Thoughts on Life & Work: Joy

As I noted in my last post, I’m writing a series based on?a list of characteristics that were penned by the ancient Saint Paul,?a first century contemporary of Jesus.??The?list?ended with the phrase “against such things there is no law”, and I’ve come to believe?these traits not only serve us well in life, but also at work.??As a refresher, here’s the list: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control.?Last time, we tackled Love, so it’s on to Joy…?

First off, I’m going to make a distinction in how I am defining?joy?versus?happiness. (I’ll acknowledge this doesn’t conform to Webster’s,?but it seems to have gathered some traction in differentiating the two ideas.)?Happiness tends to be viewed as a state of positive feelings due to external circumstances. In other words, we’re happy when we have a good reason to be happy – health, friends, fun activities, beautiful scenery, etc.?Joy, on the other hand, is often seen as a state of mind driven by our internal emotional or mental state. With this viewpoint, we can, and often do, experience joy even in the midst of difficult circumstances.?And, if you’ve lived long enough that you can read this post?without assistance ??, you probably have experienced this difference.?Our happiness can quickly turn to sadness when the circumstances causing?our?happiness change. Based on the examples above, one could infer that it can be challenging to be “happy” when we’re sick or feeling lonely or involved in a very “unfun” activity or staring at a concrete wall, etc. However, we’ve all met people who seem to have a level of joy that doesn’t correlate with their apparent situation.?How can this be??

Well, in simple terms, it’s because we humans have the unique ability to choose our attitude, regardless of our circumstances.?In fact, well-known?author?Charles Swindoll?once said,?“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” So, at this point, you’re probably wondering what all this has to do with work, right? I think it’s pretty straightforward.?Work, like life, is often full of happiness-inducing circumstances.?We can win the big deal, finish the project on-time and under-budget, or nail our first big presentation to the new boss.?These are?just a few examples?of?the types of?things that cause us to feel great at work.?But,?there are?probably even more?things that happen at work that don’t make us “feel” particularly happy.?(In fact, just to remind you, we call it “work” to differentiate it from “play” and expect to be paid to do it, thereby implying we might not do it for free…??). In fact, for many of us, there are probably more things in our work experiences that reduce, rather than increase, our happiness.?The trick is to figure out how to experience joy at work, even when the circumstances might dictate otherwise.?So, how do we do that??

In my mind, it’s pretty straightforward. To experience more joy at work, I must?choose?to be joyful.?That’s it. That’s the “big”?secret.?Because, when I choose joy, I see things through a different?lens.?To quote the most obvious example we hear in the marketplace,?we can?“see our?problems?as?opportunities.” But I think there’s?even?more we can do to improve our perspective. We can see?a?difficult colleague?as a teammate who might need some encouragement or skill development. We can hear criticism as the input that might help us become a lot better at a critical aspect of our job.?We can see past failures or shortcomings as learnings which will make us more effective, or possibly help us determine a new path forward.??If we truly want to choose joy, we can simply decide that the things that could suck the energy?out of us are also those things that we can use to fuel our desire to be a better teammate, partner, colleague, or manager.?Furthermore, we?often have the power to?help those around us see things from a similar viewpoint.?So, my simple advice: choose joy.?And,?I’m pretty sure that if more of us operated this way, we’d make our workplaces a lot better…for everyone.?