Three Steps That Restarted My Happiness at Work Journey

How did I reignite my happiness at work? What did I do when I felt miserable and really hated my work? The three steps that restarted my happiness at work might help you do the same and feel happier at work, even before you change jobs or careers. 

For about two decades, I loved my work. I defined myself by my professional identity as a human resource management consultant and trainer, and my work gave me a lot of joy, satisfaction and fulfilment. After almost 20 years of teaching, training, and advising in HR, I started feeling less happy at work, and I realised I could no longer resonate with or identify with many aspects of my work, especially in HR consultancy. And I felt miserable. I started to ask myself who I was if I wasn't a dedicated HR consultant anymore. 

I started searching for a new professional path. Still, I wasn't ready to fully give up consulting because I enjoyed working with international teams on international projects, travelling for work or living in interesting countries for a while. At that time, I started reading personal development and self-help books. I decided to apply techniques that seemed suitable to my situation to feel better at work and be more motivated.

The first steps were not about my job or a new job, profession or career. The techniques I chose were about my attitude toward work. Although I didn't know anything about happiness and its determining factors, I felt that working on changing my attitude would give me the time I needed to figure out a new professional path and make significant changes in my professional life without feeling miserable at work along the way. 

Here are the first things I did to stop feeling miserable at work: 

1. I implemented a gratitude practice.

I had just read "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne, which talks at length about the benefits of being grateful, no matter how difficult your situation is. I decided to try it out. I enjoyed my work for almost two decades, and it gave plenty of happy moments, satisfaction and fulfilment. I was sure I would find many things to be grateful for in relation to my work and career.

My gratitude practice consisted of two parts:

• I started a Gratitude List, jotting down positive memories and highlights of my career I was really grateful for. Every day, I randomly chose 3 elements from my list and spent a few seconds feeling grateful for them.
• I started a Gratitude Journal. Every evening, I wrote 3-5 entries in my journal. At least one referred to that day's work, and one to people who supported and helped me at work. I completed the daily list with elements from the past and people who supported me in my career.

The exercise wasn't about fake positivity, a kind of "let's pretend everything is nice and perfect" exercise. I really wrote about what made me happy in my working life up to that moment.

2. I stopped complaining about external factors.

Although I didn't know anything about happiness studies then and had no idea about factors influencing happiness, it was obvious that complaining about what I didn't like at work wouldn't get me further or make me feel better. And by that time, I had become a chronic complainer. I committed to eliminating this habit from my life. 

I started by paying attention to my thoughts and words and stopped myself each time I noticed that I was complaining. I changed my thoughts by thinking about something I could be grateful for or something I really liked about my work. Reducing complaining in my life meant I could shift my focus from what I hated in my work to what I really enjoyed. After a while, I felt less and less like a victim of circumstances such as the economic crisis, changes in HR management I could not feel aligned with, or my age making me "too old to be hired in my profession". 

3. I changed my questions. 

The first two steps gave me enough positive energy and a new perspective on my professional life to start asking better questions that shifted my focus towards a solution. Instead of asking why I was so unlucky, why this was happening to me or similar questions, I asked:

• What can I do in this situation?
• What are the tasks I still enjoy? How can I do more of them?
• What are the tasks which make me unhappy? How can I do less of these tasks?
• What other skills can I use to find paid work?

These and other similar questions lead to implementable solutions. As a result, I decided to focus on HR development and training tasks. Instead of looking for clients and projects on the internal market, I started applying for positions and assignments in international projects. These changes set the basis for the next 10 years of my professional life.

I didn't only do tasks I liked. But the percentage of non-enjoyable tasks was low enough to be acceptable to me, and be able to perform them to the best of my knowledge while focusing on their positive aspects and outcomes.

These steps were only the start of my happiness journey and, of course, they didn't address the deeper causes of my unhappiness at work that I still needed to uncover and then address. They created a more positive outlook on life, a new attitude toward my work and the energy and motivation to continue working in my profession until I found a new direction.