Happiness and Your Job

In the last article on this series on Happiness, you learned about a happy workplace where people like to sing.

But some of you may not have that type of workplace/job. In fact you may have a job that leaves you feeling rather unhappy.

Unless you have won the lottery, were born wealthy, are independently wealthy, or have a means of income that allows you to live a life of luxury, you have to work.

And that means having a job.

Now some have their own business, but even then it’s a job.

And a job is something that you have for your entire life. It will probably be a few jobs over your life, and it may even be your own business for all or some of your working life.

So since a job is something that you will spend a gazillion hours of your life at, and it is also something that is central to your life – after all, a job = money – doesn’t it make sense that your job should bring you happiness?

After all, if your job doesn’t bring you happiness, or at least a modicum of happiness, then what good is it? Life is too short to spend most of your waking hours at something that is drudgery and that you have a sense of dread about.

Doesn’t it make sense to do something you really enjoy? That’s a sure recipe for happiness and living a Low Density Lifestyle.

That being said, I’d like you to heed the words of Walter Murch, an Academy Award-winning film editor and sound designer.

In Murch’s book, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, he discusses how to choose the work that makes you happiest.

Here’s what he had to say:

“As I’ve gone through life, I’ve found that your chances for happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that is a reflection of what you loved most when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old…

“At that age, you know enough of the world to have opinions about things, but you’re not old enough yet to be overly influenced by the crowd or by what other people are doing or what you think you ‘should’ be doing.

“If what you do later on ties into that reservoir in some way, then you are nurturing some essential part of yourself. It’s certainly been true in my case. I’m doing now, at fifty-eight, almost exactly what most excited me when I was eleven.

“But I went through a whole late-adolescent phase when I thought: Splicing sounds together can’t be a real occupation, maybe I should be a geologist or teach art history.”

What great advice from someone who speaks from experience.

My advice to you is to take it to heart.