The Cost of Saying Yes on Your Happiness
I’ve been writing this blog for fourteen years now. Over that time I’ve talked about so many aspects of happiness. Some of the things I’ve talked about are on the positive and easy side, even if the act itself isn’t that easy. But things like the basics, getting enough sleep, eating right, exercising and having a safe environment take work but don’t cost much.
There are harder things that we’ve discussed over the years. Things like making major life changes because you’re on the wrong path, fighting addiction and working a recovery program. Perhaps the hardest thing that we have talked about is cutting people out of your life who constantly drain you of your happiness. It’s hard when these people are “friends”, but so much harder when these people are family, particularly when your culture teaches you that you are eternally obligated to your family. Sometimes the cost of happiness can not just be be high, but too high.
The Paulo Coehlo quote I used as this weeks image really hit me because of something that recently happened at work. Our district has a very interesting human resources policy, that policy says that if the work is at the same level, you can be given an unlimited amount of additional work at that level and you are entitled to no additional pay. In fact, often as a dean in charge of a division, our district will assign a second full division to a dean’s responsibility for up to a year. During the pandemic I was given an additional full assignment for fourteen months with no additional compensation, hell, without even a thank you.
Given that the average number of hours a dean works in our district is about 50 hours a week, this means that essentially we are being assigned the equivalent of 100 hours of week with no additional pay. Now, even if you account for some kind of economy of scale, and if you say naively that dean’s only work their normal schedule of 37.5 hours per week, discounting the second job by thirty percent, we are still being asked to work 60 hours a week for 37.5 hours of pay. Our jobs are incredibly stressful, we are the prototypical middle managers with all of the responsibility and almost no authority. Our job is intense people management, I have a ridiculous number of people who are direct reports, in my current position, over seventy. Stress levels amongst my colleagues are insanely high.
Recently, due in large part to our college not doing any kind of transition planning, I was asked to take another division. This was the moment that Paulo Coehlo’s quote came to me. I literally do not have the right to refuse this additional assignment. So I took another path and told my boss that I would take it on, but I would not work more than my contracted 37.5 hours per week, and whatever didn’t get done, didn’t get done. It was then my boss backed off to suggest I’d only have to cover half the job, I reiterated my position and was told they would think about it and get back to me.
Here’s the reality and the lesson for tonight. If the cost of anything is your happiness or peace, it’s not worth it. Taking this extra position is a benefit for the college. I have more knowledge about the work than anyone else on campus, plus the district would be getting two jobs done for one salary, a savings in salary and benefits of over $300K per annum. So effectively a $25K per month savings, of which they are not willing to compensate me a penny. Of course, if I were to fully engage in both jobs, it would mean several months of me working 70 – 80 hours per week. This of course would mean a huge negative impact on my health. Working that much and adding a ton of extra stress to my life means I’ll end up eating worse, exercising less, both of which will impact my sleep. The cumulative impact of this on my particular health means higher blood pressure which impacts my aortic aneurysm, it makes it harder to manage my blood sugar, both quite frankly that lead me to an earlier death. And this doesn’t even address the potential mental health impacts of the additional stress, and less downtime. This reality makes it easy for me to take the position I took.
But often, people are in a position where the impacts are not so clear and obvious, but still as severe. They just don’t see the impacts because they are further down the road and less immediate. But other impacts can include less time with family and friends, could even negatively impact the size of your social circle and number of social interactions. All of which negatively impact your happiness.
So the question we need to ask, when people are asking us for something, favors, time, or more work, is whether or not the cost in time in our precious life and the cost to our peace and/or happiness, is worth what is being asked of us. If it’s not, then we all need to do a better job of learning how to say no and prioritizing our peace and happiness over acquiescing to the needs and desires of others. Learning to do this will bring you happier days my friends, I promise you it will. ~ Rev Kane