Three Reasons Why It’s Important to Find a Job You Love
The most important goal you can have in any career is to find a job you love. The benefits of loving your job are enormous both personally and professionally. People who like their jobs are happier and more productive and those benefits can even extend outside of work hours.
Today we’ll be exploring three reasons why job happiness is one of the most important life goals you can set along with some tips on finding a career you love.
1: Loving Your Job Makes You More Successful
Many people think of job happiness as the reward for success but the opposite can be just as true. People with jobs that make them happy tend to work harder and care more about the quality of their work. They become personally invested, pushing themselves to really do their best.
This, in turn, translates into pay raises, promotions, and better opportunities down the line. It’s no secret that hard work pays off, but it’s a lot easier to work hard when you really enjoy what you’re doing. Whether that’s because you feel a real sense of camaraderie with your colleagues or because the work itself is interesting to you, the result is almost always the same.
And it makes sense too. People work harder when they’re motivated. Passion for a job can often drive people to dedicate their own private hours to learning more and increasing their skills, all chasing that precious hit of dopamine that comes every time you successfully complete a task.
2: Stress is Bad For Your Health
While loving your job will make you successful, hating it could have a serious impact on your life expectancy. Stress is obviously bad for your mental health but it can also affect your physical health.
People who are stressed have worse sleep, experience physical anxiety symptoms such as headaches and chest pains, and struggle to get the all important relaxation they need to work at their best. As if that wasn’t bad enough, stress elevates your blood pressure which can cause heart problems.
Meanwhile the mental health problems it causes can lead to more physical symptoms. People who are stressed often develop unhealthy habits such as over/undereating or alcohol/drug addictions.
And on top of all that, stress can even eat away at your personal relationships, degrading your support network and making it harder to find happiness outside of work. Stress makes people more bad tempered and less patient with others.
When you add all this together it’s clear that the cumulative effect of job happiness on someone’s health is tremendous. There’s just no getting around it – if you enjoy your work, you’ll probably live longer.
3: You’ll Spend a Lot of Time at Work
Of course, the real benefit of loving your job is quite simple. A normal 9-5 job means 40 hours a week of work. In that same week, the average person will sleep for around 52 hours. That leaves only 76 hours for eating meals, spending time with your family, cleaning the house, washing clothes, and just about any other chore that needs to be done.
Put simply, you’re unlikely to spend as much time doing anything else in life. To that end, if you want to live a happy life, then you need to have job satisfaction.
The benefits of loving your job might seem self-evident but that doesn’t change the number of people who are willing to turn down fulfilling career choices for more lucrative ones.
Money is certainly important but, in many respects, it’s only a means to an end. If you can find a job you love, you’ll live longer, be more successful, and get satisfaction out of those hours.
Of course, that’s not to say finding a fulfilling career is easy. In fact, many people give up hope on jobs that make them happy, settling for stability instead.
Here at Career Navig8r, we want to empower people to set their sites higher. We believe that one of the most direct ways to make the world a better place is to help people find a job that makes them happy.
By working with one of our mentors, you can learn skills and develop connections to help you get the job you’ve always dreamed of. Whether you’re changing industry or just looking for a better paying role, a career mentor can make it happen. Sign up with us today to find out more.