The Career Happiness Formula™

Job

Satisfaction

+

Positive

Well-being

=

Career

Happiness

The Formula

You might have heard statements like: “Follow your passion”, or “Find a job you love and you’ll never work another day of your life” (Confucius). While there’s some truth to these, they don’t tell the whole story. Career happiness is more complicated than finding your passion or work you love doing. The Career Happiness Formula helps you understand the key elements of career happiness.

Let’s take a closer look:

Job Satisfaction

There are a number of elements that contribute to job satisfaction such as:

role tasks and responsibilities
working conditions
compensation and benefits
organisational culture
career development opportunities
support, respect and recognition
shared vision and sense of purpose

It’s important to recognise that what might be an important factor for one person, may be of less importance to another. Your personal values, strengths, interests and preferences are unique and play a large part in determining your level of job satisfaction.

Positive Well-Being

Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, describes positive well-being as human flourishing. In his book ‘Flourish’, he presents the ‘PERMA’ model for well-being:

Positive emotion
Engagement
Relationships
Meaning and purpose
Accomplishment

Evidence suggests, that by nurturing these PERMA elements, we can boost our positive well-being. While PERMA can guide global happiness, it can also be used in career counselling and coaching to achieve a flourishing career. There are several positive psychology assessments to determine your current state of satisfaction with your career. Guided by these results, we can identify areas for development and improvement to help reach optimal levels of flourishing.