Today is International Day of Happiness so I thought I'd write about what that means for me here at work.
For me happiness at work is important and generally speaking I am happy at work, that's not to say everything goes well and that there aren't any problems or frustrations because there are.
For me happiness at work is about the attitude I adopt to my work and to those around me. By 'those around me' I mean those within my immediate team, my day to day colleagues; those from other departments, agencies and organisations and last, but not least, our customers.
Within my team I think over the years we've tried to look after one another, we've demonstrated that we care about how each other are, at work but also in our life outside work. We accept that we're all human and have lives to live as well as work to do. In acknowledging this we can give each other some support and care to help us get through the day, the week or whatever it is that's making the present difficult for any of us. In short we try to care for each other. We've got better at this the longer we've been working together. Admittedly part of the way we do this is to share our frustrations, discontent and disappointments within our work and this might sometimes seem like moaning - is moaning about being happy? Well no, not intrinsically, but moaning to one another for me is about our sense of belonging in our team, about our shared understanding of what we believe is right and a chance to share and get rid of some of our frustrations.
The important thing here is that we care about our work, we care about what we do and how we do it - and that's often why we moan! So we do moan but we care an awful lot and these two things bring us together as a team. It's important to us that we deliver a good service, that we do the right thing and that the people we work with know that we care. Because we do. This reminds me of a quote attributed to Buddha which says "Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others."
So yes, I'm generally happy at work despite all the frustrations that I feel. I'm happy at work because I care about what I do. I get the chance to show my care, kindness, compassion and love for others and I get the chance to share that with my immediate team and with wider colleagues. I get to be involved with people and projects that demonstrate their care, kindness compassion and love on a regular basis and that's refreshing, inspiring and life affirming. So yes, I'm happy at work.
