“Why am I never happy with any job?!”: The 6 surprising reasons

Let me guess: You’re one of those people who’s NEVER happy with any job you’ve ever had (and you’ve probably had a lot of them). You’re always on the search for something better, but every time you start a new job you might be happy for a few months, and then you slowly realize you still aren’t very happy. And you begin to always be asking yourself the question, “Why am I never happy with any job I get?!”

I just want to say: I get it. I’ve been on that job treadmill before too. I’ve had really high hopes that “maybe THIS job will be the one…” only to have my hopes smashed to bits when I realize, “Nope, this isn’t quite it…” and feeling a bit hopeless and lost.

And it was only after learning more about why we humans struggle so much to be happy PERIOD that I realized there was nothing actually wrong with me. And even more importantly: there (usually) wasn’t anything actually wrong with the jobs either.

The call was coming from inside the house, and I was actually more responsible for being unhappy with my jobs than the actual jobs themselves.

And through reflection and learning more about the psychology of happiness and contentment -- and all of my years studying and practicing career development -- I’ve found that there’s usually six surprising reasons why you’re never happy with your job.

The first one:

You’re looking for happiness in all the wrong places.

The hard truth: our happiness and contentment with life come from more than just our work. But because of capitalism and being reduced down to “what we do” versus “who we are”, we think our work - whether our jobs or our businesses - are the end-all, be-all of our happiness in life.

And while I do think finding meaning and purpose in work is a piece of the happiness puzzle, it’s never the FULL puzzle when it comes to creating that contentment and meaning we’re searching for.

And funny enough, it’s the small things in life that tend to matter far more than we think when it comes to happiness. Things like getting enough sleep, getting outside, exercising, spending more time with friends and family -- these things typically have more impact than JUST having an amazing job. 

Remember that line from Legally Blonde? “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't shoot their husbands, they just don't."

People who exercise tend to hate their jobs just a little bit less. It’s one tiny example of how our other habits can help us feel happier, without requiring us to overhaul our entire lives.

My point is that work is just one aspect of your life and who you are. And if we’re being really honest with each other: work is not actually meant to make you happy -- I’m guessing some of you are gasping at me right now.

Your work is not meant to make you happy, and it can actually never make you happy all the time. That’s an impossible ask to make of any job. There’s good and bad in everything -- even the very best of jobs. 

And even more interesting to ponder, wanting our work to be the thing that makes us happy is a relatively new concept for us humans. And this new focus on work as identity/purpose/happiness likely happened from a mish-mosh of religion (that good old Puritan work ethic!), capitalism (make that money, honey!), and cultural shifts towards rugged individualism (pull yourself up by your bootstraps!) and more. Side note: Did you know the phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” actually started as a phrase that described something absurd or impossible to do -- and now it means self-reliance (which is also absurd and impossible). 

Bottom line: I think it’s important to question whether you’re putting work on a happiness pedestal that it can never actually reach.

Pin this to remind you and keep reading!

You’re looking for a job that makes you rich, not happy. AKA your values are out of whack.

Here’s the thing: There ARE jobs in the world that will make you rich and happy, BUT too often I’ve seen people thinking that they’ll be happy BECAUSE they get paid more and they’re “rich” which just isn’t true. 

You may have heard that your happiness increases with income up to $75,000 a year and then it caps out, but new research says differently: your overall well-being DOES, in fact, go up with income, but there’s a caveat here. The research also shows that people who think more money equals more happiness tend to be less happy people. And people who make more money tend to work longer hours and feel more time poor. 

It’s important to know what you think money is going to buy you, and whether it will really get you what you think it will. If you have to work 80 hours a week in a job you don’t really like, my guess is that it won’t be worth it. And if what you really want is more flexibility and autonomy, make those your priorities when searching for a new job, not your salary.

Third:

Your brain is doing its job --  you’ve got negativity bias.

Here’s the bad news, which you’re more likely to remember than the good news anyway: 

Human brains have been designed to keep us alive, and part of that equation is a natural bias towards the negative, also known as negativity bias.

Long story, short, negativity bias is our tendency for noticing negative events and dwelling on negative events longer than positive ones.

Before modern times, it was really important to be on the lookout for potential negative events: relationship conflicts, risks like deadly animals or bad food, and anything else that could potentially risk your life in some way. Your brain is built to search for the negative and remember it well.

What this means today is that most of us naturally find and focus on the negative first and foremost. And even more importantly, we see negativity where it doesn’t actually exist.

Example: You’re in a new job. Your boss looks angry about something one morning as they head into their office. You immediately think to yourself, “It’s about me...I’m doing a bad job. It’s because I asked that question about that report yesterday…” and down you go into a negativity spiral. You might even be thinking, “I can’t believe I can’t even ask them a simple question…” when in reality, your boss just had a bad morning at home. Their behavior has nothing at all to do with you.

But you’ve already made up your mind: your boss is a total jerk and this new job sucks. And then you start finding the evidence for it everywhere: in their terse reply to your email, when they don’t wave at you in the parking lot, or any other tiny little thing that’s just their normal, everyday behavior. 

You may also be searching for negatives you saw in your last job, almost like you’re WAITING for the bad to show up. And of course, there are pros and cons to every situation - to every job that exists - so you will definitely find the parts that suck, and probably fast!

This is why training your brain to look for the positives is so important, and why gratitude journals exist. I recommend keeping a journal where you write down 3 things you liked about your job every day. It trains your brain away from focusing on just the negative, so it can begin to spot the positives too.

Fourth:

You have a “good job” that you hate -- but that you just can’t quit.

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me, “I have a good job but I’m not happy…” I’d be very rich. I’ve coached lots of folks with “good jobs” that just aren’t good fits. 

They come to me because they keep getting the same job role, just in different places. Or they can’t deal with having to get a new job in the same field, because they absolutely HATE their field, but they also don’t know what else they’d do either. 

This inability to quit a “good job” that doesn’t make you happy typically comes from sunk cost fallacy. Sunk cost fallacy happens when we’ve invested money and time into something and we REALLY don’t want to walk away from it because of that investment -- even if it doesn’t make sense anymore.

Think about the doctors that hate medicine but invested tons of money, time, and energy into the field. Even if you hate being a doctor, it’s incredibly hard to leave. Our brains just can’t compute walking away from that level of investment, even if it makes us truly miserable.

This article does a great job of describing the phenomenon:

We fail to take into account that whatever time, effort or money that we have already expended will not be recovered. We end up making decisions based on past costs and instead of present and future costs and benefits, which are the only ones that rationally should make a difference.

The sunk cost fallacy may in part occur due to loss aversion, which describes the fact that the impact of losses feels much worse to us than the impact of gains. We are more likely to avoid losses than seek out gains. We may feel that our past investment will be ‘lost’ if we don’t follow through on the decision, and make a decision based on loss aversion rather than consider the benefits that would be gained if we did not continue our commitment.

One of the reasons not following through on a decision leads to a feeling of loss is because the overall endeavor gets framed together, instead of in stages. If we fail to follow through on a decision, the narrative is one of failure, even if the subsequent decision not to continue to commit was actually in our best interest.

It’s really, really hard to see the future gains we may see if we choose to leave something we’ve invested in but that’s no longer working for us! And so we keep getting new jobs in the same field in the hopes that we’ll be happy, but it doesn’t work because we’re not fixing the actual problem.

You’re stuck on a path that no longer fits, but you’re too scared to try something new. 

Fifth:

You’re stuck on the hedonic treadmill.

You know those people who are high achievers, who never give themselves a break, who set goal after goal after goal...reach those goals...and then set more goals?

Secretly raising your hand in the back of the room?  Yeah, I’m a recovering high achiever too. But most of these folks are stuck on the hedonic treadmill — trying to find happiness and satisfaction by chasing more and more achievements — but never actually reaching that happiness.

Here’s the thing about happiness: most of us have a “set point” for how happy we feel. And regardless of our circumstances -- vacations to interesting places, winning the lottery, finding your soulmate, getting your dream job -- your happiness tends to return back to your set point over time.

What this means is that a new job is unlikely to make you happier in the long term. You might get a boost for a few months, and then you’re back to your set point. 

There is a bright side to this though: when bad things happen, it’s the same thing. We slowly return to our set point over time. 

And there are better ways of increasing your happiness that have nothing to do with changing your circumstances or getting a new job, like meditation, strong relationships, or fun hobbies.

Finally, drumroll please…

Happiness is the wrong goal entirely when it comes to our jobs -- and our lives.

I’m a strong believer that life is always 50/50 -- half bad, half good. There is no life of meaning without lots of terrible times mixed in with the good. 

And when we focus too much on happiness as a goal - either as the result of a new job or anything else - we set a goal that’s impossible to reach for good. 

Happiness ultimately can’t be an end goal, because happiness never lasts forever. I know that sounds a bit depressing, but it’s actually just being realistic.

What if instead of chasing happiness in a job (or anything else), we chase more meaning, more understanding, more experience in being human? What if we chase connection? 

What if we chase the rollercoaster that life actually provides us versus an idealized version of life that doesn’t actually exist?

But wait, are you saying I’ll never be happy with any job???

Nope. I’ve been happy with most of my jobs -- seriously -- even when things weren’t perfect. And it really came down to making sure my values matched the organizations and that I got the “perks” that were most important to me.

This is something that has always been important to me, even from my very first job search out of college. I’d just moved to Pittsburgh from Texas with my brand new husband, and all I knew at that time was that I wanted to see my family at the holidays, for as long as I possibly could.

It wasn’t easy, but I researched how this was possible, and realized that some universities closed for a week during the holidays. And so I put 90% of my efforts into applying for jobs at those universities. I wanted that time off to see my family, and I knew having it would make me happier -- even if it meant I got paid less. And I got a job at Duquesne, and I was able to spend a week in Texas every Christmas. 

I know that’s a small thing for some people, but it was a big deal for me. And it ultimately made me more grateful for that job as a secretary than I would have been otherwise. 

My best advice is to really think hard about what actually brings you the most joy and how you can make that happen with a job -- whether it’s a more flexible schedule so you can pick your kids up from school, or extended time off at the holidays, or working from home, or the type of work you get to do. And focus the majority of your energy on making the most important things happen.

And remember: nothing is perfect and nothing is permanent. And only you can choose what’s most important to you. 

If you loved this blog, check out “Why I quit my coaching business and got a full time job.”