What can we learn from the world's longest happiness study?  

While many of us seem to think that the keys to feelings of happiness, joy and accomplishment will come from external achievements such as promotions, wealth attainment, mass recognition or fame, what we’ve found over time is that although those things can and often do bring temporary bursts of happiness, the feelings are short-lived.  After a while, we readjust, that achievement or new level becomes our normal, and we find ourselves chasing the next thing. 

This is because of the hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, a theory proposing that regardless of what happens to us, we all return to our baseline level of happiness eventually.  

But this doesn’t mean we’re doomed to a lifetime of perpetual dissatisfaction. Research has suggested that some areas appear to be immune to this phenomenon, such as: community, connection, growth, development, meaning and purpose. 

And because we spend such a significant portion of our lives at work, many people are looking to their jobs as a potential or additional outlet or vessel for finding meaning and purpose. Here are several ways of doing so. 

Craft Your Work

The concept of job crafting, popularized by researcher Amy Wrzesniewski, is a simple but powerful way of reframing our work - regardless of what the work is. What we do at work and who we interact with shapes or changes our work identities. 

We craft our jobs by tweaking the activities, relations, and perceptions that we have in order to influence the design of our work and the social environment. This alters our work identities and what our work means to us and has been shown to be one of the factors that determines whether we feel like we have a job, a career or a calling.  

There are three key components to crafting our jobs. 

• Task crafting

  This involves changing the task or activity type, scope, sequence and number of tasks or activities the role comprises. This can look like taking on more of the tasks you like - for example, a teacher who enjoys event planning may look for opportunities to design events for the students.  
  

• Relational crafting

  This involves changing who you interact with in your role and how often. A senior executive, for example, may be a mentor to a junior employee to connect with younger members of the organisation and share knowledge
  

• Cognitive crafting

  This involves changing the way you interpret the role. For example, a project manager at a nonprofit environmental-focused organisation could perceive their role as a way of advancing the field and improving the environment through organisation and logistical management – rather than focusing on the perceived mundanity of daily administration. 
  

Express gratitude 

Feel, savour and share appreciation and gratitude - constantly. To other people, of course, but also to yourself. Many people have developed the habit of gratitude journaling for this very reason. It can help create a sense of awe and contentment when we reflect on and pay close attention to the things that move us daily – whether it’s the perfect cup of tea, the colours of the sunset, a barista that paid special attention to your order, a thoughtful comment from a loved one, or beyond.  

Anything is fair game, and the gratitude list can change daily or it can be the same, as long as you take the time to deeply reflect and savour the moment as you express your gratitude. Simply rattling off the events repetitively doesn’t bring the emotional benefits. 

And as a bonus: if you express your gratitude, sincerely, to the people in your life, it’ll go a long way towards building community and connections which was also found to increase life satisfaction. 

Engage self-discovery and follow your own path  

The career we selected at 20, 30, 40 or later doesn’t have to be our lifelong career. Across the globe, people of all ages and life paths have shared their discovery of new skills, passions, and interests – much of which diverged from the initial path they’d taken. Of course, I’m not suggesting that you quit your job to write the next great novel today, but a healthy curiosity about who you are, what your interests are, and how that may change over time can lead to a fascinating lifetime of endless discovery and self-forged paths – ones that may feel much more meaningful and values-aligned than one you forced yourself to discover. And with that additional self-discovery will come organic growth and development, another key component of life satisfaction. 

With expertise in Positive Organisational Science,  Wellbeing, D&I, Education, and so much more,  Elle has worked across industries and continents in sectors such as Management Consulting, Finance, Education, and Technology. Consistently, her goal is to bring evidence-based principles of positive organisational science and psychology to workplaces through direct service, training, consulting, content creation and beyond. 

Elle Mason People Science Lead (Innovation and Content Specialist) at inclusio

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