Being happy at work

Rhituparna Chakraborty
4 min readDec 8, 2017

‘The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything.’

Life is too short to be unhappy at work. Many of us have lucrative packages and complacent work place, yet we are not happy. Did we ever contemplate why? The answer here is the fact that we have fallen prey to traps. Yes, you read it right. The word is ‘Traps’.

The ‘Aspiration to be successful’ trap:

It’s not wrong to aspire to become successful. However, when we become blinded by the ambition to win, we end up becoming hypercompetitive. At that point, winning becomes so important that team goals no longer remain a priority, and we tend to get the reputation of throwing people under the bus.

The ‘Must and Should’ trap:

Many times, we focus on ‘What we should do’ rather than focusing on ‘What we want to do’. Certain work place ‘norms’ asphyxiate our dreams by not letting us making our own choices. For example, if a company has a rule that women with kids will not be promoted to higher designations because they might not be able to give time to the organization, does it mean that women in that company should not beget children because their chances of growing there will just remain a far-fetched dream if they have kids?

The ‘over work’ trap:

‘Over work’ traps us in a negative whirlpool. Over work results in ‘stress’ and our emotional intelligence goes down the drain. With the advent of gadgets, work is in our pockets or in our night stands. The good news is, if we want to get out of it, we do have feasible solutions wherein we can maintain our work-life balance.

How to be happy at work:

Accept that you deserve happiness at work:

Work can be the dock of happiness if we enjoy our daily chores with passion for a purposeful objective.

Abdicate the outdated mindset:

Let emotional self-awareness become a priority. Understand what you are doing to yourself rather than stressing yourself with the ‘outdated mindset’ of feeling insecure about not doing something which you do every day. For example, you always check your e-mails at 10:00 p.m. before going to bed. You know that you can do it tomorrow. Why do you have to devoid yourself from the straight 7 hours of sleep by checking your e-mail at that time?

Don’t surrender your calmness and peace of mind:

‘To err is human’. If you make an error, learn from it, rather than losing sleep over it. Your happiness and peace of mind matters more than that error.

Practice ‘resilience’:

Don’t go on guilt trips addressing yourself as fatuous. Get over anything that went wrong. Pointless guilt trips lead you nowhere.

Drop the past:

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a ‘gift’, that’s why we call it ‘present’.” Let go of grievance. Forget what happened in the past. Focus on ‘today’.

Eradicate Jealousy:

Jealousy indicates your lack of faith in yourself. If someone gets promoted, that’s his/her achievement. You will also achieve that sooner than later. So, why do you have to be jealous?

Don’t try to find happiness in your job, try to find happiness in yourself:

There is nothing like a ‘dream job’, which pays you well sans stress, allowing you to have ample time of your own. You have to find your own happiness. For example, instead of fretting and fuming over the role of a recruitment manager exhausted of filling in vacancies, focus on the fact that you are someone whose phone call for interviews give hopes to a host of unemployed people.

Think about yourself 10 years ago and 10 years from now:

You will find that there were multifarious problems 10 years ago, which have disappeared now. Likewise, whatever problems you have now, will evanesce.

Forget the ‘If/Then’ factor for happiness:

‘If I get this, then I will be happy’ is the root cause of unhappiness. Happiness is not dependent on what you have to get. Count your blessings. Be happy with what you have.

Be happy about the journey, not the destination:

Certain things are never in our control. We can think of reaching a destination, plan well and go ahead. However, we cannot be certain that we will reach there. Hence, we can avoid disappointment by focusing on the journey, not the destination.

Hope:

‘Hope is the pillar that holds up the world. Hope is the dream of a waking man.’ Hope affects our brain chemistry. Hope results in optimism. Hope gives us the energy to move ahead and plan for the future.

Let us all remember that ‘Success does not determine happiness. It is happiness that results in success’. With happiness, we perform better, we become more creative and resilient. Let us all break up with traps and join hands with happiness.😊

Sources: Harvard Business Review, Forbes.

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