In the pursuit of professional fulfillment, society encourages us to chase titles, salaries, recognition, and status. Yet, research suggests that the most satisfying careers may not be those that offer the highest paychecks or the most prestige, but rather those that allow us to contribute to the well-being of others.
The Pursuit of Meaning Over Money
It’s a common misconception that a dream job is one that simply pays well or aligns with your passions. However, studies indicate that true job satisfaction stems from work that is meaningful — that is, work that significantly benefits others. In fact, being passionate about your career or job doesn’t necessarily make it more satisfying to you.
The Impact of Passion vs. Helping Others
Passion tends to make a person obsessed; they can’t get enough of whatever they are passionate about. This can be really helpful if you want to be the best soccer player in the world. It probably takes being passionate about spending all your time on soccer for years in order to become the world number one in a competitive field like soccer (or football as everyone outside the US knows it).
But being obsessed, or willing to spend inordinate amounts of time on something, is not the same thing as being satisfied. Passion arouses strong emotions. Those can be ecstatic emotions, as for example, when your team wins the World Cup and you’re the hero of the day. They can also be anguished emotions, as for example, when you blow a penalty kick at the World Cup and end up crying in front of billions of people. You can get great highs and lows with passion. And yet never be satisfied with what you’ve done or accomplished or the fact that you had to stop playing soccer at some point.
The reality is that relatively few people in the world are ever going to find something work-related that they simply cannot get enough of for decades. The reality also is, however, that if you ask people what they like about their jobs, feeling like they help others is the single most common answer I have ever heard.
Day in, day out, that sense of doing something that benefits someone else keeps people going. It’s what keeps teachers going. It’s what keeps customer service reps going. It’s what keeps doctors going. And it’s probably what will keep you going if you let it be.
When you know that your work has a direct, positive impact on someone else’s life, it can transform the way you view your career.
In other words by helping others, you can build something in your career that has almost become foreign to the American understanding of anything: contentment.
If, when someone asks you what you do, you can answer “I help people [verb]”, you will almost always feel better about yourself than if you answer something like: “I do marketing for a company that specializes in marketing to Gen Z. Yeah, I have a real passion for marketing.” You don’t have a real passion for marketing; you don’t have a real passion for marketing to Gen Z; you don’t have a real passion for getting Gen Z folks to give their money to someone else. You can try to pretend that you have a passion for any of those things. But you don’t.
Literally, even “I help our sales team make their quotas each quarter by handling everything related to our lead generation software” will make you feel better than “I monitor social media channels for a corporation that owns 80 radio stations.” “I monitor social media channels…” might be true but if you don’t feel like that is helping an actual human being in a way that you can understand – not a satisfying job.
Helping others often involves building meaningful relationships and connections, which also help you build a sense of community and belonging.
This business of a sense of belonging – it has been tossed to the wayside by the last 40 years of economic restructuring in the US. And by restructuring, I mean destroying jobs that people could be contented with and replacing them with insecurity and inequality. The fabric of American social communities has been torn apart in the process. It’s time to bring belonging back. For one thing, belonging goes hand in hand with another tiresome buzz-word of the era, a thing that all companies seem to want: innovation.
According to the Center for Creative Leadership, when people consistently feel included and experience a sense of belonging in their workplace, they’re more willing to take risks and be transparent about their ideas, even ones that seem over-the-top.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/05/ideas-impact-foster-culture-of-innovation/
At the very least, your job, your career, should be like the old sitcom “Cheers”; it should be where everyone knows your name. You are likely to spend a terrifying amount of your life at work; meaningful relationships and a sense of reciprocal assistance are what make all that time bearable.
Furthermore, there’s no denying that seeing the direct results of your efforts in improving someone else’s well-being can be incredibly gratifying. Feeling like you matter, like you make an impact on the world is a deep human need. Helping others and seeing the results of that help fulfills that need. It’s the key to a currently overused (and under-experienced) word: well-being.
Companies That Value People, Teams and Strong Internal Relationships
Tend to have higher employee engagement and satisfaction, lower turnover, and a better reputation.
How to Integrate Service to Others into Your Career
- Identify Opportunities: Look for ways to volunteer your skills, whether it’s mentoring, community service, or pro bono work.
- Align With Your Values: Choose roles and companies that prioritize social impact.
- Measure Impact: Seek feedback to understand the difference your work makes in others’ lives.
- Reflect on Your Contribution: Regularly take stock of how your work benefits others and let that motivate you.
Conclusion
A career that allows you to help others isn’t just altruistic; it’s a pathway to deeper career and job satisfaction. By focusing on the impact of your work, you can find a sense of fulfillment that transcends the typical markers of success. In other words, your job is a part of your overall life. If you want your life to mean anything (and you do), you want your job to mean something as well.
Discover more from Get Pretty Fed Up
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.