is it begins with you. What makes you happy may not make the person sat next to you happy, so why are we placing our happiness in the hands of others? We are masters of our own destiny, so lets manage ourselves rather than allowing external factors to manage us.

Our attitudes are really important when it comes to our perspectives, if we simply take the view that “nothing ever goes my way” or “it’s not fair” then why are we doing/saying that? We have the power to change that! Life conditions us to believe in the negatives or worst case scenario rather than the positives, so one challenge is to change our mindsets.

This post serves as a small reminder that there are some good things going on in the world, don’t get caught up in the bad press headlines, bad attitudes or bad everything else; there’s enough of that going on in the world! Be that person who makes a difference and creates their own sunshine when the rain pours, but remember to create your own happiness, no one else can do it for you.