The caged career tiger
Imagine…
…Your career has brought you so far that you are in an important position, your job pays great and you have enough responsibilities to stay challenged in your work. Your generous salary made it possible to buy yourself a spacious house with a large garden in a well-respected neighborhood. Here you live together with your beautiful wife, who you married on an exclusive island in the Caribbean. Together you have two healthy children and a loyal family dog.
Sounds pretty good up until now right? You seem to be quite the career tiger.
Unfortunately due to all the responsibilities you have at work you need to work overtime and you even have to give up your Saturday afternoon to keep your work manageable. Your wedding in the Caribbean was also the last real holiday you’ve had, as you need to be available at all times in case someone messes up at work. Due to your busy schedule you barely see your children before bedtime and your wife would rather cuddle with the family dog on the couch than watching you falling asleep while watching TV.
Doesn’t sound so good after all, does it? You seem to be a bit trapped in your career which does not feel good at all, you feel more like a caged career tiger I am afraid.
The puzzle of happiness
This scenario plays through my head regularly when I am thinking about my future and a possible career. What do I want and what do I absolutely not want. Unfortunately, I have yet to solve this puzzle for myself and honestly I am not even sure if it is even possible to get all the pieces to fit together. Moreover the picture that I am trying to create could change as time progresses and my needs and wants in life change.
Luckily, the puzzle doesn’t have to be solved completely in order to achieve happiness. As happiness is what everyone is after I presume. Even when parts of the puzzle are completely scrambled it is possible to achieve happiness. What I believe though, is that by solving parts of your puzzle you will be able to influence your chances of achieving happiness positively.
“Start with why”
That is what Simon Sinek believes. Simon is the author of the book “Start With Why” in which he explains how people and organizations can improve themselves by asking this one question. After seeing his TED talk and reading the book he wrote I tend to agree with him. To give you an impression I would advise you to watch his TED talk:
This leaves me with one last thing to say for now and that is that this is just my personal view on how I think it is possible to increase your chances of achieving happiness. This is definitely not a surefire way to success and there are many more opinions out there that try to grasp and define happiness.
Be careful not to become a caged career tiger and try to solve your puzzle to happiness.
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