In the latest solo episode of the Happier at Work podcast, I dive into the invaluable lessons we’ve learned over almost 200 episodes about happiness in the workplace. This episode is a treasure trove of practical insights and actionable steps to create a more fulfilling and joyful work environment.

I delve into the meaning attributed to your work and the impact you strive to have. I explore how your purpose can evolve over time, drawing from my own professional journey, and discuss the significance of leaving a positive imprint on your workplace and the world around you.

I share my personal realisation on the value of working to your strengths and constantly striving for mastery in your role, emphasising the need for continuous learning and development.

Don't miss the bonus episode on Monday, where I will cover two additional thought-provoking areas related to happiness at work. 

The main points throughout this podcast include:

• Practical insights and actionable steps to create a more fulfilling and joyful work environment.
• The importance of evaluating the people you work with.
• The significance of feeling respected, valued, and aligned with the people you interact with daily.
• The meaning attributed to your work and the impact you strive to have. 
• The need for continuous learning and development.

Do you have any feedback or thoughts on this discussion? If so, please connect with Aoife via the links below and let her know. Aoife would love to hear from you!

Connect with Happier at Work host Aoife O’Brien:

Website: https://happieratwork.ie 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aoifemobrien/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happieratwork.ie/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/happieratwork.ie

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HappierAtWorkHQ

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HappierAtWorkHQ 

Hello, and welcome to episode 199 of the happier at work podcast. I'm so thrilled to have you here listening today. Today is a very special episode. I'm gonna be talking about the lessons I've learned in the last almost 200 episodes about what it means to be happier at work. And it's I suppose it's a topic that's really true to my heart. And this is me listening to what other people are sharing about what happiness at work means to them and collating that into something that's quite practical, quite actionable for you to reflect on your own career, your own current situation, and to make some changes if that's what you need. So I'll be sharing stories from my own situation, whether that has been in corporate, whether it's since I started my business 5 years ago. So taking all of that into account and applying that into the it's not so much a framework, more thoughts around the kind of things that you need to have in place to create that happier working environment for yourself, to create that happier workplace.

There are 4 key areas that I'm going to cover today, and those are, first of all, people. So who are the people that you're working with? I'll go into that in a little bit more detail. Then it's the purpose or the meaning associated with the work that you do. Then thirdly, it's the impact that the work you do has. And then it's about working to your strengths and getting better every day at what it is that you're doing. So they're the 4 areas I'm gonna talk about. If there's time today, I'm going to cover 2 additional areas to consider that people don't really talk about, but I think it's really important to consider when it comes to happiness at work. If there's not time today, then I'm gonna do a separate bonus episode for those, on Monday.

So keep an eye out for that. Let's talk about people and the people that you work with. And by that, I mean, it's your colleagues, it's your clients, it's the senior management team that you're working with as well. So thinking about all of the people that you get to interact with on a day to day basis. So who are all the pea all the touch points, all the people who you interact with on a daily basis? And do you actually like those people? Do you have fun with those people? Do you get the sense that they are as smart as you are? Do you feel like you belong, that you're in the right place? Do you feel like you can be your authentic self with them? Do you feel like you're respected for the unique contribution that you bring? Are people coming to you as the go to person, as the expert career, there are certainly places where I didn't feel like I truly belonged in that place. I was doing things a little bit differently. I wasn't I didn't feel like I was necessarily respected. So one example is I'm a huge fan of sharing my knowledge.

I I just love to do that. It's something I've always done when I've been in work, you know, sharing pictures, sharing interesting articles with my colleagues, things like that. And one of my early career experiences was that that didn't seem to be that didn't seem to go down well with my peers. I I just didn't get the sense that they appreciated me doing that. Another example then was in a really great place. I I absolutely loved the colleagues that I worked with. I loved the peers that I worked alongside, but the senior management just wasn't really cutting it. They were making promises that they weren't delivering on.

So for that, like, in terms of the people, I absolutely see a a real disconnect with the the those kinds of people that I was working with. So just a values mismatch there potentially. And then another example where the clients were super demanding and telling us how to do our jobs essentially. And if anyone has worked in agency side or is working in agency side, you'll understand that this kind of perspective that the client comes first and we kinda have to do what the clients say unless you learn to manage that relationship properly. But when clients become overbearing and demanding, it's really hard to kind of form that partnership type of relationship, and it and it encroaches on your happiness at work. So, again, something else to consider from that perspective. Number 2 then is the purpose or the meaning that you attribute to the work that you have. And you might consider this as something like an important challenge that needs to be addressed.

Now I've had several conversations on the podcast in the past in relation to purpose and the difference between, for example, big p and little p. So oftentimes, we think that our work has to have this grand meaning, this huge purpose, like we're saving the whales or it's something that's on a really large scale, but that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. Your purpose can be something like having an impact on those immediately around you. So you don't have to think of your purpose or the meaning that you give the work that you do to have this really grand scale, and that's something I think to take into consideration. Definitely go and check out the previous episodes that I recorded with Sharath Jeevan. And that, again, enlightens us around, well, what is this sense of purpose and what purpose and what meaning are we giving to the work that we're doing? So if I think about the purpose that I have, it it sort of evolved over time. So I didn't it's not something I really considered when I was in my corporate life. I never really thought about the purpose.

We had a vague connection with the purpose of the organization. So that's something I think you really need to have a think about. Like, why does your organization exist? And is that something that you want to get behind and that you really believe in? And if I think about why the organizations I worked for, I always worked in agencies, agency type roles. And those agencies were there to support these mostly large global organizations, but also some local organizations. And if I think, again, those agencies existed to support those large companies, What were the what was the purpose behind those large companies? Kind of thinking through all of the the chain of events, if you like, in that sense, It was never really clear to me the purpose of my work. However, as my career has progressed, if you think about the experiences that I've had, and I've talked about this so many times on previous episodes of the podcast, but through the experiences I had at work, my purpose became more evident. And it's more about sharing those experiences that I had and making sure that other people don't experience those same types of things. So, again, when I'm working in my business, so for the past 5 years or so, I think about what is the purpose.

Like, why does my business exist? And again, this has been an evolution, but it always stems back to those experiences I had at work and ensuring that other people don't experience those same things that I did. That's really what it boils down to. It always comes back to that. And that has been, you know, like I say, it's an evolution. It's not always clear to us what our purpose is. So have a think about that and what meaning are you giving. And slightly related to that is number 3 then, and that's the impact. What impact do you want to have? And you might think about this as something like your legacy.

What do you want to be remembered for, and what impact do you want to have on the world? Again, related to this idea of purpose, it doesn't have to be this huge thing. It can be an impact on those around you. It can be just the impact that you want to have on your family, on your community, whatever that might be, but really having to think about what that impact is. And maybe it's something like wanting to leave the world a little bit better than how you found it. And, again, linked with my own purpose from the experiences that I had, I want to make sure that other people don't experience those same things. So when I was thinking about this and well, what could that mean for my business? Well, that could mean setting myself a goal of the impact that I want to have. So I thought, okay. So if I set an arbitrary number of impacting 1,000,000 people by 2030, do you think that's doable? Maybe it is.

And that would be through the work that I do, through the organizations that I work with, and also through the podcast. Getting that message out there that work doesn't have to suck. Work doesn't have to be bad. Work can actually be fun. And we need to think about that because we spend so much of our time at work that it encroaches in other aspects of our lives. So if we are in a situation where we're not happy and that's an ongoing thing, it's not just like a temporary thing, then it impacts on our health. It impacts on our relationships, it impacts on our time that we can spend with loved ones, it impacts on our time that we can spend on hobbies, Like, hobbies is probably not a word I've used in a long time, but the things that you enjoy doing that are not related to work. You know? So having a think about what is the legacy that you want to leave, what do you want to be remembered for? And it doesn't have to be this big grand thing, like I said.

Number 4 then is all about working to your strengths. And again, I know the pain of not working to my strengths. I worked for so long doing something that came so easily and naturally to me that I didn't even consider it. And I think we're oftentimes blind to the strengths that we have because those strengths come so easily and naturally to us that it's it's hard to see them sometimes. But know that you have some natural strength and maybe you don't see them. And there's so many resources out there to help you to uncover your strengths, to understand what they are. You can ask other people, or you can have a think, have a you know, do some reflection on, well, what do people ask me about all the time? What do I get asked about? Those things are probably your strengths. And when it comes to happiness at work, sometimes we don't get the opportunity to work to our strengths.

So like I say, I had a long career where I was working to my strengths and I sort of probably took it for granted. So some of my strengths will be around analyzing data, synthesizing information, pulling together a story based on data and communicating that to people. So tying all of these different elements together and then crafting a story around that to solve marketing problems, to solve sales problems, that's something I was always quite good at. I'm methodical. I'm quite analytical. I love learning. So there's different elements that contributed to all of that. When I took on my most recent role in corporate, that was definitely I didn't really think in terms of strength.

It's only now that I'm looking back and I'm reflecting, and I'm thinking that wasn't really an area of strength for me because I'd always worked to my strengths. And I didn't realize. I just kind of took it for granted that moving into this role in the same organization as a promotion, definitely, you know, I'm going to excel in this as well, but I didn't. And it's only when I look back now, I think and I would make the same decision again today, by the way. I had an option of staying at the level I was and reporting it to someone else on the leadership team or getting a promotion to the leadership team in an area that I wasn't that passionate about. And again, upon reflection, it probably wasn't that good at. It wasn't really suited to my skills. And, yeah, I would make that same decision again, absolutely, given the circumstances that I found myself in.

But I know that that was a huge driver of my own happiness at work. I didn't have the opportunity to work on my strengths every day, and I'm not saying that you have to use your strengths day in, day out. But if just 80% of your work day was you really working to your strengths, knowing what those strengths are. But I think it's really important to talk with each other about what each other's strengths are as well. Another aspect to that is this idea of mastery. So are you getting better at what you're doing? So you have these strengths already, but are you improving? Are you sufficiently challenged that you're learning more and you're getting better at what you're doing? That's such an important aspect of this idea of we're working to our strengths, but we don't want to just be coasting and, oh, I'm working to my you know, I'm working here to my strengths and I'm not learning anything because then we can become bored. We can become complacent about what it is that we're doing. So it's really important to be gaining that mastery all the time, be learning, learning, and learning.

And again, you know, I I do speak about this on an upcoming podcast actually. One time in my corporate life where I just didn't feel like I was learning, and I just went outside of the organization and I did my own learning. And that really, really fulfilled me because I always like to be challenged and learning new things. And I went on and learned some new technologies, and I just loved it. I just loved it. The recognition piece, I think, from that as well, you know, whether you're doing accredited courses or whether you're getting recognized for the strengths that you have, I think it's really important to build that aspect into it as well. So it looks like I ran out of time to, do those additional bonus thoughts, but I will do those separately, and I'll share those as bonus episode on Monday. So definitely keep an eye out for that.

Let me know what you thought of today's episode. Let me know whether it rings true for you. Is this something that you've been considering? Is it something that you want to bring more of, and how do you bring more of those types of things into your life? Definitely feel free to reach out to me. All of my details are on my website, happier at work dot ie. I post very regularly on LinkedIn, so feel free to connect with me there as well, and I look forward to hearing from you.