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5 ways to find happiness at work without looking for another job

Positive Psychologist Megan Price shares her top tips on finding happiness at work A quick google search will tell you that the average adult spends over 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime, so it’s no wonder how we view our jobs can have a huge impact to our overarching happiness levels. When we’re feeling low in our day job, it’s tempting to think that finding happiness at work requires you to change jobs – you’ll be pleased to know that this isn’t always the case!

Research in positive psychology has discovered multiple ways we can increase our work satisfaction… without a rewrite of your CV in sight!!! ** Lean into your strengths **

Human beings have a negativity bias which often means we’re quicker to discuss what we’re not great at before what we’re great at. Unfortunately, this thinking is often encouraged in modern day working environments (hello personal development plans!). Taking some time to lean into your strengths can be a powerful pathway to finding work happiness.

The first step in doing this is identifying them. Ask yourself key questions such as, ‘what do people come to me first for?’ and ‘when I was last really proud of a workplace outcome, what skills did I bring to the table to make it happen?’. Taking some time to really explore the things you excel at can boost your confidence and self-esteem and give you more opportunity to apply those areas to your work – giving you a performance boost too. Win win!!

Remember – strengths are areas that you’re good at AND you enjoy; if you don’t enjoy it, don’t include it in your strengths list!

**Fall back in love with work **

It’s easy to think the word ‘love’ doesn’t belong in the workplace – but even if you hate the majority of your job, there will be things that you do love about it. Over the course of a week, reserve a spot in your notebook to scribble the things that you love about your current role. It could be task based such as, ‘I really love writing the month end report for my Manager’ or circumstance based, ‘I really love that the office is just 10 minutes away’.

Creating a ‘love’ list will bring the focus of your role to the positive, and bring back some balance to your current narrative about your job. From a psychological perspective, being aware of what you enjoy means that you’re far more likely to savour the activities when you do them – giving you a boost of positive emotion when they happen!

**Try Job Crafting **

When you have a strong idea of your strengths and the activities that bring you joy in the workplace, have a think about how to can utilise them to your advantage. Job Crafting is the act of making a proactive choice to make changes to your role that are within your control.

There are a number of ways that you can try job crafting by focussing on the tasks that you do and who you do those tasks with – but my favourite is what is called, ‘cognitive crafting’. This involves changing your mindset around the tasks that you do by connecting them to something more meaningful. Ask yourself, ‘why am I do this thing?’, if you can’t find an answer, can you find a way to do it better? ** Focus on relationships ** When I ask employees why they stay in their role they often say, ‘it’s because of the people’. It’s true, who you work with can make or break how happy you are at work. Connectedness is a fundamental psychological need for human beings and our workplaces offer us opportunity to fulfil this need for a large chunk of our week.

To foster positive relationships, try drawing a ‘network map’ – all of the people that work gives you an opportunity to work with and learn from. Try not to think of this as a hierarchy and take an external focus as well as an internal one. This map demonstrates who you have common goals with, and who you can possibly work together with to create more of a difference to your work happiness.

** Improve your work life balance**

Whilst work is a big part of our life, it’s not the only part. Gaining some perspective on the role that work plays in your overall wellbeing can be a really huge revelation for some. If your source or purpose and meaning comes from other life domains, such as your family, it may be that work isn’t as important as you think it is.

If you feel your work life balance is slightly more in the work camp, try drawing some new boundaries to keep you focussed on what is important to you. This may be promising to take your lunch or leaving on time. Connecting these promises to why you’re doing this will make you more likely to keep to them – eg. I’m going to close my laptop of 5pm so I can go for a run after work because my health is my biggest priority right now.

About the author: Megan Price Megan Price is a positive psychologist who leads talent functions and supports leaders to take a more human approach to people management using positive psychology. She also works with individuals in her 12 week coaching programme, Deconstructing Happiness. She can be found on instagram @happy,byme

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