5 Easy Ways to Be Happier at Work

You want to be happy at work. Your boss also wants you to be happy because satisfied employees are more productive, efficient, and reliable. Although you don’t have complete control of your work environment, there are some simple things you can do to improve your situation. It’s easier than you think, and just a few changes here and there can be enough to make a significant improvement.

Figure Out What is Making You Unhappy

Before you can take steps to improve your happiness, you need to know what issues you need to address. “I’m not happy at work” isn’t enough information to be helpful. It may be just a few specific things that are causing your grief. Unfortunately, our brains are wired to dwell on our bad experiences and push the good aside. This leads to an unbalanced view of how bad things really are.

For a week or so, carry a notepad around with you at work. Draw a line down the center of a page and label one column “Good” and the other column “Bad.” For every task you do, think about how it makes you feel. Did you enjoy it? Did time fly by while you were doing it? Did you dread it every step of the way? At the end of the week, go through your notepad and look for patterns. You might be surprised by what you discover. Sometimes, just identifying the trouble spots leads to easily correcting them.

Take Control of Your Workplace Happiness

There’s a famous saying that goes something like “If you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” That’s poetic, but not accurate. You should change the verb “find” to “create.” Successful people who love going to work every day typically started with the job they were given, and then slowly transformed it into the position they wanted. You have to be the driving force in your happiness. Treat it like exercise or healthy eating. To see results, you have to work at it diligently. Happiness won’t just happen. It takes effort.

Start Your Day with Something Positive

Are you a snoozer? When your alarm goes off in the morning, do you hit snooze once? Twice? Three times? Does that force you to frantically scramble to get to work on time? How you start your mornings directly affects your entire day. Look at your morning routine and see if there are ways you can give yourself a more positive start.

For example, plan your day the night before. Spending a few minutes organizing your day will reduce your stress at bedtime, allowing you to have more restful sleep. Another great tip is to choose a book you love and read for 15 minutes every morning before you get ready for work. Don’t read the book any other time. Make it a ritual. You’ll begin to look forward to your quiet reading time, making it much easier to wake up as soon as that alarm sounds.

Acknowledge Accomplishments

At the end of your day, review the tasks you completed, the progress you made, and anything new you learned. Ignore anything negative during this exercise and focus only on what you accomplished. Go ahead and pat yourself on the back. You did some good work today!

Next, take a moment to praise a coworker on something they did that day. Be specific and genuine. It doesn’t have to be a significant accomplishment; in fact, it may mean more to your coworker if you recognize something small they did that made your day a little better. You’ll be amazed at how contagious positive affirmations can be in the workplace.

Learn Something New

A great way to stay motivated and increase your happiness is to challenge yourself to take on new tasks and learn new skills. Doing the same thing every day gets tiresome and may eventually lead to burnout. Changing things up and learning something new will increase your confidence, inspire you to continue your self-improvement, and make you a more valuable employee.

At Harbinger, we take workplace happiness very seriously. How seriously? Our employees are also our owners. As an employee-owned company, we have a unique perspective on the value of employee happiness, which allows us to connect our partners with our best candidates. We’d love to tell you more about the way we work, whether you’re looking to find a new team member or if you’re a job seeker looking for the perfect work environment. Contact us to learn more.