Actions to Increase Your Happiness at Work with Small Internal Changes

According to positive psychology research, you can control about 40% of the factors influencing your happiness at work. This group of factors is called "intentional actions", and you can change them by making internal changes, such as working on your mindset, attitude, self-confidence, skills, habits or behaviours. In this article, learn about steps you can take to make small internal changes and increase your happiness. 

Moving to a carefully chosen new place or job can bring a lot of positive energy, joy, fulfilment and satisfaction into your life. However, after the first few months in the new place, when the excitement of the situation's novelty starts to fade, you begin noticing more and more negative aspects, many of them similar to the place you left. This happens because wherever you go, you take your mindset, values, beliefs, habits, attitude, skills, etc. with you. This might mean that after an energetic start, when everything seems better and brighter than in the previous place, you can have some "déjà vu" experiences, reliving negative situations from the past in a different environment with different people. The beliefs, attitudes and habits that kept you unhappy or stuck in the previous place or job most likely block you in the new one. 

The research carried out by Sonya Lyubomirsky and her team on happiness underpins this situation, as the results showed that only about 10% of our happiness is determined by the environment. The rest depends on us: about 50% on our genes, and about 40% on our intentional actions. You cannot change your genes, but you can influence the remaining 40% of "intentional actions" by working on your beliefs, mindset, attitude, habits, skills, experiences, self-confidence, behaviours, etc. 

For example, if you were unhappy and dissatisfied in your previous job and hope your new job will make you happier, after a few months of excitement over the new workplace, you might be confronted with similar situations that made you unhappy in your previous job. You will react in the same way unless you do some inner work to change your mindset and attitude, improve your skills, increase your confidence, become more assertive, eliminate bad habits, develop new, more productive habits, adopt new behaviours in problematic situations, etc. 

The reasons can be multiple. Here are a few possible reasons:

• You might have limiting beliefs about yourself and your abilities, low self-confidence and self-esteem, a lack of assertiveness, or be a people-pleaser, etc. If you developed a victim mentality and low self-confidence based on repeated negative experiences reinforced by limiting beliefs, you become a perfect target for bossy people with a big ego, who find pleasure in treating others badly.
• Even if there is no ill will behind it, if you never speak up, the tasks and projects others don't like will usually end up on your doorstep. Until you change your attitude, increase your confidence and learn to speak up for yourself, the situation won't get much better.
• Your dissatisfaction and unhappiness might partly come from your negative attitude and approach toward the tasks, colleagues and the work environment. If you believe work and happiness cannot be connected, and work is for making money, not for being happy, it will stop you from looking into what makes you unhappy and what you could do about it.
• If you have a victim mentality, you do not take responsibility for your happiness and success. Most likely, you complain about circumstances, blame others, and have excuses for your unsatisfactory results and unhappiness. It is the fault of the job market, your age, your boss, your company, or the economic situation. But never your fault.  

The solution is inner change. But first, you must analyse the influencing factors of the "intentional actions" to know which ones you need to address. Many of these internal factors are interrelated, meaning that improving one factor will bring positive changes in related factors. For example, if you replace a limiting belief with an empowering one, your self-confidence, assertiveness and attitude might improve.   

Here are a few tips to implement inner changes:

• Commit to taking responsibility for your life, happiness and success.
• Look at your limiting beliefs, clear them and replace them with positive, empowering beliefs.
• Work on improving your self-confidence, self-esteem and self-love. This is usually supported by working on the beliefs.
• Stop complaining. When you catch yourself complaining, stop and turn your focus to something positive; for example, be grateful for something good in your life. Ask yourself: "What can I do about this situation to improve it or to turn it to my advantage?" Instead of complaining, start finding solutions.
• Stop blaming others. When you catch yourself blaming something or someone, stop and ask yourself: "What can I do or do differently to change the situation or the result?"
• Change your focus from the negative to positive elements of your work. Be grateful for what's good in your job while also acknowledging what makes you unhappy, finding solutions and taking action to change the situation. Sometimes this change means talking to your boss to make changes in your work; other times it requires you to change in your attitude or bring out the best of the existing situation.
• Check your self-talk. If you have limiting beliefs, your self-talk is often negative. Negative self-talk contributes to the creation of new limiting beliefs and the reinforcement of existing ones. Every time you catch yourself having negative self-talk, stop and change your thoughts to positive ones using an affirmation, being grateful for something or mentally celebrating an achievement. Discover the root causes of your negative self-talk and eliminate them. Work on developing a positive, empowering self-talk.
• The same goes for the mental images. Your limiting beliefs will create negative images and scenarios in your mind that can transform a small problem into an imaginary catastrophe in a very short time. When you notice a negative image, stop and use a positive affirmation or the gratitude technique. You can also remind yourself of happy memories. Find your own tricks which help you turn your negative thoughts, inner speech and images into positive ones. As in the previous case, discover and eliminate the root causes of negative self-talk.

• If necessary, do more releasing and forgiveness work to clear the negative emotional burden of past events, resentment and anger against other people, etc.

These techniques and tools reinforce each other when you use them regularly. They will change your approach, attitude, beliefs and expectations regarding work, life, the world and your happiness.

Of course, they are not the only determinants of your happiness at work and in life. But starting with these inner changes will make any other actions more effective and will open you up to new opportunities you haven't even thought about before.