Photo: blackvoice.co
Happiness is a decision. And happiness at work is a hard, overrated one. We expect to spend upwards of eight hours chained to a desk, computer or other stationary device, dealing with different people with different moods, appearances and energies, whom we don’t really intimately know (and many of whom we have no desire to know that well, anyways), and expect to derive mind-blowing happiness from it. Oh and the for the feminists among us (and other practical idealists), we expect to change the mess of centuries of misogynistic thought, patriarchal work structures and karma-influenced wage gaps abysses, so we can finally be happy at work!
So we strive to find the perfect job in a perfect environment with perfect people, a job we don’t suck at, or one that doesn’t make us feel like a loser. A job where we can change the world, be amazingly productive (because we’re so happy), and get overwhelming happiness as a result of it all. Ahem…
How do I say this? Work may provide some fleeting moments of illusory bliss, like when you get that promotion you’ve been deserving for years, or get noticed by the CEO, or get the biggest bonus check you’ve ever seen. Or it can make you despicably miserable, like when your co-worker gets your promotion, the CEO has no idea you even exist (although that report on his desk has your signature on it), or the Company decides to forego bonuses this year (after you’ve planned your family vacation and put a deposit on it). It can really go either way, and very often, it does, based on criteria as fleeting as how much your boss likes you (or is a total dick), or how well you play office politics, or oh, what skin color you were born with…
Work will do a lot of things to you, including pissing you off, making you smile, or considering learning the art of voodoo dolls. It may be a place of great opportunities or one of great losses. For some, it may even determine the identity we carry around every day. What it won’t do is keep you happy, simply because it was never meant to do so.
What keeps you happy is YOU, the sum of all the great and not so great things that make you who you are. And that’s what you work on and where you find your happy. And once you find that happy place, you can let it take you to the job that fits into it. Not the other way around…
Now get back to work…
The Corporate Sis.
