Satisfying Careers

Want a job that gives you greater satisfaction and happiness? Researchers say get one that serves other people.

Researchers with the General Social Survey (GSS) of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago looked at data collected from 1988 to 2006 in which people were asked a variety of questions during face-to-face interviews.

Which profession had the highest levels of satisfaction and happiness? Why clergy, of course. Eighty-seven per cent of them said they were satisfied with their jobs.

On average, 47 percent of people interviewed said they were very satisfied with their jobs and 33 percent said they were very happy. In addition to clergy, the other jobs rated highest in satisfaction were: firefighters (80 percent) and physical therapists (78 percent). Other top jobs in which more than 60 percent of the respondents said they were very satisfied were education administrators, painters and sculptors, teachers, authors, psychologists, special education teachers, operating engineers, office supervisors and security and financial services salespersons.

What were the least satisfying jobs?

Garage and service station attendants (13 percent reported being happy), roofers (14 percent) and molding and casting machine operators (11 percent). Other workers who said they are generally unhappy were construction laborers, welfare service aides, amusement and recreation attendants, hotel maids, pressing machine operators, electronic repairers, kitchen workers, and machine operators.

More details of the study can be read in this ScienceDaily article.

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Knowing is Satisfying

Understanding is knowing. It’s also satisfying.

Whether it’s a scientist trying to figure out the mysteries of the brain or a parent trying to figure out his teenage son’s recent disruptive behavior, understanding our world is an important part of our satisfaction mix. We all want to make sense of our world. It gives us order and serenity. Call it encoded satisfaction. Encoding (or bringing order or understanding) to our environment — past or present — contributes to our feeling good.

But there’s more to it than that. Ironically, even dissonance can be satisfying. That is, some of us like it when we don’t know what’s going on. Take mystery novels or haunted houses. We don’t know what’s “around the corner” and that in itself is stimulating or exciting.

All of this explains why some people love to learn and others don’t. Learning new or novel information can be very satisfying to some people. Others find their satisfactions elsewhere — and that’s okay.

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Visualizing Your Best Possible Self

One activity that has been suggested by researchers to improve your happiness has been to increase your gratitude. Another suggestion involves thinking about your life in the future and visualizing living it as “your best possible self.” Researchers point out that they are not referring to fantasies or dreams, but rather realistic and achievable visualizations.

Several studies provide support for this proposition. In one study people who wrote for 20 minutes a day about how they wanted their life to be in the future experienced increases in a positive mood compared to people who wrote about neutral topics. The results were replicated in longer studies as well, demonstrating that “visualizing your best possible self” over a period of time appears to be an effective technique for improving happiness.

Researchers say there are two explanations for the results.

First, they say the visualization fosters an optimistic mindset, which in turn creates a positive image of yourself and with it an enhanced sense of purpose and meaning. Second, writing down your dreams for the future helps you logically formulate the story you want to unfold.

In other words, to be happier, think about what you want to become, then write it down.

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