Four Levels of Happiness Exercise - Essay Example

Management essay What step do you need to take to reach your goals? Answer: Reaching ones career goals has many intermediary steps that one needs to fulfill before reaching his destination. It becomes absolutely necessary for the candidate to hone his skills and work on his inadequacies as far as it is possible. As I wish to train in a reputed financial institution such as JP Morgan I have decided my time management schedule in the following manner. I wish to work on the following areas: 1- Writing skills 2- Speaking skills 3- Math 4- Managing time 5- Reading about finance I will be putting in minimum of two hours per week in these areas initially. I plan to increase this to four hours gradually. The time allotment as per my schedule is as follows: I am fairly good in my writing and arithmetic skills but I lack confidence in public speaking and interviews. For this I have decided to practice my speaking capacity for at least one hour daily during the initial phase. After that I would be working on my mathematical and financial skills. This would take another one hour. Gradually I would be increasing my practice session to four to five hours in a week. I wish to build a strong communication and an analytical capacity so I will put in around 2 to 3 hours working on my vocabulary and math skills. I will also have to spend time on reading about the daily finance news to keep myself abreast of the latest information on financial matters. I will put in a minimum of 1 hour reading about the information from the daily newspapers and business magazines. In short I plan to put in five hours per week while preparing for my interview in a relevant sector. IMPORTANT VS URGENT Answer 1: 1. As I wish to rise in my career I will have to develop my speaking and communicating abilities. I wish to reach a senior level in three years so I will be emphasizing on speech, vocabulary and the right usage of words. 2. I will have to develop my analytical and interpretive skills. 3. I can plan well so will try to improve it further. 4. I will work on social skills like greeting and addressing people in corporate meetings and time management. 5. I wish to increase my knowledge in financial engineering and modeling too. Estimated Timeline Speech and communication- 8 to 9 months Analytical and interpretive skills – around a year Planning capacity - around six months Social skills – 3 to four months Knowledge and time management – around a year urgent Not urgent important Speech and vocabulary, analytical skills. Social skills and confidence Not important Reading, time management No such skill Answer 2: As I am married my non career life would compose of my family, my parents, my spouse and my children. I am a family oriented man and as such family values a lot to me. But I also realized that there are certain places where I lack in terms of family values and its requirements. I have been married for two years and have a single son. I wish to have more children in future. I also have elderly parents who are sick and need help. My mother is on wheel chair and needs to be accompanied by someone. I value them a lot other than my career so I would like to increase my time I spend with them. My parents love vacations so would like to take them on short trips. This would help me to bind with them more and also improve my interactions with them. My mother likes to read so I would have to develop the skill to read to her the books she likes. For this would have to develop my reading skills so as to sound interesting to my mother. My wife is not to be neglected here. So I would need to make sure that my behavior towards her is affectionate as well as caring. Lastly my son is young. So I would have to ensure that I maintain the right amount of association with him. I would have to work on my body language so as to make him easy and open to me. I must maintain control over my anger and emotional outbursts so as to not affect his cognitive behavior in the long run. I need to improve in my: 1. Social skills with my parents. 2. My reading skills 3. Control over my anger and emotions. Answer 3 a: The time limit I had set aside to develop on these was not completed during the initial stages. I realized that I need some more time to be perfect on my skills. There were times when I had completed my home work just for the sake of completing it. Sometimes I used to do it for the sake of the pass grades. But most of the times I utilized these home works to work on my deficiencies. At my work place I tried to match up with my boss’s standards but most of the times I also tried to learn from it. I have-not decided ion any plan or list to develop them but I typically spend around 15% of my daily time to work on my weak points. Answer 3 b: I plan to watch television more often and play games. I also seem to talk more often with my colleagues and keep an eye on all the workings in the office. These are not important or urgent for my development. Out of these tasks, keeping informed about the office might be urgent but watching extra hours of television is not that urgent. Talking with my colleagues may be their urgency if they want to get some important information from me. Answer 3c: I wish to improve my writing and speaking skills as soon as I can. I also wish to get knowledge about the latest financial modeling schemes and techniques. I would work on my mood swings and emotions. I would also try to control my temper. So, for me stress and emotion management, social skills are the important tasks while the remaining ones are urgent. The Exercises FOUR LEVELS OF HAPPINESS EXERCISE 1 Answer 1 Level of Happiness Actually Spend Would Be Proud If I Spent External stimulus 10 5 Ego gratification 20 15 Making a difference to others 40 40 Seeking spiritual growth 30 40 TOTAL 100% 100% FOUR LEVELS OF HAPPINESS EXERCISE 2 Answer: AT WORK OUTSIDE WORK External Stimulus 1. My company had given me a new office with my own cabin last year. It was well furnished and had all the required amenities. 2. I was given a new accommodation in the new city and also the expenses to shift top the new place. 3. My company had offered me training session and an opportunity to visit Dubai in the next six months for a corporate tie up. 4. They had also gifted me with a laptop that had all the latest applications and business features. 1. I get happiness for myself when I go shopping and lazing around the market place. New things tempt me and it makes me happy. 2. I also get happiness by cooking for others and sometimes for myself. I love to socialize a lot and feel happy when friends or relatives turn up at my place for lunch or dinner. 3. I love cars and was happy when I gifted myself a car last year. Ego Gratification 1. I got happiness when I was promoted in my new job. I was sent to Dubai for a training session and was successful in closing the corporate tie up successfully. I got a team of four members to lead. 2. I also felt good when my efforts were appreciated by my senior bosses in front of the entire staffs. 3. I also felt happy when some of the strategies I used at work where mentioned as landmark decisions for the company. 1. I felt happy when I got a first class degree from my college. 2. I was happy the day I got married to the person of my choice. 3. I was happy when I was blessed with a son. Making A Difference To Others 1. I felt happy when I was able to contribute my knowledge to my subordinates in my office and help them in their works. This helped them by increasing their confidence level and their willingness to work. 2. I felt extremely happy with myself when the company responded positively to my suggestion to go to the stock market at the mentioned time. The advantage was that my company was able to make a profit of $2millions. 3. I felt honored and happy when the company chose me to sign in the final documents of the deal where in my company was sanctioned to build a community consisting of 120 homes 1. I felt happy when was successful in persuading to my friend to leave drugs and alcohol. 2. I was happy when contributed some amount from my salary to help a poor man get married. 3. I got happy when I donated my old books and clothes to the orphanage homes. 4. I was good and satisfied when I helped a blind man cross the road. 5. I felt good when my parents sounded happy and pleased when I called them over the weekends. Seeking Spiritual Growth There is nothing in my work area My job area is entirely professional in its image where there is no scope for any form of spirituality to come across the business dimensions. 1. I feel good and happy when I read the holy Quran. 2. I feel good when I offer my prayers five times in a day at the right time. 3. I feel happy when I meet the Haj pilgrims and will get the opportunity to visit the holy city of Mecca. FOUR LEVELS OF HAPPINESS EXERCISE 3 Answer: A. External stimulus and ego gratification seems to make me happier. There are times when I end up making up most of my time on these two features. I love to pamper myself so I often feel happy when people reward me or I gift myself with a new thing. Materialistic objects seem to make me feel good so I do not hesitate to purchase anything I like. This often makes me look like an impulsive buyer as the purchases have often turned out to be useless. I work hard so I often look forward to people when they would acknowledge my works. I am also a high achiever by nature so I do not mind if I need to take some other measure to achieve it. As I prefer materialistic happiness more spiritual growth does not seem very alluring to me. I prefer to live in the present with my pleasures and within my comfort zone. B. I am aware of the fact that my likeliness for materialist pleasure will not help then in the long run. I understand that I need to limit my spending and such cravings. Contemplation sometimes makes me to take the wrong decision. As I spend more time in external stimulus and ego gratification, inner sufferings seem to manifest themselves in the materialist pleasures for me. C. The “other” would help me to reach the ultimate stage of happiness where I would be able to seek solace in all my activities. It would help me to realize my worth and make me realize that we can do our own jobs and the results should be left in the hands of God. By understanding the good in pain and sufferings it would help to instill more faith in God (Spitzer and Bernhoft 163). FOUR LEVELS OF HAPPINESS EXERCISE 4 Answer: AT WORK OUTSIDE WORK External Stimulus 1- I would like to get to a better position. 2- I would like to new position in my job. 3- I would like to get my bills paid. 1. I would buy a new home. 2. I would have more kids in future. 3. I would invest in shares. Ego Gratification 1. I would like more acknowledgements for my works. 1. I would like to get married and have a family life. Making A Difference To Others 1. I would like to help people in their problems with my knowledge. 1. I would give more time to my family. Seeking Spiritual Growth No such activity here I would like to understand the importance and the essentialities of pain and sufferings in life. A Schema of Work Orientations Answer: A career is just not only about a job, it’s much more beyond it. A career is something which may be changed by fortune or any misfortune but as seen, for most of the people, it provides him with a sense of direction. And when the career or rather the professional career of a person gets involved with other personal aspects such a family, children and relations it gets more challenging in nature. There are persons who can prioritize either their family or their career but there can be some people for whom both of these aspects are important. Although family life remains to be valued in high terms in most of the societies, there are many evidences particularly in the western societies that will show that the importance for family life has reduced considerably over the past few decades. Cultural values are the laid standards that helps a person to decide what is are good or right for his well being and the ways he must act while in each society. These can include several cognitive structures, the behavioral and the affective dimensions, plays a vital role in his establishing the personal goals and helps him to form the basis for personal as well as evaluation of the others. In this context the importance for framing the primary and the secondary orientations in the career path of a person can be explained. A normal person before getting into any kind of relationship or other personal aspects tends to give a primary orientation to his career. He may be the sole bread earner for his family. So, it becomes imperative for him to dedicate all his time in his job thus forgetting his contribution required in the family life. This was the situation with me when I had joined the job. I joined the job field as an executive in the post office. My job involved working almost 14 hours in a day as I handled both the cashier and the finance department. I had taken up the two departments to go up the career ladder fast. This was exciting initially but soon I realized that I was losing my time from my family. I was earning a handsome remuneration but there were family relations where I was missing out. I was married after a couple of years and was blessed with a kid after my marriage. My family life seemed complete but the responsibilities had also grown with that. My kid was growing but I realized that I was not spending enough of quality time with him. It was then that I realized that I need to balance my primary orientations with the secondary ones. It would be inappropriate to call those responsibilities as secondary orientations because I want to now balance both my career and my family life as both were equally important to me. Career orientations and goals change as our lives change. I decided to choose the option in number 5 as it related with my situations completely. Getting ahead, getting secured, free and getting high in life are essential but they cannot be expected to provide complete happiness to a person. There are certain deficiencies in each of the. While getting ahead will compel a person to go after materialistic pleasures (Spitzer and Bernhoft 64) place his job before his family and go by his career orientations getting secured will compel the same person to ensure that his job is protected and he is professionally safe guarded always (Spitzer and Bernhoft 67). Similarly getting free will make the person to seek independence thus growing the urge in him to work harder to achieve it. Lastly getting high will depend on the choice of the person. He can either seek to adjust with all his limitations to achieve his goal as an entrepreneur or might be willing to starve himself to work at his own discretion. Both the mentioned forms are extremities in themselves. It would only benefit the person individually only in his career options. As my goal in life was to balance between the primary and the secondary orientations I decided to choose the option of getting balanced. This option would help me to adjust my job schedules along with my career. The biggest return that I would be receiving from this option is that I would be happy at my personal level. Work and money are important components in today’s life and it is also sensible to be a careerist at times. But family life is also important. We need to understand that the conditions that we are experiencing now will never remain the same. We might need to change to getting secure or high in life again. At this point we would need the attention of our family relations and their care. So, it is important to balance the career goals and the personal family requirements in a judicious manner. Reference  Spitzer, Robert J. and Bernhoft, Robin A. Healing the Culture: A Commonsense Philosophy of Happiness, Freedom, and the .... Ignatius Press, 2000 Read More