Knowing the Strength of Happiness

Below is a story of "resilience" that I wrote for my life coaching class:

"I'm not happy here", I said. I had moved out to San Francisco in June of 2008 for a job with a small company in my field, web-based software, on a product that was meaningful to me. We were helping people make good hires at their companies, a weakness I saw at my previous employer back in Indiana. I had loved my job, but things had changed and recently there had been a lot of pressure to deliver without a lot of investment in people, resources, or time. I would come home each night feeling drained. Waking up in the morning was getting harder and harder, and I found myself taking sick days just to preserve my mental health. It wasn't enough, so in early October I was sitting down with my new boss, only five months in to my employment, and trying to find a way to turn things around.

Since Alex's (name changed) arrival, the engineers were all assigned separate projects, and overly aggressive time lines. We were of course told that we could work together if we so wished, but we were expected to deliver on time. The result was that no one collaborated, we worked mere feet from each other and it was a rare day that much more than a few sentences were exchanged. At our daily status meetings, no one got much value from each other because our work didn't overlap. No one else in the company wanted to hold meetings with us because we seemed busy, but really we were busy guessing what they wanted from the product. Production was slowing down, sales was getting frustrated, the engineers were frustrated, and it looked like it would all come crashing down if I didn't try to change things.

I knew all this, and yet I was being blocked everywhere I tried to create happiness, "Working together with people is important to me", I told Alex. I went on and explained how I tried to find job satisfaction and how every step was either actively blocked or was being hindered by policy and/or philosophy. I needed his help. I wanted to stay because I still believed in the product. Alex told me to "chill out" and to "just be happy", which certainly was not the help I was looking for. A month later with my efforts all resulting in failure and management still unwilling to help me be successful, I was out of options. I felt trapped because my long work hours kept me from looking for a job, but I also knew that living in the city without an income would be difficult at best. I turned to one of my strengths to lead me out of this desperate situation, honesty.

I wasn't going to sneak around and have everyone "know" I was looking for a job elsewhere. I wasn't going to stay there working for Alex either. In early November we met again and I got my plans out in the open, I was looking for a job, and that I planed to be gone by the month's end. It wasn't a conventional move, but to me it was the best thing to do as a professional because I feel strongly that people make better decisions with more information rather than less. I began my job search, but the end of the fiscal year and the tanking economy were working against me. At the end of November, Alex asked me for my resignation. I had not found a new job, the economy was even more in the dumps, no one was hiring, I had travel plans back to the Midwest for the holidays and did not want to show up without a job. Despite all of that, things at this company had only gotten worse, and when he asked for my resignation, I was all too happy to comply.

"Why not just keep your job a little longer, or at least fight for it?", you might ask. The answer is because inside I knew a lot about happiness and how it affects me. I knew that I was a good enough engineer that I could find a job that treated me better. I knew I was in San Francisco, one of the few cities that would continue to have tech jobs open up. Most importantly, I knew that I was stronger, both physically and emotionally when I was happy; getting out of that miserable situation might mean less money to work with, but it would also mean that I would go in to job interviews with a lot more zest and energy. It meant that when I met people at social networking events, I could greet them with enthusiasm, really engage and rally for my cause instead of being exhausted and battered by my job. That's exactly what I did.

I attended every related group meetup I could find in the city. Everyone I met got to know a lot about my skills and interests as I learned about their work environments. People had their ears to the ground for the kind of openings I was looking for, and I was going on more interviews than I ever expected. I rode my new found freedom from misery all the way through the holidays and in to early February. When I saw my family and friends for Christmas, they all felt happy and comfortable with my choice to leave my job, whereas I think they would have felt miserable on my behalf if I had explained to them I was way out in San Francisco and my job was no good for me. In February, it all came together in the form of multiple job offers, leaving me to have my pick of the lot.

A year since February 2009 I am still very happy with my new job. I found all of the things I felt I was worthy of having thanks to my willingness to face a desperate situation head on. When my attempts to improve my current situation failed, I relied on my strength of honesty. That led me out of a place of weakness, and in to a place where I could leverage my happiness to better interact with others. Those interactions ultimately resulted in a great job, and a lot more happiness for myself.