Each minute of our life is a lesson but most of us fail to read it. I thought I would just add my daily lessons & the lessons that I learned by seeing the people around here. So it may be useful for you and as memories for me.

Happiness at work is heavily surveyed and it is proved that an average human spends over 90,000 hours at work over his/her lifetime. People still figure out how to work on feeling happy or coming in terms with your work. Just like everyone, you may be also thinking that happiness should be the primary goal of having a good work-life.

Most people chase success at work, thinking that will make them happy. The truth is that happiness at work will make you successful. How often do you consider quitting your job and feel that you are not getting paid enough for the dedication and service you offer your organization?

Happiness and satisfaction are subjective concepts – while for some of us monetary benefits can be equated with job satisfaction, some might strive for recognition of their hard-work and lose motivation on failing to achieve so. For some people, having a friendly environment at work is an essential requisite for deriving pleasure. No matter what the standards are, being content with our careers is crucial for maintaining the ‘work-life’ balance.

Being happy is the first step to anything that we want to do successfully. Going to the office, mechanically performing all the duties assigned, and coming home to spend the rest of the day with a drink in hand and the TV in front is an ideal picture of an unhappy life.

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” ~Dalai Lama

How to work toward happiness at work

So now that we know the essence and benefits of happiness at work, how can we foster, support, and build it?

There’s no single, simple answer to this question. However, in developing our course, we have identified four key pillars of happiness at work: Purpose, Engagement, Resilience, and Kindness—or PERK, as in to PERK up your happiness at work, or make happiness your company’s best PERK.

Studies report multiple ways to strengthen each pillar of PERK on personal, social, and structural levels at work—through individual exercises and activities, the development of key social skills, shifts in leadership style, organization-wide initiatives, or changes to company policy. While this field is young and ideas overlap, we offer PERK as a flexible, integrated framework to help guide thinking about how to increase happiness at work.

A happy worker will reach office on time because he respects his punctuality and will perform all the daily tasks because he enjoys doing it. He will work out of love, not out of compulsion.

1. Happiness Multiplies Success

Happiness at work can spread like fire. Employees who feel pleasure in doing their work form a great example to others who are less motivated.

For example, when a team leader is happy with his position and work, he can influence his team with more positivity and maintain great functionality in the group. Happiness in the workplace is directly correlational to increased productivity and better group performance at work.

2. Happiness Builds Positivity

A troubled mind can be the storehouse of negative contemplations. When we work out of compulsion and don’t feel passionate about the contribution we make to the organization’s success, our mind starts wearing.

We become stressed, lose focus, and indulge self-deprecating thoughts like “I have to quit”, “I cannot take it anymore”, “I am not worth it”, etc. On the contrary, a professional who has strong positive feelings about his job will undoubtedly be more enthusiastic and focus on building himself. Rather than focusing on the problems, he would look into ways of solving it.

3. Happiness Reduces Stress

Annie Mckee, an International Leadership advisor, and writer, in one of her publications in the Harvard Business Review, mentioned that when employees are unhappy, their brain starts to disconnect from the positive emotions, and damages their power of creative thinking and reasoning.

She further said in her article on the link between our thoughts, feelings, and actions. If any of these breaks down, it is sure to hamper the others. If we feel happy in the 8 hours that we spend at work, if somehow we can hit the strings of positivity that will keep us uplifted, it can remarkably improve our responses to stress and redirect our focus to the positive aspects of the work-life.

4. Happiness at Work means a Healthy Life

If we allow the work stress and disappointments to enter into our personal space, there is no way that we can get rid of them.

Successful professionals who can optimize their work are less likely to suffer from hypertension, cardiac arrests, substance abuse, and other stress-related disorders.

When we are happy from inside, we get that power to fight diseases and the will to recover and get back on track.

Remaining physically or mentally sick can bring unprecedented hurdles even at work. We lose the energy to give it our best shot, become less focused on work and more focused on the woes, and consequently, kill our productive soul.

Not just that, happiness at work also makes us less prone to work-related stress and burdens.

5. Happiness at Work Increases Likeability

We all like to stay around people who have a positive attitude and look content with themselves. In a happy state of mind, people are more innovative and inspired. They are willing to improve their existing skills and contributes toward creating a fun and creative performance culture at work.

Finding happiness in work helps in building strong interpersonal relationships at work and encourage people to work together for the common welfare of the organization they are serving. It is the backbone for innovation, loyalty, responsibility, and success.

Happy workers can create a pleasant environment at work that is easy for others to cope in, and the more people get into it, the better the team grows.

Dyfed Loesche, an eminent statistical and data journalist, in one of his publications about countries having the best and the worst work-life balance, mentioned that the Netherlands is one of the happiest countries concerning the work-life balance.

His interactive chart (given below) represents the countries that have great work-life balance, starting with the one that has the happiest working population.

Happiness Workshop Ideas for Employees

1. Workshop Activities To Build Team Success – Access here
2. The Work Happiness Workshop – Access here
3. The Employee Stress Management Online Workshop – Access
4. Happiness In The Workplace Everyday – Access here
5. Team Building And Effective Communications Workshop – Access here
6. Happiness At Work In-depth Workshop by Alexander Kjerulf – Access here
7. Arrive At Happy Workshop – Access here

Finding happiness is as much about the decisions and actions you take as it is about having good things happen to you. And remember, if you don’t enjoy your life, change it! Doing the same thing today will create the same results tomorrow. Try some of these strategies and put yourself in a position for happiness.

Please feel free to share your story and any lessons you learned, you experienced, you came across in your life in the comments below. If you enjoyed this, or any other other posts, I’d be honoured  if you’d share it with your family, friends and followers!

If you wish to follow my journey outside of my writing, you can find me on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/MunnaPrawin) Instagram(MunnaPrawin) and Twitter(@munnaprawin1).