Many people consider career as a source for monetary gains. They look forward to a joyful life based on their package or profit. Praveen Parameswar tells you how one should look beyond this and find a meaningful and happy career

Career contentment and joy has a considerable role in making one happy. This forms the foundation of a peaceful and satisfactory life. This article shares with you six tips to plan a career for happiness.

Change your perception towards career

Most of the people consider career only a source for monetary gains. They expect financial stability and to further live a luxurious life, but their career gets limited to just that — remuneration and financial numbers. They look forward to a joyful life based upon their package or profit, whereas reality lies far away from this. Nearly 30% of a person’s life is spent on a career, forming a relevant part of our lives. Thus, it should not be just looked at from a way where it is getting restrained to profits or financial stability but also about professional contentment and lifelong joy that comes along with it. This change in perception is the first step in the journey to a career for happiness.

Make passion the profession

Passion refers to the activities a person engages in a continuous manner without boredom and tiredness. Most people would be having one or more such areas which have been pursued with sheer passion. If any of these areas can be transitioned to profession, they would not even feel that they work for a day. Rather enjoy the bliss of each moment.

Map personality and intelligence alignment

Every career demands certain personality traits in people to become successful in it. If it is structured and logical approach for career as a ‘banker’, it is highly oriented towards relationship building for career as a ‘sales person’. For a product designer it is visual intelligence and agricultural scientist it is naturalistic intelligence. Pursuing a career that is in line with the personality and intelligence orientation makes our road easier to travel and take us to more happiness.

Accommodate interests and comforts

Each of us have varied interests and levels of comfort. This may include a diversity of things such as working with people v/s work with machines, indoors v/s outdoors, involvement of travel in work v/s a stable location or non-involvement of travel, routine work v/s irregular work schedules and so on. It is always appreciable if we can accommodate our interests and comforts while planning a career.

Keep updated on knowledge and skills

Achievement and success in career is a very important factor to find happiness in career. This is highly related to the knowledge and skill a person possesses to deliver his professional responsibilities. If one falls below par in these vital factors, they would be underperforming in work which would lead to failure, dissatisfaction and unhappiness. In order to avoid such scenarios, it is important to keep well updated on knowledge and skills.

Build strong relationship with colleagues

The Harvard Grant Study finds that the happiest people in this world are the ones who are most connected with others around them. Applying this concept to work, to be happy in work it becomes extremely important to be well connected with colleagues, customers and any other set of people who we work closely with. This would contribute to happiness in a larger manner.

Along with these it is also important to celebrate every small success we get in our career. Following the above would surely help any person to be happy and purposeful in their career.

The writer is Chief Executive Officer, Lifology