people often ask me does work make you happy and the answer is it can but we have to understand how it's a real skill the biggest mistake that people make about work and happiness is thinking that that success in worldly terms is going to bring happiness and it's not true the the worldly success from work has to do with money and power and the admiration of other people and job titles etc etc and a lot of people mistakenly think that those markers of success will bring happiness in its wake in other words be successful get
happy automatically that's exactly wrong I've done research for years as an economist on on labor markets and the characteristics of work and it's true that you need to make an income where you can support yourself and your family but that doesn't bring happiness that's just eliminates the sources of unhappiness to get actual happiness from work you need to seek two things and really two things only we call them earned success and service to others service to others is pretty self-explanatory I can talk about that in a second earn success not so much that's the opposite
of what psychologists refer to as learned helplessness where nothing you do really matters and so you kind of give up it's also associated with depression and uh loneliness in the workplace Etc you don't want learn helplessness that's for sure you want earned success where you feel like you're creating value with your life value with your work value in the lives of other people through your work and it's being acknowledged and recognized that's how earned success works that's why it's so critically important that that people who are bosses people who are managers that they help other
people to earn their success and they recognize the value that people are creating that's why meritocracy is so critically important for people to get actual Joy from their work the second is service to other people you have to feel like your your job matters to others and you're lightening somebody else's load then you'll go to work with joy it's weird data are pretty clear that it doesn't actually matter to a certain extent what the job is you know I've done experiments with people where they say I feel like I'm a drone I feel like I'm
a cog and a machine and then they'll do something like through the experimentation process they'll start getting coffee for the people in the next cubicle at 2:00 in the afternoon you look like you could use a fresh cup of coffee and mysteriously they start to like their jobs better why is that because we're made to serve other people if you can build your work into something that's meaningful to you because you're truly earning your success and recognized for it and you're serving other people and on top of that you're doing something you're really good at
work's going to bring you Joy 100% guaranteed
