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Finding Real Happiness at Work: Resilience Principles, with Sharon Salzberg, Buddhist Meditation Teacher and Author, Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace
Create a sense of meaning
They say that the biggest source of happiness at work is a sense of meaning. And very often – sometimes of course the meaning is found in the job description. We feel a very mission driven organization, you know, is our life and our work. But a lot of times we have to infuse that job with a sense of meaning. And that comes from a personal commitment, so I want to be present and compassionate with everyone I meet today – clients, customers, supervisors, whatever it might be. It comes from a sense of wanting to be excellent at what we do whatever it is, however menial or grandiose the task might be.
You know so there’s a lot that we need to bring forward in order to really feel a sense of fulfillment and not to be so completely stressed out. They say one of the, some of the biggest sources of unhappiness at work is first of all feeling unappreciated. And another source is feeling a loss of autonomy. We can’t control the workload, we can’t control the kind of tasks that we’re given and so we feel – in a funny way it’s probably also a little bit feeling unseen because we feel like we can’t have our voice really be heard.
And so people say well, you know, you’re saying you should just kind of get by and not challenge anybody or accept even an abusive situation just because you’re being happy at work. And it’s not like that at all. It’s really a question of resiliency and resourcefulness. And sometimes people can either change the culture of a workplace or they can leave. They can find another job and sometimes we can’t. We don’t need to go down with the ship, you know, we don’t need to be as stressed out as we often are. And we can find those skills in order to have a very different experience of being at work.
Find balance, avoid burnout
When it comes to compassion, I think there always needs to be an examination of balance. It’s a balance first of all between compassion for ourselves and compassion for others. If we ignore ourselves, I mean, that’s not going to work in the long run anyway. We’re not going to be able to sustain some effort. We’re just going to burn out. And it’s also a balance between compassion for someone and discernment. Maybe we really feel bad for someone and we need to be strong. We need to express disapproval. We really need to set a boundary that’s very clear. Not give them what they want, right. And there’s also a balance between having compassion for someone and realizing I can’t fix it, right. I can’t make your problem go away. I can be there. I can try to help. I can do this. I can do that. But in the end, I can’t control the unfolding of the universe, which I often add an addendum to that like too bad, right. It is kind of too bad. But it’s true.
I did this program for about four years through this place called The Garrison Institute in Garrison, New York, working with front line domestic violence shelter workers, bringing tools of mindfulness, meditation, loving kindness meditation and yoga to them. And one of the things that emerged in our conversations as we moved from front line workers to directors and supervisors and so on was the sense of wanting to help create a culture of wellness at the place of work.
And one women said, in an unforgettable exchange, she said, “I’ve decided that I need to take a lunch break.” And everybody in the room who did not work at a shelter was aghast. And we said, “You don’t take a lunch break? Isn’t it in your contract?” And she said, “There’s too much to do, demands are endless. I realize I need it. I really need to do it or I can’t go on.” So that’s like a resiliency skill, right. And so maybe three weeks later she came back and she said, “It worked. I closed the door and I turned off the lights and I got a lunch break.” You can translate that to a lot of different work situations where it just feels like I cannot take time for me. Like some sense of repose, some sense of space is the wrong thing to do. I just have to go and go and go and go and go. We need a balance in order to have resiliency which is kind of the secret ingredient in compassion. Otherwise compassion becomes burn out. It becomes exhaustion.