Career Contentment

About the Author 

      In addition to being a coach, speaker and career Human Resources professional, Jeff Garton is an HR innovator who coined the term and developed the concept of career contentment. He is author of the first and only book on this new topic. Jeff’s firm produces one-of-a-kind learning resources and train-the-trainer programs that guide employers through the process of establishing a culture that leverages the increased productivity and financial rewards of a contented workforce. His background prior to starting his business in 2001 includes 23-years inside HR with the Philip Morris Companies.

      I came across Jeff’s book, Careeer Contentment, while looking for something to read on the SHRM website. After reading the overview, I was intrigued and decided that I needed to get a copy of the book and take a closer look regarding Jeff’s notion that everyone can become content in their careers.

      What is career contentment? Jeffrey describes it as the feel-good-feeling you get when “everything in our lives seems to align and both our work and personal life are going so well we feel relaxed, comfortable, and confident about the future.” It is a feeling that must come from within. Interestingly, it doesn’t come from the salary, benefits or other perks provided by our employer. Thus, if you think that finding a job that pays you more will make you more content, you will be disappointed.

      The idea of career contentment was developed based on research in the areas of positive psychology, resilience, self-efficacy, and self-motivation, that were distilled into three principles that employee’s control to enable their own career contentment. They are: 1) choice of work that is meaningful to one’s calling and most meaningful purposes for working; 2) the control of one’s self-reliance, as opposed to remaining dependent on employers to make you satisfied; 3) the control of one’s thoughts and emotions to affect performance enhancing emotions; and 4) reasoning to recognize the agreeable middle ground, and develop a more favorable predisposition to deal with circumstances, rather than being limited to the either/or conditions of job satisfaction.

      What are the benefits of career contentment? According to Jeff, there are three main advantages or benefits, they are 1) career contentment acts like a homing device that provides the emotional link to discovering your true calling and purposes – the closer you get to your calling, the more contentment you feel, and vice versa, and you can experience this independently of what employers do to make you satisfied, dissatisfied, engaged or disengaged; 2) it is the source of an employee’s enduring resilience to deal more effectively with instances of job stress and dissatisfaction. It’s the same principle as your ability to love someone unconditionally, despite their tendencies to frustrate and dissatisfy you; and 3) it is the source of an employee’s self-motivation, improved performance and retention. Contentment enables your mind to focus on what you’re doing as opposed to wasting time and energy complaining.

      The book is divided into two main parts. They are 1) Attracting Meaningful Work, and 2) Choosing to Be Contented with Your Life and Career.  

Attracting meaning work begins by recognizing and building your own sense of career contentment. In other words, what type of work would be meaningful to you? For some of us, we may not know what type of work would be meaningful to us. It’s okay, because Jeffrey’s book provides us with an approach to finding out that he calls the “Four Ps” which contribute to our ability to recognize our contentment. The “Four Ps” are:

1. People-Look for a career where you will work with people who seem to share the same morals, ethics, and values that you do.
2. Place-Seek a workplace that is genuinely stable, safe, and attractive within the community overall.
3. Particulars-Review the whole gamut of the job (e.g. job competencies, expectations, and available resources).
4. Personal-What’s most important about me that makes this the right choice? The reasons should come down to whether you’re pursuing authenticity, passion, emotional maturity, competence, professional image, and balance.

   In Part II: Choosing to Be Contented with Your Life and Career, Jeff explains that most of us confuse contentment with job satisfaction. However, they are not the same. Job satisfaction is usually something we measure in relation to time and talents. In other words, job satisfaction stems from those things we can usually measure. For example, we can measure a job’s income, benefits, training and development and budget and resources. And in most cases, if our career is insufficient in any of these countable items, we usually proclaim job dissatisfaction and see it as “just a job.”

   Conversely, career contentment can’t be measured. It comes from within you. Thus, it is not contingent on other people or material things. In essence, it is defined as our willingness to acknowledge our situation and make the best of it. Yet, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t continue to seek other career options. Career contentment is about loving what is as you work towards what you desire.

      My favorite parts of the whole book are the stories Jeff interjects to illustrate the topic previously discussed and the self-assessments found at the end of the book.

      Now is the perfect time for the HR Practitioner to foray into Jeff’s notion of total job happiness—career contentment. We know, better than anyone else that with the downturn in the economy organizations are scaling back on the amount of pay increases and benefits. Thus, if we are just looking for a job that pays well, we probably aren’t going to find it. As Jeffrey explains in his book, we should be looking for that career which is aligned with our values. If we do not, we will never be happy doing what we do, and we will never reach the blissful state that comes with career contentment.