Happiness is something that’s hard to come by in life. I think the biggest reason people struggle to find true happiness is that they don’t know what makes them happy. We grow up assuming that success and happiness go hand in hand - and that you need to make a lot of money to be happy. This sets everyone down the same path of finding a job that pays well. The money comes in, and you get promotion after promotion, yet you still feel unhappy.
Why? Because you’re not doing something that genuinely makes you happy.
Think about how much time you spend working in your life. Our careers dictate a lot of our happiness, so we need to take care when choosing them. Too many people struggle with this as they find careers that cause bad stress and stimulate negative feelings every day.
How do you pick a job that actually makes you happy?
Define your happiness
What makes you happy? Seriously, what makes you smile and puts you in a better mood every single day?
This isn’t a trick question, and there aren’t any wrong answers here. We’re all entitled to happiness - and this means we all feel it in different ways. One of you may have a true passion for travel; it’s what keeps you going. You’re at your happiest when you’re visiting new places and seeing new things. One of you might be happy when you’re at home with your family - you hate being apart from them and truly feel overjoyed when they’re close. Or, one of you might find joy in helping others, while another may get a big smile on their face when solving complicated problems.
You get the point; we all have things that make us happy. The first step in finding a fulfilling career is to define your happiness.
Make your job fit your idea of happiness
Taking the examples above, you can see how easy it is to take what makes you happy and find a job that fits this.
If you love traveling, consider a career in OTR trucking. It forces you to spend hours on the road exploring new places and experiencing different ways of living. Or, perhaps a job as a flight attendant suits you perfectly.
Those of you that find true happiness at home can pick any career that lets you work from home. You could go freelance or find a job that allows the flexibility to spend more time with your family.
If you enjoy helping others, there are loads of careers in healthcare or related fields. Maybe the rigors of a hospital are too extreme for you, but you could always become a personal trainer or a therapist.
The final example was someone who enjoyed problem-solving and gets a lot of joy out of creating solutions and solving puzzles. A job as a coder or project manager could be ideal for you as there is a lot of problem-solving involved in both.
See, it is possible to choose a career that makes you genuinely happy. You just have to define what makes you happy, and then pick jobs that fit this idea. It’ll mean you spend the majority of your life actually doing something that fills you with joy every day.