Steps To Happiness At Work!

Undeniably, work can be hard, challenging, and stressful. However, there are little ways you can make your workdays more enjoyable. Here are a few steps to take to improve the quality and standard of your happiness at work:

1. Be Friendly With Co-Workers: Being friendly towards your co-workers can help uplift a dreary atmosphere. By getting along with your co-workers, you can build strong connections with them. These connections help to fulfil that social need. It is important to remember that you spend majority of your time with them and it is mentally unhealthy to be anti-social and bitter towards them all day.
2. Don’t Compare Yourself to Other People: When your sense of pleasure and satisfaction are derived from comparing yourself to others, you are no longer the master of your own happiness. When you feel good about something that you’ve done, don’t allow anyone’s opinions or accomplishments take that away from you. While it’s impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think of you, you don’t have to compare yourself to others.
3. Exercise During the Work Week: Getting your body moving for as little as 10 minutes releases GABA, a soothing neurotransmitter that also limits impulsivity. A University of Bristol study showed that people who exercised on workdays reported improvements in time management, mood, and performance. The benefits of exercise always outweigh the time lost in its pursuit.
4. Don’t Judge and Gossip: Judging other people and speaking poorly of them is a lot like overindulging in a decadent dessert; it feels good while you’re doing it, but afterwards, you feel guilty and sick. When you’re tempted to speak of someone else in a way that might be negative, just ask yourself if you’d want someone saying the same about you.
5. Choose Your Battles Wisely: Emotionally intelligent people know how important it is to live to fight another day. In conflict, unchecked emotion makes you dig your heels in and fight the kind of battle that can leave you severely damaged and unhappy for some time to come. When you read and respond to your emotions, you’re able to choose your battles wisely and only stand your ground when the time is right.
6. Stay True to Yourself: Crossing moral boundaries in the name of success is a sure-fire path to unhappiness. Violating your personal standards creates feelings of regret, dissatisfaction, and demotivation. Know when to stand your ground and express dissent when someone wants you to do something that you know you shouldn’t. When you’re feeling confused, take some time to review your values and write them down. This will help you to locate your moral compass.
7. Stay Away From Negative People: Complainers and negative people are bad news because they wallow in their problems and fail to focus on solutions. They want people to join their pity party so that they can feel better about themselves. People often feel pressure to listen to complainers because they don’t want to be seen as callous or rude, but there’s a fine line between lending a sympathetic ear and getting sucked into their negative emotional spirals. You can avoid getting drawn in only by setting limits and distancing yourself when necessary. Think of it this way: If a person were smoking, would you sit there all afternoon inhaling the second-hand smoke? You’d distance yourself, and you should do the same with negative people. A great way to set limits is to ask them how they intend to fix their problems. The complainer will then either quiet down or redirect the conversation in a productive direction.
8. Laugh at Yourself: When you take yourself too seriously at work your happiness and performance suffer. Don’t be afraid to show a little vulnerability. Something as simple as laughing at yourself draws people to you because it shows them that you’re humble and grounded (it also keeps them from laughing behind your back). Happy people balance their self-confidence with a good sense of humor and humility.
9. Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude: It’s all too easy to get caught up in things that could have been different or didn’t turn out the way you wanted them to. Sometimes the best way to pull your mind away from negativity is to step back and contemplate what you’re grateful for. Taking time to reflect on the good in your life improves your mood because it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%
10. Believe the Best Is Yet to Come: Don’t just tell yourself that the best is yet to come—believe it. Having a positive, optimistic outlook on the future doesn’t just make you happier; it also improves your performance by increasing your sense of self-efficacy. The mind has a tendency to magnify past pleasure to such a great degree that the present pales in comparison. This phenomenon can make you lose faith in the power of the future to outdo what you’ve already experienced. Believe in the great things the future has in store.
11. Bringing It All Together: Applying these strategies won’t just improve your happiness at work; most of them will also improve your emotional intelligence. Pick those that resonate with you and have fun with them.

Sources:

https://psychcentral.com/blog/7-simple-ways-to-find-happiness-at-work/

https://www.inc.com/john-rampton/15-proven-tips-to-be-happy-at-work.html