Why are so many people unhappy at work? Can anything be done about it? Yes - by reconnecting your work with your life and inner world journey.  We all want happiness and we all want to be away from suffering. Imagine the three realms of life – work, home, and inner fulfillment – to be circles. When our circles have rich overlap, we are happy; when our circles have no overlap, we suffer. The forces at play today tend to push these circles away from each other. The best remedy is to create a deliberate strategy for happiness at work and life that seeks not less but more overlap.

A Conference Board survey showed that 55% of Americans are unhappy at work. Add 12.5 million unemployed plus those who want more gratifying work, and the number could easily surpass 100 million! Too many people in this country are unhappy at work, more than half the workforce.

The root cause of unhappiness at work is separating work from life, inner fulfillment, passion, and purpose. How can people be happy spending half their waking hours on work that has little to do with their sense of purpose or fulfillment?

Audrey Wong Chung, CEO of Beliza Design found courage and perseverance to become a successful entrepreneur by connecting with her inner journey, tapping into purpose and passion: “If your path aligns with your soul journey, abundance will surely follow.” Alignment with your inner compass is important. Be sure that business-shaping decisions feel right with the inner journey.

Early in life, we choose actively: school, mate, and career, but later we relinquish choice and abdicate the role of master of our own fate. Our life circles drift apart and cause unhappiness. At key life junctures, we ask ourselves what we seek to create. At each juncture, we can deliberately choose to create happiness. Choice is a strategy.

Once we reignite the awareness of choice, we can change our lives and reclaim our fate. If we align each choice with our inner journey, our circles of life move closer. Will the choice create more overlap in our circles of life? Spend time to tap into the inner self and make choices that create overlap in work, family and the inner worlds.

It is said that our choices create our destiny. With deliberate strategy we choose to create our own destiny. 

 

 About the Author

Ed Wong is a consultant, executive coach, and strategy teacher. He is writing "Deliberate Strategy", a book to make the techniques of strategy used by leading corporations available to everyone. He holds an MBA from Columbia University and a BA from Columbia College. He was a Tai Chi instructor at his village recreation department. He writes, consults, and lives with his family in New York. He can be reached at [email protected].