Happiness vs everything else
We have talked a lot in previous blog posts about being happy and the pursuit of this elusive
goal and how this can be a direct route to exactly the opposite.
There are lots of good things going on in many large companies, to improve employee
happiness, have you seen large sofas, happiness officers, books about happiness, and table
football in any of the businesses you manage or visit? Some of these work but some are
not towards the pursuit of happiness, but don’t actually make any difference to the way
employees feel.
We have now perhaps come to a place where happiness is seen as something we can ‘do to’
people. And this is almost certainly not the case. It also puts a lot of pressure on leaders and
managers to create a positive environment where this may just not be possible. We can
certainly be happy about one thing in our lives and unhappy about other aspects. One of
the problems with the pursuit of happiness at work is we are, perhaps, negating the validity
of other emotions. Happiness should not be the only goal, what about fulfillment, confusion,
uncertainty, all of which certainly contribute to a work-life that is interesting and that may
be just what makes us happy!
