Happiness Traps
Life is too short to be unhappy at work. Yet many professionals who are free to shape their careers are just that: disengaged, unfulfilled, and miserable. Take “Sharon,” a vice president at a global energy firm and one of my consulting clients. She’s smart and hardworking and has risen through the ranks by following the rules. She makes a lot of money, is married to a man she loves, and is devoted to her children. She had everything she thought she wanted, but she wasn’t happy. Things were tense at home, and work no longer gratified her. She was tired of workplace politics and cynical about the never-ending changes that would supposedly fix whatever was wrong with the company in a given quarter.
After coaching Sharon for several months, I grew to like her.
Sharon is not alone. more stress than ever owing to politics, the speed of change, and uncertainty in the world. Three of the most common happiness traps—ambition, doing what’s expected of us, and working too hard—seem productive on the surface but are harmful when taken to the extreme.
The Ambition Trap
The drive to achieve goals and further our careers pushes us to be and do our best. But when ambition is coupled with hyper-competitiveness and a single-minded focus on winning, we get into trouble. We become blind to the impact of our actions on ourselves and others; relationships are damaged and collaboration suffers; we start chasing goals for the sake of hitting targets; and work begins to lose its meaning.
That’s exactly what happened to Sharon. Throughout her life, her parents, teachers, and coaches encouraged her striving, and she attained a lot. She got good grades, top spots on sports teams, and academic awards. When she started working, her ambition impressed her bosses: She gave them what they wanted on time and well done.
Her peers weren’t quite as enthralled, however, and some steered clear as they realized that Sharon always wanted to be number one. To her, that meant everyone else had to be number two. Team goals were not a priority unless they served her purpose, and she got a reputation for throwing people under the bus.
If coupled with a single-minded focus on winning, ambition gets us into trouble.
Success early on had reinforced a winner-take-all attitude that ultimately derailed her both professionally and personally.
The “Should” Trap
Doing what we think we should do rather than what we want to do is a trap that all of us risk falling into at some point in our work lives. True, some of the unwritten rules that shape our careers are positive, such as completing an education so that we can help our families and observing punctuality and civility at work. But too many of our workplace norms—what I call shoulds—force us to deny who we are and to make choices that hinder our potential and stifle our dreams.
To be successful in most companies, people have to obey shoulds about how to dress, how to talk, whom to associate with, and sometimes even how to have a life outside work. I’ve worked in organizations where a candidate’s scuffed shoes kill his chances of getting the job and where women must wear makeup and have certain (usually short) hairstyles.
Self-suppression and diligent conformity don’t bring out our most original, creative contributions at work; nor do they lead to workplace happiness, a key ingredient of sustained professional success. In this case the shoulds that directed his professional choices caused Marcus to take the wrong job and hide his personal life. The rules he thought he must obey became soul destroying and ultimately dragged down his career.
The Overwork Trap
Some of us react to the very real pressures of the “always on” 21st-century workplace by spending every waking moment working or thinking about work. We don’t have time for friends, exercise, healthful food, or sleep. We don’t play with our children or even listen to them. We don’t stay home when we’re sick. We don’t take the time to get to know people at work or put ourselves in their shoes before we jump to conclusions.
Overwork can slow down our brains and compromise our emotional intelligence.
Breaking Free
The first step is to accept that you deserve happiness at work. That means giving up the misbelief that work is not meant to be a primary source of fulfillment.
Work can be a source of real happiness, which I define as a deep and abiding enjoyment of daily activities fueled by passion for a meaningful purpose, a hopeful view of the future, and true friendships. To embrace these three components of happiness, we must first delve into the very personal drivers and habits that keep us from fostering them. Why do we work all the time? Do our ambition and desire to win serve us or hurt us? Why are we trapped by what we feel we should do and not pursuing what we want to do? To answer these questions, we need to tap into our emotional intelligence.
Moving from Trapped to Happy
Over the past several decades, psychologists and researchers, myself included, have come to agree that there are 12 emotional intelligence competencies, all of which can help you avoid or break free from the happiness traps. I believe that three—emotional self-awareness, emotional self-control, and organizational awareness—are particularly useful when casting off an outdated mindset.
The Emotional Intelligence Competencies
Emotional self-awareness is the capacity to notice and understand your feelings and moods and to recognize how they affect your thoughts and actions. You might realize, for example, that the discomfort you feel when you buck a work “should”—such as replying to e-mail at 8 pm or during the weekend—signals that you’re afraid of being excluded. Going a bit deeper, you might see that this fear has little or nothing to do with your current work situation; it may simply be an old habit of mind that no longer serves you.
Purpose, Hope, and Friendship
Using emotional intelligence to remove barriers to happiness is a first step on the journey to greater fulfillment at work. But happiness doesn’t happen magically—we must actively seek meaning and purpose in our day-to-day activities, foster hope in ourselves and others, and build friendships at work.
Meaning and purpose.
Passion for a cause fuels energy, intelligence, and creativity. Brain chemistry is in part responsible: Researchers have shown that the positive emotions aroused by work we see as worthwhile enable us to be smarter, more innovative, and more adaptable. We give more of ourselves when we have an impact—even if it’s a small one.
Purpose is a powerful driver of workplace happiness. Yet too often we fail to tap this wellspring of motivation. Each of us finds meaning and purpose in work differently, but in my experience with people from all over the globe and in all professions, I’ve seen some similarities: We want to fight for a cause we care about. We want to create and innovate. We want to fix problems and improve our workplaces. We want to learn and grow. And, as studies have shown, meaningful work is as possible and important for a janitor or a middle manager as it is for a CEO.
Breaking Free from Happiness Traps
As you discover which aspects of your job are truly fulfilling—and which are soul destroying—you will face choices about how to spend your time and what to pursue in your career. Marcus decided to begin seriously exploring that business he’d always dreamed of having. He looked at finances and at how to leverage his relationships at his current firm and with clients. He and his spouse considered the lifestyle changes that launching a business would require. In the end, he created a bridge: He worked as an associate at his firm part-time for two years while seeking funding and starting his new business.
Hope.
If you’ve ever faced adversity, a crisis, or a loss, you know that hope is what got you through. It makes us want to get up every day and keep trying, even when life is tough. Hope makes it possible to navigate complexity; handle stress, fear, and frustration; and understand hectic organizations and lives.
I’ve met many people in my work who shy away from big dreams, fearing that they’ll only be disappointed. But I don’t believe there’s any such thing as false hope. Hope is not magical thinking or fantasy; it’s a powerful, positive emotional experience that leads to courage, thoughtful plans, and concrete actions.
Conclusion
Too many people believe that if they’re successful, they’ll be happy. That’s backward. The author and psychologist Shawn Achor says it straightforwardly: “Happiness comes before success.” That’s because the positive emotions aroused by being engaged, fulfilled, and valued at work have a host of benefits: Our brains function better; we are more creative and adaptable; we have more energy, make smarter decisions, and better manage complexity. It’s simple: Happy people perform better than their unhappy peers.
It’s time to claim our right to happiness at work. To start, let’s replace outdated beliefs with a new understanding of what we can expect from work—and from one another. Let’s break free of traps that keep us from happiness. And let’s begin the journey to fulfillment by focusing on discovering and living our purpose at work, reaching for a compelling vision of the future, and turning colleagues into real friends. These things will help us create workplaces that honor our humanity and foster common decency and sustainable success, workplaces in which ideas, needs, and desires matter—as does happiness.
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