7 signs that your career happiness is at risk and needs your attention

Being happy at work means something different to each and everyone of us. Therefore, creating an overarching definition for career happiness is quite a tricky task but I decided to give it a go...here it comes: Career Happiness is a long term feeling of overall enjoyment at work combined with the intrinsic drive to make progress towards a mission that we see as purposeful. With that in mind, below are 7 signs that your Career Happiness needs a top up.

1- You are living for your time off

If you are regularly counting down the days to the weekend or to your holiday, it might be the sign that your career isn’t giving you the positive energy that you need. The weekends are never long enough and Mondays are generally not enjoyable days for you.

2- Your brain feels like it is carrying a heavy mental load

You feel like your brain is constantly processing information, either re-living scenes of the past or doing some scenario building for the future.

You rarely spend any time enjoying the moment present, your brain is constantly chasing the next project, the next goal, the next promotion, the next job, the next “you”....

3- You seem to have an increased amount of triggers

You experience signs of irritability and emotions that are disproportionate to the triggering event. You snap. You sigh. You aaaargghh. Or maybe you feel all the emotions inside and you express them by tearing a piece of paper down in tiny little pieces or throwing your phone on the sofa or typing really REALLY loudly on your keyboard or listening to loud music in your headphones or you start obsessively scratching your hand, or forearm inexplicably. However these emotions manifest, it is important to acknowledge them, you don’t need to try and justify them, or numb them, let them exist. These emotions do not define you, they are temporary, other emotions will come and replace them when the moment is right. In the meantime, you can gift yourself some extra self-care attention whilst remembering these wise words from Brene Brown:

‘’Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous. Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change’’.

When you feel like the moment is right, you may start asking yourself what you would like to change in your life in order to get new emotions flowing through your body.

4- Your eating habits are disrupted

You experience a change in appetite which can manifest in different ways:

• You eat less than normal during your meals

• You skip some meals which you would normally have

• You eat more than normal, whether it is more during a meal or you have more meals or snacks throughout the day

• The times when you would normally have your meals has changed.

• You obsess over certain foods

These are all signals that your body is sending you, it is a message for you to decipher, it’s your body’s way to contact you. Like children, your body has two reservoirs that need filling everyday: Power and Attention. Power comes from nourishing food at regular times, sleep, exercise and all that it needs to function well and attention is the need for you to listen to the little signals that it sends. When your eating habits change, identify the patterns that are at the source of this change so you can create new habits that are serving you better. Remember, it takes about 21 days to form a new habit.

5- You feel like the situation you’re in is misaligned with some of your core values