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So you want to do what you love.
... and you want to make money.
A handful of people have the privilege to do both. Not surprisingly, these folks tend to have a few things in common, as Cornell University economist Robert H. Frank lays out in a recent story for the New York Times' Upshot blog.
But what we wanted to know was this: Among these high earners who adore their gigs, are there any psychological commonalities that the rest of us might be able to incorporate into our own lives?
Turns out, the answer is yes. According to the latest psychological research, people who make a lot of money and adore their jobs tend to share three key traits.
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#1: They're experts in their field.
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Dozens of studies belonging to a field known as positive psychology suggest that the happiest people are those who identify their unique skills — or "signature strengths" — and find a way to incorporate these into their daily life.
A team of British psychologists who recently studied hundreds of college students for two months found that, compared with students who reported rarely or never using their signature strengths, those who reported regularly using these skills tended to report better progress in reaching the personal goals that they'd been asked to identify at the beginning of the study. Those students also tended to report being happier (according to their scores on a widely used psychological measure of satisfaction) over the same time period.
Plus, experts tend to make more money than non-experts. As economists Philip Cook and Robert Frank argue in their book "The Winner-Take-All Society," those who become highly skilled at their jobs are capturing a much larger share of total income in almost every field.
"Moral: Become an expert at something!" Frank wrote in the Times.
#2: They feel good about what they do.
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Sure, you might feel okay with what you do at work each day, but how do you feel about what your employer does for the rest of the world? In his book "What Price the Moral High Ground?", Frank says feeling good about your employer's broader mission is one of the most important aspects of occupational satisfaction.
"When most people leave work each evening, they feel better if they have made the world better in some way, or at least haven’t made it worse," Frank writes in the Times.
And, not surprisingly, research suggests happy employees are better for the company in the long-run. A Harvard Business Review survey of 12,000 electronic journal entries from 238 professionals across seven different companies suggested that employees were far more likely to have new ideas on days when they felt happier. Win-win.
#3: They regularly find themselves blissfully submerged in their work.
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When was the last time you were so immersed in something that the world around you seemed to fade away? Research from the Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests that this state of consciousness, which he and other researchers have called "flow," also happens to be the time when we feel the most joyful, creative, and at-peace.
Fortunately, further research suggests that this positive, flow-state is under our control: Finding a job or a hobby that encourages us to enter our flow state can help us feel happy and satisfied.
Plus, if you've found a job that regularly gets you in your "flow," chances are you'll be more likely to devote a lot of time doing it. Dozens of psychological studies suggest that this time spent practicing can add up and increase your odds of becoming an expert in your field. Again, experts tend to make more money than non-experts.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider![]()
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