Is happiness at work your manager or bosses responsibility? I say no – if you are searching for happiness you are going to be disappointed. Sit by your self for at least 30 minutes and attempt to list what happiness is, how you can achieve it.
This list will probably have little to nothing to do with work – happiness is a fleeting concept that work will not supply. The people who are “Happy” are generally just satisfied with what they are doing. They appear what people call happy because they are free to choose and realize that they are not going to allow themselves to be forced to forget their will. Will in the sense of choosing to have a free will. A free will is the idea of freedom – freedom is that of intelligent and free thinking beings. In order for one to be a free thinking being they must be free from the pressure of outside forces (bosses, co-workers, managers, workload) and not allow the forces outside of ones self to determine what choices are made within the work environment.
Peers who seem “Happy” are the ones who people feel choose what they wish to do – even when no choices appear present they make choices within that they can control.
Below is some advice for happiness (or the illusion) at work.
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michael cardus is create-learning
Great post. I agree that happiness lies more within the individual (not the boss) and his or her attitude to life – and that a sense of choice is also important.
And of course managers and other decision makers can contribute to creating an environment in which it’s easier to find freedom, satisfaction and choice in the work we do. This is really crucial.
Support from managers, bosses and colleagues is very important. It’s not always easy to see choices when life’s circumstances are particularly challenging, so we need others to help us find the way through.
But it’s also unrealistic to think we can be ‘happy’ all the time – and perhaps that wouldn’t actually be a Good Thing! Without challenge there is no growth.
There is always something to be learned – and a gift to be had – from every difficulty, even if it’s really hard to see at the time.
Perhaps it might even be that if we’re doing work that is draining to the spirit, then it’s time to be doing something else!
As Kahlil Gibran once said:
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that it’s heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.”
Sue,
the idea of happiness all the time would becoming a negating value. We need peaks and valleys in our lives to accuractely measure our current perspective.
The od thing is that our perception of experiences can create a negative and positive interpretation of these trying times.