It is a common belief that the happiness comes from having a career and a live that you can enjoy. Likelier still, for many, happiness comes from sucking up a drink that has a vibrantly-coloured umbrella stuck in it. You’re sitting back, listening to the sea lap at the sand and nothing seems to be out-of-order. A career simply doesn’t come into it.
For happy people however, it has become apparent that their career is happiness.
Whether it is helping the terminally ill to filtering water to make it safe to drink, the challenges and hardships of a job supposedly drives the individual to be devoted to their job.
Whilst relatively successful, the individual is not necessarily concerned with money. For the happy person, master, membership and meaning were primary concerns over the general pursuit of fortune. This isn’t to say that money doesn’t matter, but that money often correlates to the person’s happiness as something of a scorecard.
For happy people, money is simply not the motivator, but simply the after-effect of a satisfying job.
The nature of cultivating skills in order to use them to benefit other people is an intriguing and rare concept in such difficult times. In the world of work, the idea of marching into a career that makes you money sounds profitable, if not the easiest form of being happy. Certainly, places such as London boast a make-or-break attitude that is visceral as it is profitable – unfortunately, this does not guarantee a lifelong passion in your job – nor does it offer anything apart from hard coin and little enlightenment.
Happy people take up the challenge. They take up work in a pinch, throwing their skill into the hardest of situation – and almost always, they come out on top. The unity, the cultivation of skill and the inner strength to find purpose draws them in – and all they can do is answer.
As likely masters of the altruistic, happiness comes from helping others; the happiest of souls bestow upon themselves the hardest of tasks, where dark times are faced with a smile and an eagerness to shed a little light into the lives of others.