workers are “engaged” in their jobs. The other 87 percent
feel disconnected from work and more frustrated than
fulfilled.^4 These numbers shouldn’t come as a surprise.
When a friend says she hates her job or a family member
talks badly about his boss, we aren’t shocked. This is
acceptable behavior. We’ve been conditioned to think of
work as drudgery, a chore you endure in exchange for a
paycheck. And this is a problem.
When you are stuck fulfilling an obligation instead of
chasing a dream, you aren’t your best self. We all know
that. This is why we find more and more people moving
from one occupation to the next. They are doing their best
to be happy but failing miserably. Most of us have done this
at some point, quitting one thing for the promise of
something better. And we were disappointed to find that the
next job or relationship held the same complications as the
one we were escaping.
But maybe we’re going about this all wrong. Maybe the
worst way to be happy is to try to be happy. The work of
acclaimed Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl supports this
idea. A Holocaust survivor, Frankl had intimate experience
with suffering, and it taught him an important lesson.
Human beings, he argued, are not hardwired for seeking
pleasure and avoiding pain. They want meaning. In spite of
what we say, we don’t want happiness. It’s simply not
enough to satisfy our deepest longings. We are looking for
something more, something transcendent—a reason to be
happy.^5