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Should you be reading Stephen Covey’s
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective
People? Or the Eighth Habit? Maybe the
David Allen Getting Things Done system
is right for you? Is coaching what you
need? Maybe some anti-stress training.
Or conflict mediation. Career
counselling? Or developing your
communication skills, your presentation
skills or your...
The truth is that your options are
almost endless - and most of them are
pretty good. But it’s better to start
somewhere else, with something even
simpler. Start by making yourself
happier at work.
People who are happy and have meaning in
their lives are not only more productive
and more resilient at work, they take
less sick days, they perform better in
leadership roles and they receive higher
pay.
This is great news for those for whom
positivity comes naturally. But what
about the rest of us? Can we really
learn to become happier at work?
Apparently we can, if we change the way
we think about work, success and
happiness.
The conventional thinking on happiness
is that if you work hard, you’ll be
successful and by being successful,
you’ll become happier. The problem with
this is that every time we’re
successful, we change the goalposts of
what success looks like. If we hit our
sales target for the last quarter, we
change the target for next quarter. If
our happiness depends on our success,
we’re constantly making it harder to
achieve.
Research shows that our brains actually
work the other way around. Happiness
fuels success. When our brains are
primed to be positive, we perform better
than when we’re in a negative or neutral
state and our work becomes more
enjoyable and rewarding.
However, being happy at work isn’t easy.
This is partly because we all have
patterns through which we view the world
and we get stuck in these. For example,
a tax manager who spends all day looking
for mistakes in tax forms is more likely
to come home and unwittingly notice
what’s wrong in his home life. He’s
primed to look for mistakes and he can’t
break that pattern.
Habits and mindset changes
The learning point that needs to be
delivered is that it is possible to
imprint the brain with a positive
pattern by creating a series of habits
and mindset changes. By changing the way
you think about work, you can increase
your happiness.
For example, you could prime your
brain to be happier at work by:
1)
Creating the habit of gratitude
Write down three new things each day
that you are grateful for. Make these
things specific. If you spend two
minutes a day doing this, your brain
becomes slightly happier. Try doing it
for 21 consecutive days. The more you
think of things you’re grateful for, the
less time you have for thinking about
hassles and complaints.
2)
Think about what makes you happy
at work
Think of a specific work situation when
you were happy and ask these questions –
What happened? What were the
circumstances? Who was involved? Why was
it a good experience? What did it do to
your quality of work? How did it affect
you outside of work? This is an exercise
based on the idea that the best way to
create positive change is to focus on
what worked previously and what you want
more of in the future, rather than on
all the earlier problems you want to
avoid.
3)
Exercise
Many people know that exercise releases
positive endorphins and that when you
exercise you’re more likely to eat
healthier. If you could exercise daily
for 21 days in a row, the benefits would
cascade into other areas of your life.
4)
Reduce multitasking
Our brains like to do one thing at a
time. When we attempt to multitask, we
decrease our success rate on those
tasks. To be happier and more productive
at work, people should try to do one
thing at a time.
5)
Perform conscious acts of kindness
Altruism is a great way to feel good
about yourself. Thinking of how you can
help someone else changes how you see
the world, from how is the world
affecting me to, how can I affect the
world? It may seem a small change but
this is very important. Encourage
colleagues to find positive things that
they can do for - or say to - other
people.
6)
Decide on happiness
Before anyone can make any significant
progress they must make the decision to
be happy. That decision is the first
step. Before you make that choice,
remember that every decision has
consequences. Choosing to be happy also
means doing what it takes to get there.
However if your current work situation
really is not good, you face the most
difficult decision...
Should I stay or should I go?
Once you’ve decided to be happy at work,
here’s the most basic choice you must
make: Should you try to become happy in
your current job, or is it better to
switch to a new job? Can you make things
better where you are? Have you tried?
How did it go?
There are two possible options: choose
to stay where you are and make that work
situation happy. Or, choose to leave and
do something about it. As the
philosophers say, the greatest pain is
not in making one choice over another,
but in not choosing at all.
Can you make changes to your current
job? Remember that:
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