This question was sent through to
Professionelle:
I need help to look at my options after the career period of
my life. My priorities are life style and choosing work that I want
to do. How do I do this ? And what do I do? I am a baby
boomer!
Galia BarHava-Monteith offers the following advice:
A Thank you for your question. I have
given it a lot of consideration, and have thought about what
Positive Psychology has to offer you. I am of the view that to find
your best path, first you need to understand what your signature
strengths are and how you can find ways to use them in your work
and life. I also want to introduce you to the concepts of the
pleasant life and the engaged life and the implications they have
for your 'post career' phase!
What are Signature Strengths?
Professor Martin Seligman and his colleagues in the field of
Positive Psychology developed twenty-four signature strengths that
can be measured. Strengths are things we choose to develop and
possess and we can keep building and proactively enhancing them
throughout our lives. Much of our happiness and fulfilment depends
on our doing so.
The first thing for you to do is to find out what your signature
strengths are. Visit the Authentic Happiness website to register and
take the VIA test. And remember these are strengths across ALL of
your life and what your top five are might really surprise you! We
find this reaction with many of the women we work with.
Once you've found out what your signature strengths are, do
three things:
- evaluate how often you actually get to use them in your current
work - try to make sure you get to use them at work EVERY DAY.
- think about how much you get to use your signature strengths in
your activities beyond work
- finally consider what other work options are open to you where
you could use your signature strengths.
For example, if one of your signature strengths is 'Love of
Learning, ask yourself:
- Do I learn something new at least once a week at work?
- Do my activities beyond work let me develop and build on my
love of learning?
- What can I do after my current 'career phase' which will enable
me to continue to learn?
The answers might surprise you. You might realise that you'd
actually like to go back to university to study something
different. If another top signature strength is Creativity,
Ingenuity and Originality, you might end up taking up art or
music.
On the Pleasant Life and the Engaged Life
The next thing that Positive Psychology has to offer when it
comes to life choices is the distinction between the pleasant life
and the engaged life.
The pleasant life is what most people think of when it comes to
retirement. Lying on the beach, spending lots of time with friends
traveling and enjoying the good things in life. According to
Seligman, the pleasant life is what hedonic theories of happiness
endorse: it is about having lots of positive emotions in the
present, past and future and working to enhance these emotions.
However, studies show that the sole pursuit of pleasure is only
marginally correlated with higher life satisfaction and lower
depression.
Enter the engaged life. This is the life that pursues
engagement, involvement and absorption in everything we do, be it
our work, relationships and leisure activities. Flow is
the term coined by one of the leading researchers in this field,
Csikszentmihalyi, who documented that when people are highly
engaged in activities, they enjoy a unique physiological state
where time passes quickly, their attention is completely focused on
the activity and their sense of self is lost. In essence, being
totally engaged is best described as the absence of feeling. When
you do something you are totally engrossed in, you forget to eat,
to think and even to feel!
According to Seligman, people who want to increase flow in their
lives can do so by identifying their signature strengths are and
actively finding ways to use them more in everything they do.
Studies on the engaged life demonstrated that people who pursue
meaning and engagement have significantly higher life satisfaction
and lower depressionThis contrasts markedly with results for those
who only pursue the pleasant life.
Looking into 'your post-career' phase of life, I believe this is
especially important as so many people enter this phase and very
quickly find out that it isn't all that it's cracked up to be! So
remember, the engaged life is what will generate the most
well-being and, yes, happiness for you in the long run.
I hope this helps, and good luck!
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I buzz on new ideas, my step is lighter, my outlooks are
positive, my energies drive me forward, I am excited, I am
rewarded, I enthuse others...
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