I just read a great blog from the Huffington Post on why Generation Y Yuppies are unhappy.
Here is the complete blog.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3930620
Career satisfaction basically comes down to a simple formula:
HAPPINESS = REALITY minus EXPECTATIONS
The blog author - Wait But Why (http://www.waitbutwhy.com) - provides a very simple but profound insight on how people determine whether they are happy with their career:
- When the reality of one's life or career is greater than their expectations they are happy
- When the reality turns out worse than expected they are unhappy.
When we evaluate our careers it takes years before we can determine where we are in this basic equation. We have to take a deep inventory of what we should have realistically have expected and compare that to how things actually turned out. This is sometimes difficult to do since we may have held unrealistic expectations or had our ourselves impossibly compared to others who achieved far more.
What we have seen at The Frontier Group is that our career coaching and outplacement clients routinely become more satisfied with their life's work after we do a complete career assessment to show the significant amount of value that they have created.
Being happy these days takes some work though. With all of the social media - Facebook, LinkedIn - showing us how others have more fulfilling careers and social lives (or so we think) we have to discipline ourselves to focus on what we can do - work on our own self development - stop comparisons that lead to outsized expectations - and learn to be happy and grateful for what we have and what we have achieved.
