Are you engaged? Congratulations!

The Gallup Management Journal (gmj.gallup.com) often does inventories on employee engagement.  This measure is captured in what they call the "employee engagement index."

The index is based on three levels of engagement:

source: gmj.gallup.com

Where do you fall on this list?  The Journal determined that there is a link between employee happiness and engagement levels.  This is not surprising.  The more happy an employee, the more engaged they will be.

I think that we struggle too much to stay "happy."  Happiness is an emotion, and emotions come and go and are shaped by our inner dialogue (the conversations we have with ourselves).  There are much deeper levels of thinking, such as remaining positive, and even deeper, feeling generally optimistic.  I'll talk about these in a later blog post.

To sum it up, when it comes to feelings, just remember this quote by James Lehman: "You can't feel your way to better behavior.  You have to behave your way to better feelings."  Basically, what he is stating is that in order for you to have a positive self-esteem, and in order to feel good about yourself, you have to focus on setting goals and accomplishing those goals.  The more you achieve what you are working toward, the better you will feel.  The better you feel, the more driven you will be in your daily activities, both personally and professionally.

Have a great day.

Best wishes,

Victor