Why Examining Your Values Is Essential
in Finding Career Happiness
By Martina Sanchez
Most people say that the amount of money they make on a job is the most important thing about it. But, if you feel like money is just not enough and you need more, you are not alone. While making money is still important, younger generations hope for more. They want to work in the line of business that helps others, is creative or has a lot of creative types employed and so on. They also say that how they spend time on the job matters too.
They want challenges instead of constant and monotonous work.
This is where they differ from older generations that only cared about making the necessary income and moving up the corporate ladder. But even though these young individuals are in touch with the world and understand that they need more than money, it can be hard for them to choose a satisfying career path. Especially when you consider all of the outside pressure coming from their family and friends who don't understand this idealism.
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Values
“Here is the main difference between previous generations and the ones working right now - the values they place as the most important. While the older generations firmly believed that extrinsic values like money, position, prestige and so on are the most important ones when it comes to a job, new generations need the job to be in line with their intrinsic values,” says Maya Berlin, a training manager at Writinity and Last Minute Writing.
These intrinsic values are what makes you happy inside, what makes you motivated to go to work and be happy about it.
People looking for career happiness - and looking to avoid exhaustion and emotional emptiness - should look for work that is in line with their values, even if it does mean you will have to give up the money a different job would bring.
Examining Your Values
“The real way to get to the bottom of what line of work you should enter is to examine what exactly you are looking for in a job and in life in general,” says Anton Gersh, HR specialist at DraftBeyond and personnel management specialist at GumEssays.
First, consider the activities that you do in your daily life. It could be anything related to athletics, entertainment, culture and so on - assuming you do these activities freely, without anyone pushing you to do them. For instance, you could like running or swimming or writing. Next, you should determine which of those activities - or other activities that you don't perform as often - are the ones you are deeply passionate about. For example, painting or playing music or something similar.
Finally, you should examine which of the activities you feel the most engaged and inspired with.
You will end up with a solution after this careful examination. There have been many cases of people realizing that they are in the wrong line of work - a financial advisor realizes that she should be a visual artist, a lawyer figures out that he should be in marketing.
However, examining yourself is easy - at least easier than implementing your new realization into your life.
Living in Sync With Your Values
Ultimately, when you realize what your values are, you might want to live in sync with those values. However, this can get a bit complicated. For one, your current situation - no matter how unhappy it makes you - is predictable, safe and comfortable. You have to break out of that safety and allow yourself to change something.
Next thing you should understand is that you don't have to throw your life away and start anew. You could instead try to implement your passion and your values in a meaningful way into your life. For instance, if painting is your passion, you could take a painting class or simply commit to painting in your free time.
The realization of what you truly value in life may scare you but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to open your mind and your life to something different. Hopefully, this article will help anyone looking for true career happiness.