In life we go through different times and depending on the type of person you are and how you react will determine your happiness. It’s taken me many years, most of my adult life to realise happiness comes from within rather than acquisitions or possessions. Someone said to me a while ago which really resonated with me “happiness is a journey, not a destination”. Wow, how powerful is that? Since that day I’ve begun to understand myself and what brings happiness to me a whole lot more.

So that’s in life, in our personal lives but does the same philosophy apply to our working life, our careers? Let’s think about it, to carefully construct a plan, whether a career plan or business plan we first must set the end goal, the target. Once we have the target we can work backwards, including individual objectives, the tasks we need to carry out to achieve those objectives and how, with whom and when we complete those tasks.

What is the key to successfully achieving our goals once we have set out a well-constructed plan? I believe it is twofold: sticking to the plan, or if the plan needs to be reviewed, make those revisions and continue following the new plan. Secondly, if the tasks required to be completed aren’t motivating you, you aren’t going to enjoy your job and therefore you won’t be happy at work. Most of us spend the same amount of time in our job, if not more, than we do at home so surely happiness at work is important.

Now we can’t be happy all the time, that’s not realistic. There are always going to be certain tasks in every job which we don’t enjoy, or dislike the most. However, if these tasks outweigh the enjoyable aspects of our job we need to seriously question whether it’s time for a change. Happiness is a journey, doing our job should make us happy not just the end result, a pat on the back, an award, a pay rise or promotion. If the journey towards reaching our goals isn’t making us happy, chances are the goal itself will not make us any happier.

It’s never too late to review our interests, change our job or even change career. I once heard the average person changes career more than 5 times in their life, whether or not that statistic is true I can safely say as a professional dealing with people and careers on a daily basis over 20 years, I’ve seen a lot of people change direction. It’s not always a success but it’s mostly just what people need to be happy. A simple change such as environment, or culture can reinvigorate a person’s career and bring more happiness. Are you happy in your job? I hope so and if so, that’s great, stick at it and keep smiling.

About the Author

Tom Murphy is a recruitment leader & founder of Aptus Personnel (Aus) and Aptus Recruitment (UK). After 10 years in consulting engineering and 11 years in recruitment Tom aims to be an employer of choice for recruiters.

Tom aspires to provide a working environment where people can be as successful as possible. Tom believes by being the best he can be as an employer, other employers and employees will want to make Aptus their recruitment partner.