
I came across this term "service heart" from The Happiness Project. Gretchen Rubin says something very profound:
"People with a service heart will be happier in certain professions than people with the same job who don’t have a service heart, because some jobs lend themselves to expression of the service heart; conversely, such people might be less happy if they worked in professions that didn’t allow them to satisfy that aspect of their personality."
I have to disagree somewhat with the latter part of that statement because I think someone with a true service heart could find some kind of meaning in any type of profession. For example, let's say that I went to work as a dog pooper scooper. The city hired me to go around town and pick up dog doo-doo all day. On the surface this may look like a very mundane job with no potential, right? Well, if I had a service heart, couldn't I find fulfillment in knowing that my job would bring happiness to those people whose yards or sidewalks are being cleaned?
Any thoughts?








I'd go a step further. You should strive to only hire people with a "service heart." The fact is, you're always serving someone - whether you're the janitor or the CEO. Anyone who doesn't have the mindset that says that the fulfillment of their job means something important to the people who are the recipients of their service. If you don't have that mindset, the quality of your work suffers.
And an employer can't abide flaws in quality.
Posted by: Eric Sohn | July 30, 2007 8:38 PM | Permalink to Comment