Try a Little Gratitude (or Love Thy Job)

I had the chance to talk about gratitude and happiness this week in the support group I run for chronic pain patients. We were planning out some topic ideas for future sessions and I shared my goal for 2009 was "gratitude." It reminded me that gratitude is something I need to practice regularly in the hopes of making it a habit. I've blogged before about the relationship between gratitude and happiness. Let the gratitude begin...

With so many people losing their jobs of late, I have been trying to appreciate the fact that I even have a job. In fact, I am grateful for so many aspects of my work. The following represent, in no particular order, the top ten reasons I love my job:

1. I get to help people, most of which are actually motivated to put in effort, find ways to live better and feel better.
2. I make good money, have great benefits, including plenty of paid time off to enjoy life outside of work.
3. I get paid to do things that are also good for me, like practice and model deep relaxation or meditation techniques.
4. I get to work in a huge hospital close to many resources, and this has even come in handy for my own medical conditions. Come on, who can say they broke an ankle or passed a kidney stone without missing any work!
5. It may be small but I have my own office even though most people in my department have to share space while we await new office space.
6. I get to go to work and every day there are colleagues and friends who are pleasant, friendly, and helpful.
7. I get to work independently, making my own decisions on scheduling, treatment planning, program development.
8. Did I mention the benefits? Over a month of paid leave each year. And being unionized, raises and bonuses annually!
9. If I do not go in to work, people genuinely miss my presence!
10. We only have one staff meeting a month.

Well, these are a few of the things about my job for which I am thankful. My goal is to appreciate my blessings and having a good rewarding job is certainly a major blessing I don't usually appreciate as much as I would like!

2008 in Perspective

My Goal for 2008:

happiness
n. joy, the emotion of being happy.
n. Good luck; good fortune; prosperity.
n. An agreeable feeling or condition of the soul arising from good fortune or propitious happening of any kind; the possession of those circumstances or that state of being which is attended enjoyment; the state of being happy; contentment; joyful satisfaction; felicity; blessedness.
n. Fortuitous elegance; unstudied grace; — used especially of language.

I noticed that I had a goal on my blog for 2008 and this lead me to think what my new goal would be. On one hand, I don't think I fully achieved my 2008 goal so i could just continue the same goal forward to 2009. However, I think a new year is a good time to reassess needs and goals, and I decided to refocus my goal this year. My new goal for 2009 is more along the lines of gratitude, appreciation, and thankfulness. If you have read some of my blog posts from November you might notice these goals do align. I suspect being more in the moment of my life and appreciating the good already in my life is a better path to achieve some measure of happiness that sticks!

I hope to do some focused posting on some of the things I am grateful for in the future. Watch for it!

Should I Rethink the Happiness Goal?

Happiness has been my goal for 2008. It seemed like a worthwhile pursuit. I have spent years pursuing education, career, money, accomplishments, etc. I spent years pursuing perfection, a pretty futile task. Happiness seemed like something to work towards. I have read the research and been fascinated on the variables we used to think important that don't determine happiness and the variables that do.

Then I listened to a podcast today that has me rethinking my goal. The podcast was Words to Mouth by Carrie Runnals and it involved her interview with Eric Weiner, the author who wrote The Geography of Bliss. He pointed out some important observations.

I might be going about it all wrong. Mr. Weiner pointed out that Americans seem to suffer from the "unhappiness of not being happy." He observed that other countries obsess about happiness less and tend to be happier for it. He spoke about the great paradox of happiness. It may not be something you can obtain. "You can't really chase it. It's a by-product, a very pleasant side effect to a life lived well."

So it seems plausible and I am thinking happiness may not be the best goal. It may be something I can not plan for and accomplish. I need to approach it "from the side like a crab." I looked this up and this observation is by John Stuart Mill, who said that happiness is something that comes to you "by the way in the pursuit of some other worthy end."