Yeah right, follow your passion … but how?
Anyone can start discovering their passion, it’s just a matter of paying attention. 10 years ago I was inspired by a speaker at a conference who talked about happiness at work. Happiness as part of your work was still very far away for me. Work was not fun, work was something you had to do to earn
money and you followed an education for it. For me it had nothing to do with happiness. Except: I was happy I had a job (I had been unemployed) and happy I had the opportunity to follow an education, which made the level of my work challenging.
Once touched by the topic of happiness at work, I just started working on it. At the IT company that I
worked for at the time (if you were not billable) there was room to set up your own training in your
area of expertise. As far as I knew, there was no one in this international organization who knew more
about happiness at work than I did. So I was the expert and started with a workshop
happiness@work. There was enough enthusiasm for this training to fill a room a few times a year, so I
built up experience with this workshop. Over time, it became known in our region that I did
‘something’ with happiness at work. I signed my initiatives with ‘Chief Happiness Officer’. As a result, I
was occasionally approached for information and HR wondered what that position entailed (because
we didn’t officially have a Chief Happiness Officer within the organization 🙂 ).
In my own IT consultant work I used happiness at work as a motivator for self-managing teams. That
meant that I included Autonomy, Fun and Meaning in my actions. The role I often had was an advisor
role; not directly in the team, but on the sideline to guide them. When I later became a Scrum
Master, it was again my job to make teams perform well. In time, it turned out that happiness at work
was well applicable in this role.
In recent years I have followed happiness trainings, read more books and research on this subject and followed online happiness sessions. Especially during the corona lockdown, happiness at work has become more important, because teams are no longer at the office, so there was a lot of talk about it online. The lockdown has had an impact on happiness at work; positive for some, negative for others (https://gelukkigwerken.nl/nationaal-werkgeluk-onderzoek-2021/).
In the meantime I learned how I could use my passion for happiness at work, in such a way that it
fitted with who I am and what I can do (using my abilities). As of December 1st , I will start a new
phase in my career as freelance Happy Master. I start very agile with that. The topics with the highest
priority have been arranged: Chamber of Commerce number, VAT number, administration in order,
insurances arranged and a first job won. My website is listed as an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
and I will continue to shape my propositions. There are no workshops bookable on my site yet, but
you can always contact me for the Happiness@Work and ShapeYouFuture workshops.
Are you still looking for a way to apply your passion in your work? You can start right away by taking
small steps towards your future. Good luck and don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
