May the spirit of papau inspire us

Let’s start the week with something good: Papau. It’s a great Hawaiian word. To quote from my crumbling copy of The Pocket Hawaiian Dictionary (1975):

papau. Deeply engaged, absorbed, engrossed; united, all together.

Papau may be an elusive place; let’s face it, even the best of jobs have their grunt work. But the state of being deeply engaged, absorbed, engrossed; united, all together is something to which we all should aspire. And if our current daily tasks don’t offer this possibility, then we should strive to find things that do. It’s not just about ridding ourselves of the bad stuff; it’s also about envisioning something better.

Isn’t it great that there’s a word for this? (Maybe this explains why the minute you land in Hawaii, your blood pressure drops 10 points!)

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Thanks to Wikipedia for the great photo of a Maui sunrise at the Haleakala crater.

Recycling: The Golden Rule at work, hanging together, and personal reinvention

With the holidays beckoning, here are three past articles that offer some positive ideas and messages:

1. What if we applied the Golden Rule at work? (October 2010) — Did you know this “rule” has its roots in many faith traditions?

2. Can communal responses to tough times lead us to better lives? (October 2010) — Hopeful, humane, and creative thinking for difficult times.

3. Seth Godin: Seven keys to personal reinvention (September 2010) — Better than a New Year’s resolution.

[Editor's Note: In addition to maintaining a list of articles that have remained very popular on this blog -- see the Popular and Notable Posts page -- every month or so I'm recycling relevant posts from more than a year ago. Hopefully they will be of interest to newer readers.]

Does life begin at 46?

Conventional wisdom about life’s journey, suggests The Economist magazine, is that our path is “a long slow decline from sunlit uplands towards the valley of death.” If so, then why is the cover of the magazine’s year-end issue headlined “The joy of growing old (or why life begins at 46)”?

To find out, look inside for an interesting piece about life’s “U-bend” (link here). Conventional wisdom, according to research, is wrong. True, we start off our adulthoods pretty happy and become increasingly disenchanted as middle age approaches. However, our outlook then gets better as we age.

The Economist cites research studies to back up its proposition, overcoming the presumption that this is more Boomer-inspired babble about how 60 is the new 40. For example, the article references a 2010 study by researchers from Stony Brook and Princeton universities, which found that:

Enjoyment and happiness dip in middle age, then pick up; stress rises during the early 20s, then falls sharply; worry peaks in middle age, and falls sharply thereafter; anger declines throughout life; sadness rises slightly in middle age, and falls thereafter.

Obviously such studies represent aggregate findings; plenty of folks fall outside of that pattern, and life’s ups and downs can occur at any age. But the research indicates that the U-bend is an independent phenomenon:

(C)ontrol for cash, employment status and children, and the U-bend is still there. So the growing happiness that follows middle-aged misery must be the result not of external circumstances but of internal changes.

What of age 46? It turns out that globally speaking, overall happiness levels bottom out at 46. And according to a British Labour Force Survey, respondents’ self-reporting of depression peaked at 46.

Emotional intelligence improves with age

But wait! There’s even more good news (at least for anyone who is getting older, i.e., all of us). ScienceDaily reports on a UC-Berkeley study indicating that emotional intelligence improves with age (link here):

Their findings — published over the past year in peer-review journals — support the theory that emotional intelligence and cognitive skills can actually sharpen as we enter our 60s, giving older people an advantage in the workplace and in personal relationships.

According to lead researcher Robert Levenson:

“Increasingly, it appears that the meaning of late life centers on social relationships and caring for and being cared for by others. . . . Evolution seems to have tuned our nervous systems in ways that are optimal for these kinds of interpersonal and compassionate activities as we age.”

What does this mean for work and workplaces?

The aging workforce presents lots of challenges in terms of compensation & benefits, emerging retirement and labor market transition questions, and the like. But this research indicates a benefit as well. Our workforce has the capacity to become wiser, more compassionate, and happier. Maturity, it turns out, can be our ally. It would behoove us to take advantage of this promise as we weigh the kind of workplaces we want in a post-Great Recession society.

It also means that we can pursue vocations and avocations with a better idea of what kind of work brings us happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment. We do not necessarily have total control over this question. Bills must be paid. But to the extent we have choices, they can be informed by our wiser understanding of what is important in life.

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Some related posts:

Will our avocations save us?

Work and the middle-aged brain

What will be your body of work?

Are you a marathoner or a sprinter?

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Barring important news developments, I’ll be devoting the remainder of my posts this year to pieces envisioning a healthier society.

Keys to happiness at work?

In 2009, Australian psychologist Timothy Sharp conducted an informal survey that asked a simple question, What do you consider to be the top three keys to happiness at work? The responses he received “were remarkably consistent.”

His study led to a short piece for Greater Good magazine, in which he shares “five key steps to workplace happiness” (link here):

“One: Provide leadership and values”

“Two: Communicate clearly and effectively”

“Three: Give thanks”

“Four: Focus on strengths”

“Five: Have fun”

Is that all there is to it?

This list is a good start — and the full article supplies more of the deeper meaning for each item — but I think there’s more. Sharp casts his lot with the school of positive psychology. In fact, according to the article he is known in Australia as “Dr. Happy.” As such, I think his general orientation may gloss over the darker sides of work and how organizations handle issues that implicate fairness, inclusion, and ethics.

Organizational justice is a term used to capture employee perceptions of fair treatment. A difficult situation at work can be a test of organizational justice. Workers who believe their employer acts with fairness and integrity are more likely to be satisfied and loyal and to feel safe, and those who do not are prone to think the opposite.

Signs of growing worker discontent

In any event, employers are advised to take worker happiness and satisfaction seriously, for it appears that pent up worker frustrations are emerging. Tim Gould, in a piece for HR Morning (link here), reports that “(m)ore than eight in 10 (84%) of the employees polled said they plan to look for a new job in 2011, according to staffing consultant Right Management.” The reasons include:

• the prolonged recession and layoffs
• increased workloads, small or no raises
• companies’ reticence to add staff, even as business conditions have improved, and
• a lack of trust in company leaders.

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Hat tip to the American Psychological Association’s Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program for the HR Morning article.

 

On happiness: If you’re going to spend, buy experiences, not stuff

If you’re going to treat yourself to a little present, your happiness quotient is more likely to go up if you drop your money on a nice trip instead of a shiny new computer. Research on the “buy experiences” vs. “buy stuff” debate clearly sides with the former. Earlier this year, Rachael Rettner of LiveScience.com summarized a cluster of relevant studies (link here):

The results show that people’s satisfaction with their life-experience purchases — anything from seeing a movie to going on a vacation — tends to start out high and go up over time. On the other hand, although they might be initially happy with that shiny new iPhone or the latest in fashion, their satisfaction with these items wanes with time.

The findings, based on eight separate studies, agree with previous research showing that experience-related buys lead to more happiness for the consumer.

Of course, there are times when the lines cross. If that new computer enables you to create a homemade movie or record music that you share with others, then stuff has enabled experience. But anyone who has engaged in “retail therapy” knows what I’m talking about — buying items that provide a (very) short-lived boost, to be followed by a long stay on the shelf or in the closet.

I worked for this?!

Unless you have an independent source of income, it’s likely that whatever you buy will be paid for with your toil. If you buy something that provides instant gratification but very soon adds to your clutter (full disclosure: books and DVDs are my weaknesses), in a way you’re working for free when it comes to paying for an item you really don’t use.

As we evaluate the long-term effects of the Great Recession, some are using the economic mess to evaluate our buying and spending habits. The experiences vs. stuff debate should be part of this deeper and broader examination. Especially when we’re dealing with flattened paychecks and tottering 401k plans, we should pay extra attention to how we can maximize our happiness when we spend our money.

At the risk of sounding preachy

Another consideration, especially at holiday time: If you have some discretionary cash, find a creative way to help someone in need. A friend, a family member, maybe even a relative stranger. It could be through an anonymous gift. I confess I have no idea how the happiness research measures that compared to buying a trip or a new flat-screen TV, but for the recipient it could be a huge lift.

Finding Happiness Amidst the Meltdown

Posting to his Psychology Today blog, leadership consultant and executive coach Ray Williams collects pieces of advice on achieving or maintaining one’s happiness in the midst of the recession.  He begins:

How can we be happy when our investment savings have dwindled, we’ve lost our job, or our house. The recession has had a negative impact on the lives of many people. Is it possible to be or remain happy?

Among the suggestions:

• “Spend your money on experiences rather than material objects.”
• “Pursue meaningful life goals.”
• “Nurture meaningful relationships.”

As I posted last month, money makes a difference, especially during tough times.  All the happy talk or upbeat thinking in the world doesn’t pay the rent or the grocery bill.  But perhaps the recession is compelling us to get beyond material things and look more deeply into what makes for a good life.  Williams’s post offers some good food for thought on that.

The Happiness Recession

Money may not buy happiness, but it’s foolish to think they’re unrelated.  Insight, the magazine of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, links psychology, economics, and the current recession in an interesting piece:

“We’re in a happiness recession,” says economist Justin Wolfers, associate professor of business and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “We have found the most robust determinant of happiness to be the current state of the economic cycle.”

Dr. Wolfers and colleague Betsey Stevenson have studied three decades of data produced by the Gallup-Healthways Index and several earlier polls that measured subjective well-being (the Gallup World Poll, the World Values Survey, and the U.S. General Social Survey) and identified strong parallels between general well-being and the ups and downs of the economy. Low points plotted on their “happiness charts” occurred in 1973, 1982, 1992, and 2001, each a year at the center of an economic recession.

For the full article: http://insight-magazine.org/2009/headline/the-happiness-recession/

Happiness on the job index

Time Magazine features a “happiness index of American workers,” which allows readers “to see jobs ordered by worker happiness” in a wide range of fields and vocations.  The underlying stats are drawn from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.  Take a look — it’s fun to scroll through the list and compare!

Link: http://www.time.com/time/2007/america_numbers/job.html