The Happiness Project: Happiness at work: does it matter?

I’m working on a book, THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, a memoir of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, the current scientific studies, and the lessons from popular culture about how to be happy--from Aristotle to Martin Seligman to Thoreau to Oprah. On this daily blog, I recount my adventures as I grapple with the challenge of being happier. THE HAPPINESS PROJECT will hit the shelves in December 2009 (Harper).

Twelve Personal Commandments

Four Splendid Truths

First: To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
Second: One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
Third: The days are long, but the years are short. (click the link to see my one-minute movie)
Fourth: You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy.

What Started Me Thinking

"Whoever is happy will make others happy, too." Mark Twain.
“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” Robert Louis Stevenson
"Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Luke 10:41-42
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Simone Weil
“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” Colette
“It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.” G. K. Chesterton
“A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.” Joseph Addison
“Best is good. Better is best.” Lisa Grunwald
“Order is Heaven’s first law.” Alexander Pope

Happiness Theories I Reject

Flaubert: "To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."
Vauvenargues: “There are men who are happy without knowing it.”
Eric Hoffer: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”
Sartre: "Hell is other people."
Willa Cather: “One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them…”
Alexander Smith: “We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.”
John Stuart Mill: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

Happiness at work: does it matter?

Today I was a guest-blogger on the fabulous New York Times Shifting Careers blog. I posted on the question of Happiness at Work: Does It Matter? Your comments welcome!

Posted February 4, 2008

Comments

How could at least some level of happiness at work not matter? We spend most of our waking hours there (and more if you add in going to work, coming home from it, and thinking about it while awake). Life fulfilling bliss, maybe not, but total unhappiness just won't work in that kind of concentration.

Posted by: MJ | February 04, 2008 at 03:13 PM

Of course it matters! Not just for the employee but also for the employer. A happy employee will not go jobhunting.

Posted by: Joelle | February 05, 2008 at 08:19 AM

I am evidence that it matters alot. I quit my job as a nurse last year because I started my own home based business. I love it and am a completely changed person, for the better. I am happy, free and am enjoying my life now that I have changed jobs. My job as a nurse was fine, but my new business is positive, inspiring and motivating... it has made all the difference in my life.

Posted by: Nicole | February 08, 2008 at 02:43 AM

Recently I stepped into the beverage room where I work to buy a bottle of water. A fellow worker was at the machine buying a bottle of water for himself. He said hello and then asked what I was going to buy. I answered a bottle of water. He said let me get that for you. I was quite suprised and said, Thanks but you don't have to do that". he said, "No I want to because you get treated very badly around here." I was dumfounded. It was kind and it was also very embarassing knowing that it was that noticeable that my immediate superior was that obvious with his disdain of me. Why the disdain, I have no idea. I have never had a conversation with my superior, Never. Even though I tried many times, I finally just stopped talking and smiling pretty much. I was glad to have a job. I finally went to HR and spilled myself. It was very freeing to finally speak of it out loud. From what I gathered my boss has quite a reputation of not being a good leader but at being a good closer for business bottom line, money. In this life we are never too old to learn about ourselves, Not every one can like you and I can live with that but being rude and nasty to your workmates or anyone is not acceptable at all. My happiness is my own responsibility I cannot blame anyone for that, happiness is a personal choice. Besides, I think it annoys him to see me smile and be happy and laugh and joke with other people. Hee, heee

Posted by: carrie | April 23, 2009 at 04:01 PM

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Gretchen Rubin is a best-selling writer whose new book, The Happiness Project, is an account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. On this blog, she shares her insights to help you create your own happiness project.