Do you fall in to any of these 5 happiness traps?

via Forbes.com by Kevin Kruse

What’s holding you back from happiness?

Identifying whether or not you are happy is simple enough. Understanding why and what to do about it is another story altogether. Through work and life we often delay making changes we think would make us happier because we tell ourselves to wait for the “right time.” But what if the right time is now? And what if you can figure out how to address your unhappiness and start to move forward?

Annie McKee is a best-selling author, respected academic, speaker, and sought-after advisor to top global leaders. She is a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, and has co-authored numerous Harvard Business Review books, including Resonant Leadership, Primal Leadership, and Becoming a Resonant Leader. Her latest book is, How to Be Happy at Work: The Power of Purpose, Hope, and Friendships.

I recently interviewed Annie for the LEADx Leadership Podcast where I asked her to walks us through the five most common happiness traps, and what we can do to get out of them.

McKee explained that through her research, she realized that the key to finding happiness at work, is to first acknowledge that we deserve it. Secondly, she says, we need to stop blaming leaders or work cultures for our unhappiness, because we have to take on some of the responsibility for our own well-being. “Take the ‘Overwork Trap’, for example,” she says, “Overwork is our modern disease. A lot of us work all the time, and this is particularly true, ironically, for people who love our jobs. It’s really hard to turn off, and couple that with access to technology and the demands of our workplaces, and we can find ourselves burning out in very short order, even if we’re strong and resilient.” She goes on to say that while loving your work is great, if you’re working constantly then it’s only a matter of time before it becomes unfulfilling. “We’ve got to find some way to ensure that we can renew ourselves,” she advises…

…keep reading the full & original article HERE