About the Author: Executive coach and leadership consultant Beverly Jones works with leaders at federal agencies, NGOs, universities and companies of all sizes.
You have the power to make life-improving changes.
According to Gallup polls, more than half of American workers feel stressed and frustrated by or stuck in their present jobs. This stands in stark contrast to the one-third of workers who feel engaged and are happy, energized and purposeful at work. If you identify more with the former than the latter group, know that, even if you don’t see a way out of your current situation, you can make practical changes to improve your work life without changing jobs or career – specifically, changes to your perspective, skills, approach to life, mental acuity and health.
“Happiness and success are similar in that you can’t pursue either directly. Each seems to emerge as a consequence of the way you manage yourself and your activities.”
Sometimes, changing how you choose to work gives you a boost. Even if your job doesn’t offer you much autonomy, you can change how you usually do things – even if it’s as small as approaching an assignment with a less-pessimistic-than-normal attitude or listening more closely to your colleagues. Your brain reads this simple change as a chance to “be inventive” – a vital component of human happiness.
Feel happier at work by pursuing the “Engagement Triangle.”
Happiness at work often hinges on three issues which form an “Engagement Triangle”:
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A well-honed sense of purpose – Work is more enjoyable and engaging when you feel part of something meaningful. This sense of purpose may stem from your company’s core principles, your team dynamics or your personal values and how you live those out on the job.
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Positive relationships with the people in your job-related sphere – When you feel strong, friendly ties to the people with whom you work, you feel happier and more engaged.
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Your performance, or how you approach your work – When your work makes the most of your strengths and provides learning challenges, you experience greater job satisfaction. The same holds true with autonomy: The more you have, the happier you will feel.
The Engagement Triangle affects your personal engagement and if you lead others, shapes your team’s engagement. If a team member seems disengaged, you might, for example, work to build a stronger relationship with that person and look for opportunities to give them fresh challenges, so they can experience success.
“The Engagement Triangle can help you plan your good days and feel better on your bad days.”
A well-crafted “statement of personal values” can help you pursue the three Ps. Think of this statement as a guiding idea that shapes how you pursue your work and interact. For example, hotelier Klaus Peters adopted the statement, “Treat everybody like Somebody” – a sentiment inspired by a hotel manager who treated him like an equal when he was a lowly server in the establishment’s restaurant. When crafting your mission statement, consider your values and standards, how you hope to help or serve others and the activities that give you the greatest sense of satisfaction.
Self-care, healthy habits and mindfulness boost your well-being.
Your well-being influences your happiness and success in the workplace. While people define well-being in different ways, many agree it encompasses four distinct realms: mind, body, heart and spirit. The body element includes eating, sleeping and exercise habits, and stress levels. Spirit includes your sense of purpose, values and moral/spiritual beliefs. Heart includes your relationships, resilience and sense of compassion, love and joy. Mind includes mental and brain health, mindfulness and curiosity. You can improve any of these areas with simple changes.
Mindfulness counteracts the negative and boosts the positive at work. Mindlessness can lead to missed opportunities, inflexibility, bias and feelings of helplessness. Mindfulness increases your abilities, creativity and happiness. Pair mindfulness with a meditation practice to improve your brain functions and lower your stress and blood pressure levels. Techniques for mindfulness include breathing exercises, taking a meditative walk, participating in a guided meditation or enjoying a fully present coffee or snack break.
Start small to make headway on big changes, and celebrate little wins.
When it comes to making big changes in your life or career, the “sugar grain” method – named after the author’s slow shift from drinking sweetened to unsweetened tea by removing a few grains of sugar each day – can help. The method comprises four steps:
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“Develop a vision” – Consider your ideal life and career and what big goals might help get you there.
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“Identify micro-goals”–Break each big goal into specific, actionable small goals. If you want to get physically fit, for example, you might set a micro-goal of walking for 20 minutes a couple of times per week.
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“Commit to sugar grains”–Plan out tiny actions that support each micro-goal, such as buying new walking shoes.
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“Record your grains”–Keep track of your progress. Evidence of your successes keeps you moving forward.
The sugar grain method works because it lowers the barriers to change by making it easier to build momentum and form new habits. It allows you to grow in nonlinear ways and shift your identity over time.
Fine-tune your habits to improve your life.
Good habits help you to make choices that benefit your life. Less-than-great habits undermine even your best intentions. If, for example, you feel exhausted and disorganized at work, your nightly habit of junk food and binge-watching TV until the early morning hours exacerbates these issues. To identify the habits that may not serve you well, record your daily activities for a week. Shift your existing habits to more productive ones. Forming a new habit is a three-step process:
1. Cue – This is the prompt for the new behavior you want to turn into a habit. It might be an alarm on your phone or a physical reminder, such as leaving your walking shoes near your front door.
2. Routine–This is the action you take in response to the cue–the new habit itself.
3. Reward–This generates a sense of pleasure about your new habit. Pausing to reflect on how doing the new habit makes you feel can create this sensation.
Regular consideration of how your new habit or habits move you closer to the person you wish to be or the life you wish to lead help you stick with building them. Using the sugar grain method – including breaking bigger hoped-for habits into smaller ones and tracking your progress – allows the transformation to occur slowly but steadily. Find support for your goals by spending time with people who share the habits you want to adopt.
Replace bad habits with better ones by identifying what motivates your unhealthy behavior. Find better habits that fulfill those needs in healthier ways. For example, your daily trip to the office cafeteria for a cookie might be less about sugar cravings than a desire to socialize. Identify the cue for the bad habit, and create a new routine connected with that cue.
Choose settings and activities that help you feel happy.
Hobbies play an important role in helping you have the energy – mental and physical – to do your work. Almost anything can be a hobby. Pick whatever feels fun to you. Make sure your hobby engages you; it should not be something passive, such as binge-watching Netflix.
Along with leisure activities, studies show that spending time in nature is one of the best ways to boost your happiness and health. You can get natural benefits in a variety of ways: Go to a park; put a plant on your desk; get a pet; go for a walk, or seek out a sunny spot to work. Adding color to your workspace, keeping your desk tidy and choosing a comfortable chair, likewise, support your well-being and productivity.
Another happiness-building activity is showing kindness to others. When you help someone, you feel a greater connection to your community. Learning to focus your attention on tasks that demand your highest level of skill and attention also gives you a deep sense of satisfaction.
Keep learning.
When you master a novel skill, you feel a rush of the feel-good hormone, dopamine. Learning new things makes work more enjoyable, helps ensure a successful career and makes you a more interesting person. Learning allows you to keep up with developments in your profession and adapt your skills as needed.
Nurturing a growth mind-set – the belief you can develop knowledge and abilities over your lifetime – helps you handle the unexpected and regard setbacks as learning opportunities rather than failures. It helps you develop grit – the ability to keep going in the face of difficulties – by teaching you the value of practicing to improve. Learning bolsters your sense of purpose and autonomy and keeps you from becoming bored.
“Learning is fun. It can transfer routine work into a continuing adventure. And constant learners tend to be interesting to other people.”
Keep a list of possible learning topics, ask questions of knowledge experts, embrace micro-learning opportunities throughout your workday – such as TED Talks and daily newsletters – schedule longer, deeper learning sessions during the week and pursue broad and narrow learning topics. Read books to gain knowledge from wise people throughout the ages. Reading also helps you hone your writing skills.
Cultivate a diverse array of relationships.
Loneliness is epidemic in the United States. According to a 2020 survey by the health care company Cigna, more than half of Americans are lonely and as many as 72% of 18-22-year-olds experience feelings of isolation. Friendship isn’t an option for human beings; it’s a biological need. Relationships are the fuel that allows people to feel happy, stay healthy and perform well.
The rise in loneliness poses a problem for people’s health and well-being. Loneliness increases your risk of depression, heart disease and diabetes, among other mental and physical ailments. Relational ties help decrease anxiety and boost confidence and self-esteem. Be aware: You can’t expect to build these healthy connections with others virtually. Replacing conversation with emails and texts can leave you feeling more lonely.
“Any busy workers, even those in lively offices, may drift into loneliness without noticing that it’s happening.”
Working with others in an office each day is not a surefire way to avoid isolation. You must be proactive about cultivating relationships. To counteract loneliness, come to meetings early to socialize with colleagues, look for opportunities to greet and thank co-workers, and, when you feel a connection with someone, suggest activities, such as taking a walk together, that would allow you to form a closer friendship. When appropriate, consider forming mentoring relationships within your organization. Whether you are the mentor or mentee, you gain opportunities to teach and learn.
While networking sometimes makes people feel uneasy, remember that its benefits go both ways: You and your networking partners share connection, information and support. Someone you meet might help you find a new job or opportunity, and you might do the same for them. Forming diverse networks broadens
your perspectives. These contacts can challenge old assumptions and increase your potential for innovative solutions.
