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What jobs & employers make us happy?

January 8, 2023

What jobs make us happy? One of my NLP training students asked me to give career advice to young professionals, as part of an interview to be featured online soon. What jobs make us happy? And what employers make us happy?

Our NLP training has moved forward over the years in studying the latest breakthroughs in the neurosciences.

What jobs and employers make us happy?

This is the truth about the “perfect job” as we have learned growing up in the societies that we do:

1. What we think makes us happy doesn’t, in fact, make us happy. We believe a specific career makes us happy, but the perfect job doesn’t affect our happiness. Unless we start understanding first what the scientific measure of happiness is and with that the ideal job. It indeed isn’t in titles, famous brands, promotions, opportunity, money, or learning (things that do not relate to happiness).

2. The expectation of the increase of happiness when we get the job we want is far less than the actual reality. In fact, we don’t become much more unhappy or happy as a result of getting the perfect job. It stays the same.

For example

Remember when you got your job, how excited you were, like you won the jackpot. Here is my question for you, do you still wake up with that feeling in the morning before you go to work? Because people don’t, they take NLP training and that’s why I meet them. Do I think it is possible to wake-up in the morning and do a resounding “Yes!” sure I do, I feel that way in my job as an NLP trainer, business owner, and social entrepreneur.

What jobs make us happy?

Jobs that make us happy, according to the latest scientific research, on a day-to-day basis, are those that involve the following:

1. We experience positive emotions. In fact, the ration of positive emotions needs to bear the negative ones by at least 3-1. This is when your happiness may start to experience slow growth, the ratio is much higher if you genuinely want to set yourself up in well-being. The most determining factor is the ability to experience positive emotions with others while at work. To feel a sense of connection in these positive emotions.

2. Do you experience a sense of flow? Time goes away, you are in the zone. Your ability meets the challenge.

3. Having positive relationships with your co-workers. Whatever this means to you.

4. A job that has meaning and purpose. Which means a job that for you somehow benefits the greater good for others in some way. You are in service of something outside of yourself.

5. Achievements and accomplishments that have meaning to you. This is different from completing goals or completing or completing projects. What this is about, is offering a sense of real significance to you. The kind of things that build your life-satisfaction and happiness up, rather than the needle of your “happiness meter” not shifting.

The requirements

A requirement is for us to feel safe, to feel happy. Our emotions and thoughts cannot be continuously under mini-threats, pushing the body in a fight or flight response. When our bodies are forced into the fight or flight and stress in micro-moments, or when we are pushed to depletion, our immune system weakens and we become the target of ill-being and disease. Many people go back to work on Monday, where the weekend didn’t offer enough rest to recover from the last week.

What employers make us happy?

Employers that make us happy are the ones that foster jobs that make us happy as described above. Employers need to look at us in the full ecology of our lives. Our jobs require us to enhance and facilitate all areas of our lives. Or at least not take away from them. To offer us a job, in balance with our life, and not see these things as separate.
Our careers are indeed part of our life, but not all of our life.

The areas of your life

What are the areas of our life? A good question to ask is, what is your level of satisfaction from 1-100% in the following areas of your life and how does your job impact them?

1. Career: a career that make you happy.

2. Finance: enough money for you to be happy in life. Our basic needs plus experiences give us positive emotions, not “stuff.” Scientific research I always share in our NLP training classes is that one’s happiness increases up to making $75,000 yearly, while after this point out levels of happiness will not increase. Even though we expect that if we make more money we will be happier, this is in fact not true.

3. Friends and family: we need to experience the markers of happiness with those around us. Especially when it comes to shared positive emotions & connections.

4. Significant other: you need to experience happiness with your partner or have this without a partner. It is scientifically proven that single vs. married people are not happier or unhappier, except for the first two years of marriage in which those in relationships are more miserable than single people. People expect that when they have the perfect partner then they will be happy, but this is in fact not true. Your happiness is the amount that you experience as described earlier, and these things do not technically require a partner.

5. Personal development and spirituality: increasing our happiness and well-being. A lot of my NLP training students come to our classes for this reason.

6. Physical & Mental health: we have ill-being and mental illness on one side of a spectrum, and mental health and well-being on the other side of the spectrum. Where are you, towards one side, the other, or the middle? Your job’s real job is actually to push the needle towards mental-health and well-being, not away from it.

7. Physical environment: we must enjoy where we spend our time, not only our home but also the environment of our office.

8. Fun and recreation: this means fun at work, and energy and time to have fun in your personal life.

Conclusion

What jobs & employers make us happy and its relation to NLP? NLP training allows a person to set-up the brain and how it filters at your place of work. NLP Practitioner training and especially NLP Master Practitioner training facilitates being happier at work and with our employer. Many people in NLP training decide to transition to another employer or job as a result of understanding what makes them happy.