On a personal level, understanding what psychological needs you meet through your work can help you make better decisions about what to do with your life. On a social level, with automation eliminating or changing so many jobs, it is also important to understand how work benefits people psychologically.
A blind spot that many have is that they assume that what they want from work is the same as what everyone wants. This can result in misunderstanding others; be it your romantic partner, your co-worker, or your workers. We all have our own individual priorities about what psychological needs fill what we do and what we want to get from work.
While reading this article, identify any benefits of the work with which you particularly feel related. If you wish, order benefits by importance, and if you have a partner, ask them to do the same. If you cannot identify yourself with any example, try doing so from the shoes that someone you know is benefited by some of the work.
For this article, don't just stay on the surface of the points I raise, since the explanations are more of the kind of sophisticated and nuanced psychology than the topic in general.
1. Work can generate friendship.
Some people have a lot of opportunities to make friends through their interests and hobbies, or through groups of friends they have had for a long time. However, other people fit with others within their field of work (for example: they share the style of thinking or the way of seeing the world), or they are not the best making friends outside of work.
For those who are socially anxious, socially lazy, or who are too busy for so many hobbies, work can provide built-in friendships. People who are obsessed with their work (for any reason), sometimes also feel they don't have much in common with people outside their field. Your work colleagues may feel that you vibrate in a way that most people do not.
2. Work provides a sense of stability when life is difficult.
If your work is stable, and you are good at it, it can help keep you balanced when other things in your life are stressful (such as when you take care of a sick family member, go through infertility, or recover from a breakup). Sometimes, people do not fully appreciate this benefit until they are hit by a difficult situation in their life.
If you are prone to depression, work can give you the opportunity to do something you are good at, which can help strengthen and stabilize your mood.
3. Work can provide an intellectual challenge.
If an intellectual challenge is what you mainly get from work, you may think that it is the main thing that everyone wants as well, but that is not really the case. People who love facing new challenges and those who get bored easily most of the time have problems understanding those who don't work the same way. For people who love to conquer novel challenges, work that is cognitively demanding and not monotonous is very important.
4. Work can help you preserve a positive identity and your own value.
If your identity and self-worth only revolve around your work, that can be a problem. In this scenario, when the work is going well, you will feel good, but if the work collapses, you will also do it. A more balanced manifestation of this is when what you do as a job / career, or the specific projects you work on, feels like your own expression.
5. Work can simply provide the funds you need to do the activities you enjoy.
We have all heard the discrepant phrases of live to work versus work to live . Some people love going to work, doing their job, and spending the rest of their time in activities they enjoy. They prefer to depend on their external interests to fill their psychological needs. They do not require their work to give them a sense of identity, challenges, among all.
These can be individuals who surf or ride a bicycle before and after working each day, who spend the whole night in their gardens or workshops, or who see their friends several times a week. Their work provides the funds to facilitate that.
They do not need more of their work, nor do they want the stress related to it, which is transferred to their personal time. (For people who love the challenges of work, they can see their relaxation time as an important way to help their work performance, rather than their own benefit).
6. Work can help you understand the world, other people and yourself.
Work sometimes puts us in contact with people and situations that we would not experience in other circumstances, and this can help us learn more about the world and even about ourselves. For example, one of the favorite aspects of my work as a writer is to answer the questions of journalists.
Until I started doing this, I didn't know that I would really enjoy being "under the spotlight" in the interviews. As a naturally anxious person, it was unexpected that I enjoyed it, but I do. I get a creative impetus for it.
In addition, through work, we come into contact with people who have all kinds of thinking styles and behaviors different from ours, and this can be learning experiences that help us in our lives and in our work. Exposing ourselves to the way of doing things and the thinking styles of others can help us develop our skills and expand our horizons.
7. Work can allow you to contribute to the public good.
Most of us want to do meaningful work, but what makes a job meaningful has to do with the personal benefits it provides, or with doing something good in the world. Like people who want to get intellectual challenges from work, to people whose greatest motivation is to do good and reinvent the world, it is hard for them to understand those who are not driven by that force. Some may be motivated to do something good in the world, but they do not necessarily relate it to their work.
Why does all this matter?
When people retire, change careers, become full-time parents, or their work is automated, then these benefits of work need to be replaced, and this requires some deep reflection on a personal and social level.
When you think about decisions related to your career and projects, there may be specific benefits that you are looking for. For example, I am mostly interested in projects that allow me to work with other intelligent people (especially those who think a little differently than I naturally do), and projects that give me a reason or excuse to acquire new skills. Whatever is important to you, you have to hold on to it. You don't need to belittle your life's decisions when comparing yourself to people who have different priorities.
The benefits you seek to obtain from work, somehow, evolve depending on the different stages of life. Try to be aware of this. For example, let's say you become a father. It may be that the intellectual challenges of work become less important. Or, get higher priority if you need to challenge yourself to balance the father's behavior. Having the next generation in front of you can also cause you to focus more on doing good in the world or doing great things, since the time you are away from your child should be worth it. When you are aware of how the “wants” and “needs” of your work change, you make career / work / project decisions that support them.
Understand that other people are different from you, and that that is fine and valid. Seeing this can help you understand those close to you (as your partner). Understanding different motivations can help you understand why others behave the way they do and how to influence and motivate other people when necessary (including employees and coworkers).
At the career planning level, think about your long-term plan and how you can maximize what is most important to you.
Extra tip: Look for any aspect of work you don't like or belittle. There may be benefits that you underestimate. If you don't appreciate them as you should, their importance may surprise you if you make a life decision that results in losing them.
Translated by: Diana Mart nez, editor and translator in the big family hermandadblanca.org
Channeled by: Alice Boyes, translates the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy and social psychology into advice that will serve people in their daily lives.
Original page: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/in-practice/201908/what-psychological-benefits-do-you-get-work
