Read it and win: Happiness at Work

(First person to comment on this post gets a free copy of the book!)

Are you happy in your job? Do you bounce out of bed in anticipation of the day ahead of you? If the answer is no, don’t despair. Srikumar S. Rao, Ph.D has written Happiness at Work (McGraw Hill), which could change the way you feel about your job– and about the rest of your life.

I read the book from the perspective of a person who once worked in a place she didn’t always like. (I did enjoy my work and took pride in it, but I had a tough time with the pencil-throwing boss who wailed like a toddler when things didn’t go his way. Oh, yeah, and with the other ‘superior’ who informed me that his ample stomach provided the perfect angle for pleasuring his wife in bed. Thanks for the photo, Jack).

Let’s face it. If you want to succeed, sometimes you have to be able to get along with jerks. Rao, who offers a Zen-like approach to business success, has this to say about the subject:

“I don’t even care whether he is or is not a jerk. What matters is the feeling you have toward him. The groaning expectation when you meet him that the interaction will be distasteful. The dread you feel beforehand. That is the burden you carry. This is the sum total of the experience that you have not let go….Your problem is that you carry stuff around. Over time, the accumulation becomes burdensome indeed. Drop it.”

When I read this, I got a little mad. I thought, “How was it my responsibility to drop feelings about a clown who punished me with details of his sex life?”

But then I thought about other jobs I had, and in every instance a jerk or series of jerks lurked in the atmosphere. I once worked for a man who took a three-week vacation to grow a beard (I’m serious). When he came back, he tacked a poster of Elle Macpherson in a bikini on his office door. I made a comment, and he widened his nostrils. “Jealous?” he demanded.

Since offices tend to harbor jerks the way deer harbor ticks, I guess I would do well to learn how to deal with them.

The next time I come up against a troublesome person, Rao suggests:

“…forget the history. Don’t expect the interaction will be unpleasant. Expect that it will be delightful, and if it isn’t, then let it go. Don’t carry it over to the next time you meet. Do the same thing with unpleasant situations. Note how many times your existing expectations sour your experience. Consciously drop the past. It’s hard, but with practice, you will get the hang of it.”

Now, to those who’ve never tried it, this may sound like a lot of nonsense, but I have tried a variation of this method. I’ve tried it with regard to office jerks, to old boyfriends, to friends who turned out not to be friends. And I’m telling you, when you let go of the anger (and the chemical responses you suffer in your body) about who did what to you, it frees you.

Unfortunately, many people who actually have jobs right now not only have to deal with clowns in the workplace, they’re expected to be thrilled they’re even employed. Too often they’re doing the work of three other people who were laid off, and nobody’s giving them a raise.

Well, that’s the situation. If you’re in it, you can either go with the flow or rail against it. You can resent it (which would be my first instinct) or you can do what Rao suggests and become “other-centered.”

He suggests that “other-centeredness” leads to happiness, whereas “me-centeredness” (our natural inclination) leads to unhappiness. He gives the example of an executive assigned to deliver employee evaluations when he could be out selling and doing the work for which he was hired. After he realized his attitude was making him miserable, he decided to change it and prepared to meet an employee he had to deliver bad news:

“He meditated for a few minutes before the meeting and consciously let go of his own feelings of dislike for the task ahead. He thought with compassion of the possible effect the task would have on the young woman and what he could do to soften the blow…’Little that I said was different from previous similar meetings,’ he reflected. ‘But the emotional space from which I spoke was vastly different. I wasn’t thinking of finishing off a disasteful task. I was concerned about how I could help a young person in trouble survive in a difficult environment. I didn’t realized what an enormous difference this would make. It was a huge lesson for me and part of my own growth as a manager.’”

Possibly the most valuable chapter in the book deals with fear, which is rampant in this era of layoffs and foreclosures. Seriously, how can anybody be happy when she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to pay her mortgage?

Here’s a snippet of the counsel Rao, who has taught at Columbia Business School and runs workshops for executives, offers:

“…Imagine the worst thing that can happen to you only to determine what you can pragmatically do to forestall it. Then banish it utterly from your mind. Focus insistently, intensely, exclusively on what you can do, and do it with complete dedication. The outcome will be what it is, and you will deal with it if it appears. In doing this, you banish the ghosts that would otherwise prey on you, and you discover that dedicated action brings you its own reward in increased joy.”

Dedicated action definitely brings joy.

If you’re in the bad habit of making your happiness dependent on the actions other people, or even just the weather (how many of us refuse to have fun unless the sun is shining?), Srikumar Rao’s Happiness at Work could be your prescription for a more joyful life.