It is true
that employees who are higher in the organizational hierarchy are more likely to
experience their work as a calling. But regardless of whether one is the CEO or
a clerk, there is still much that a person can do to change their perception of
work in a way that will maximize the yield—so that it is experienced more as a
calling. Even in the most restricted and routine jobs, employees can exert some
influence on what is the essence of their work.
In early research Wrzesniewski and Dutton conducted on
jobs, they looked at hospital cleaners. One group of employees
experienced their work as a job—boring and meaningless—while the other group
perceived the same work as engaging and meaningful. The second group of hospital
cleaners crafted their work in creative ways. They engaged in more interactions
with nurses, patients, and their visitors, taking it on themselves to make the
patients and hospital staff feel better. Generally, they saw their work in its
broader context and actively imbued it with meaning: they were not merely
removing the garbage and washing dirty linen but were contributing to patient
well-being and the smooth functioning of the hospital.
So, how we
perceive the work can matter more than the work itself. Hospital cleaners who
recognize a simple truth, which is that their work makes a difference, are happier
than doctors who don't experience their work as meaningful. The researchers saw
a similar trend among hairdressers, information technicians, nurses, and
restaurant kitchen employees who create meaningful relationships with customers
or with others in their organization. They found the same was true among
engineers: those who saw themselves as teachers, team creators, and relationship
builders felt they were contributing significantly to their companies' success,
and thus related to their work more as a calling than as a job.
How can you
craft your current work to have more meaning? What changes can you introduce? In
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig writes, "The truth
knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth' and so it
goes away." We very often fail to recognize the rich sources of pleasure and
meaning that are right in front of us in our work. The potential for happiness
may be all around us, but if it goes unnoticed—if our focus is elsewhere and we
fail to perceive it—we risk losing it. To turn a possibility into a reality, we
first need to realize that the possibility exists.
Happiness is
not merely contingent on what we do or where we are but on what we choose to
perceive. There are people who are unhappy regardless of the work they do or the
relationship they are in, and yet they continuously fool themselves into
thinking that an external makeover will
affect them internally.
Ralph Waldo
Emerson was right: "To different minds, the same
world is a hell, and a heaven."
The exact same event can be perceived, and
hence experienced, in very different ways by different people; what
we choose to focus on largely determines whether or not we
enjoy what we do—within a relationship, at school, and in the workplace. For
example, an unhappy investment banker may learn to derive meaning
and pleasure from her work if she chooses to
focus on those aspects that are personally meaningful and pleasurable.
If, however, like many people, she focuses primarily on the material rewards,
she is less likely to sustain happiness.
In the
same way as changes in perception can make a significant difference in those
hairdressers, hospital workers, and engineers who were studied, we too can find
the treasure by focusing on it. What we choose to focus on - our perception -
matters so much that at least one study claims lucky people are not at all
luckier than others, they just believe they are! (Read the book "The Luck
Factor" by Richard Wiseman.
This does not mean that just anybody can find
happiness in any situation. For example, there are people who, regardless of
their focus, will not derive meaning and pleasure from investment banking or
from teaching. Of course, there are also certain
circumstances people find
themselves in—stuck in an oppressive
workplace, an oppressive relationship, or an oppressive count for that
matter—that make the possibility of finding happiness
extremely difficult.
Happiness is a product of
the external as well as of the internal, of what we choose to pursue as well as
of what we choose to perceive.
Most of us
can, and often do, find a job or a career in whip we are relatively satisfied.
But we can usually do better. To help us find our calling, we should be thinking
about what we can't live without rather than focusing on what we can live with.
Finding a calling is about heeding the call
of our
inner voice. This call leads us to our calling; that voice guides us to our
vocation.
EXERCISE -
The
Three-Question Process
Write down
your answers to the following
questions:
QUESTION I:
What gives
me meaning? In other words, what provides
me with a sense of purpose?
QUESTION
2:
What gives
me pleasure? In other words, what do I
enjoy doing?
QUESTION
3:
What
are
my strengths? In other words, what am I
good at?
Going through
this process can help you identify your path on the
macro level (what your life calling is) as well as the micro level (what
you would like your day-to-day
activities to look like). While the two
are interconnected, it is more difficult, and therefore may take much
more courage, to introduce the
macro-level change—such as leaving
one's work or the security of a known path. Micro-level changes,
such as putting aside two weekly hours to practice one's hobby, are
easier to introduce—and yet may still
yield high dividends in the
ultimate currency.
Short of a life-changing move, one way of enhancing
the quality of our lives is to introduce new activities that are meaningful and
pleasurable and that we are good at. Another way is to mine what we are already
doing for the ultimate currency. And we usually do not need to dig very deeply
to find the treasure. Our prejudices against work,
or a narrow-minded perspective of the
kind of work that can be meaningful, often makes us miss the
fact that the potential for happiness is all around us. This
exercise can help identify and exploit the hidden treasures.
List
everything you do at work as if you were explaining your job to a Martian. Then
look
at the description and ask yourself the
following two questions. First, can
you change some of your routines at work—incorporate
more activities that are meaningful and/or
pleasurable while you reduce
the amount of work that you find uninspiring? Second, and
regardless of whether you are able to introduce actual changes, ask
yourself what potential meaning and
pleasure already exist in what
you do. Keep in mind the research on those
hospital cleaners, hairdressers and engineers who were much happier than most
- those who chose to craft their work in ways that provided them
with more of the ultimate currency. They did not change anything
fundamental about their work or their
workplace but, by highlighting certain elements of their work - like the
potential inherent in their daily interactions with others - they increased the
meaning and pleasure, and thus the happiness, they experienced at work.
Now, based
on your answers to these questions, rewrite your
"job
description" into a "calling description." Write the description
in a way that might entice
others to apply for this job, to see it as
desirable—not by misrepresenting it in
any way but by highlighting the potential pleasure and meaning that can be
derived from it. How we perceive our work, how we describe it to ourselves and
to others, can make a significant difference in terms of how we experience it.
