Workplace Calisthenics: Happiness found inside, not in job or possessions

Cal LeMon, of Executive Enrichment Inc., solves organizational problems with customized training and consulting.

Why are you working so hard?

I'll bet you have asked yourself that question at 4:30 a.m. You know, you have to get up by that time in order to get everything done (jog, feed the kids, walk the dog, brush and floss, iron a piece of clothing, water the geraniums, turn off the lights, adjust the air conditioning) before your "real" job begins.

And the real job just keeps getting downsized, rightsized and sanitized. Everyone wants more from you without giving you more money, resources or time to deliver. The "more with less" mantra at work is really getting old.

So, why are you working so hard? It is a fair question.

When I ask myself and my clients that question, the normal bottom line answer is, "I want to be happy."

If our frenetic lifestyles are any indication, we should be certifiably ecstatic right now.

I mean, we should be bouncing off the walls with laughter and leg-slapping guffawing at coffee breaks. Conference rooms should echo with giddiness. And human resources should be the seat of happidom with the entire staff breaking into repeated choruses of "Don't worry be happy" when people show up to complain about medical co-pays being increased.

If our happiness is equated with how busy we are, life should be a wonderful concoction of a Bob Hope monologue, a basket full of puppies, squealing children on playgrounds and Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

Do you see a disconnect here?

When clients tell me they are killing themselves for "this job," I ask why. They tell me to provide for themselves and/or loved ones. I ask why. They then go on to tell me that the money provides the "things that make us happy." I ask why. With great exasperation they say, "Look, you cannot be happy unless you have the right things."

I ask what kind of things makes them happy. They tell me a precision, "hot" car makes them happy. I ask what about the car makes them happy. They tell me it makes them happy when they see the way people look at them in the hot car at a traffic light.

Anyone see where this is going? Our happiness is usually an "outside us" experience.

According to research gathered by Tom Miller of Roper Starch Worldwide (2002), the United States is the third "happiest" country in the world (behind those disgustingly ebullient citizens of Denmark and Australia).

Using a research base of 22,500 adults in 22 countries, the researchers discovered that money and economic security is a foundational factor for happiness (the most unhappy countries were Russia and the Ukraine).

Once those basic needs for shelter, food and security are met, we then get into self-confidence, family, role of religion, job satisfaction and mastery of technology as the most profound predictors of happiness.

I have my own research. There is no mean, median or double-blind study in my stuff. Here it is.

People who have the least, often have the most.

It is my experience that people who are "inside" happy (content with life) are, for the long run, not affected by having more or fewer possessions. It is also my research that when people do get a boatload of cash, they often spend the rest of their lives protecting it often marked with great unhappiness.

And, I'm concerned about me.

I'm often irritated because I work 12- and 14-hour days, guided by my Franklin-Covey Time Planner, and then get even more irritated when flights are cancelled and people do not answer on the other end for prearranged teleconference calls.

I wonder why I'm not as happy as the Cuna Indian family on the island of Rio Tigre in the San Blas Islands off Panama who invited me, a young college administrator, for dinner on their dirt floor.

So, let me ask again. Why are we killing ourselves at work?

Do we really believe the new car, house or that new gas grill advertised in the Sunday paper will turn on the lights inside of us?

Oh yeah, that gas grill will make me happy until a year from now when I am seized with another happiness-deficit moment and I make the decision that a gas grill with four separate controls and a warming tray will do the trick!

Happiness is definitely an "inside" thing.