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How To Make People Happy All Of The Time

Updated: 11/21/2022 by Financial Samurai 70 Comments

Bowing In Respect

Are you wondering how to make people happy all of the time? I’m not sure that’s a wise endeavor, but let’s see if we can try.

When I was ruminating on whether or not to go back to work after two years of absolute freedom, my friends all thought I was crazy.

“What if your boss is a micromanager who makes your life a living hell?” questioned an ex-coworker.

“What’s the point of saving and sacrificing for so long if you’re just going to jump right back in the fire?” wondered an online buddy.

I told them I was getting bored. As a professional writer, every experience, good or bad, has the potential to be a treasure trove of good material. Writing is so much easier when you’re emotionally charged up.

I’ve had a compliance woman throw me under the bus during a group meeting and a guy promise me one thing and do something totally different. It’s been awesome! I truly love the pain because pain makes everything else feel so much more pleasurable.

When you have a lot of freedom, you start taking your freedom for granted. Going back to work to be a “yes man” is a great way of keeping the appreciation of freedom alive. This post offers a simple way to make people happy all the time. If you’re someone who fears getting laid off, this one is also for you. 

How To Make People Happy: YES SIR! YES MA’AM!

Writing is a very individualistic endeavor. Ask five writers to write about a narrow subject like “how to tie your shoes” and you’re likely to get five very different results. One of the keys to being a good editor is to not inhibit the writer’s creativity, while offering constructive suggestions.

After one year of creative freedom as a consultant with a certain company, the graphics department gave me a ridiculous 8-point guideline on what pictures to use with my posts. It had already been hard enough to choose pictures in a 2:1 aspect ratio (really wide and short) vs. the normal 3:2 aspect ratio format. Now they were adding additional hoops to jump through in order to pass quality control.

After the two pictures I selected for a post were rejected, I was frustrated. These were my choices that in my opinion matched with what I had written. Who knows better than the writer himself what matches and what doesn’t?

It was as if the tail was wagging the dog where the picture was more important than the actual content. If I managed an art or photography blog, the images would be most important. But I was managing a site where written content is King.

Just Take Orders Well

Instead of complaining, I came up with a solution. Have the creators of the 8-page picture guideline create a repository from which any picture may be chosen. In this way, writers would no longer waste time finding the perfect picture, only to have it rejected by the picture police. Brilliant!

I could have objected to their objections about my picture selection because it suppressed my creativity and dampened my motivation. Instead, I said, “Happy to accommodate.”  What I did was a little jujitsu. To make them happy, I put the onus back on them.

But guess what happened to this amazing suggestion? They never created the picture repository. As a result, they could no longer nitpick about the pictures we selected. Months later, the creator of the picture bible quit. Classic.

Lesson #1: Always accommodate a request no matter how dumb. Even if the person has no experience with what she is asking you to do, just tell her “yes ma’am.” When it becomes apparent what she is asking is unreasonable, simply ask her to provide you examples of her work to mimic.

If she is a fraud, then she won’t be able to come up with anything, and will therefore leave you alone. Your goal is to smoke out people who only tell people what to do, but don’t know how to do it themselves.

How To Create More Happiness

When you are an employee, you are expendable. Always remember this. You can be thrown to the streets with the next bin of shredded documents at any time. An employee must know his or her place. The more you need the money, the more you must be respectful to everyone.

As a masochist who likes money, I find working for a company as a consultant to be extremely exhilarating. While it’s great to be the boss of my online media company, there’s something magical about being relieved of responsibility and just doing what you’re told to do.

Some People Have No Experience

During my tenure at another company where I was in charge of managing and writing content, I was told a new full-time person was to assume the Head of Content role. As a consultant, I didn’t care too much and was looking forward to working with this new hire in order to learn new writing and content marketing techniques.

It turned out the new hire had practically zero experience writing any content! I couldn’t find one single publication of his on the web. He didn’t even have his own website. Further, he had no idea about online content marketing because that wasn’t part of his role at his previous firm.

As a creative, I tried my best to say “yes sir,” but I couldn’t hide my lack of respect for someone in charge of content who had never written content. It would be one thing if he had been the editor at an online media company like Business Insider or The Wall Street Journal, but he wasn’t.

Because I could no longer fake my enthusiasm by quiet quitting, I offered to resign. And that’s when things got interesting. The Head of Content person started to panic.

We had emergency meetings with the CMO and CEO about how we could better work together. But I wanted none of it because I knew my value to the company as its content creator, editor, and manager of a team of writers. If management hired this person for big bucks above me, then they should try to get their money’s worth from him.

Money Gives You Options

When you are financially independent, you have no problem voting with your feet by leaving. At any rate, we worked something out, so I stayed on for a little bit longer. Two months after joining, the new Head of Content was fired. Finally, management saw through the smoke screen. 

Lesson #2: Know your worth and don’t be afraid to move on if you feel under-appreciated. Management will realize who are the producers and who are the dead weight. You will make your bosses happy by making them realize your value.

DO AS YOU’RE TOLD AND LIKE IT

The key to making everyone happy is to do as you’re told. Whether that person has the relevant experience to tell you what to do is besides the point. This is where so many people get in trouble because they don’t respect authority. Even if you are older and have more experience, suck it up if you need the money!

The goal of this post is to make other people happy, not you. After a while, always doing what you are told will probably make you pissed off and miserable. But because you make other people happy, other people will start liking you. When other people start liking you, you will get paid and promoted and eventually get to come out of your shell and play.

My biggest weakness as an ex-employee is not being able to fake my feelings well enough to create a massive support network. If I did, I would have probably made Managing Director at my old firm by age 35. If I don’t believe in something, I will butt heads. This is a career limiting move.

If you just can’t stand bowing to other people’s demands you don’t respect, then your only two choices are to negotiate a severance and find another job or be your own boss. Staying at a job with people who don’t inspire you will suck your soul dry.

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Related post: Solving The Happiness Conundrum

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Filed Under: Career & Employment, Relationships

Author Bio: I started Financial Samurai in 2009 to help people achieve financial freedom sooner. Financial Samurai is now one of the largest independently run personal finance sites with about one million visitors a month.

I spent 13 years working at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse. In 1999, I earned my BA from William & Mary and in 2006, I received my MBA from UC Berkeley.

In 2012, I left banking after negotiating a severance package worth over five years of living expenses. Today, I enjoy being a stay-at-home dad to two young children, playing tennis, and writing.

Order a hardcopy of my new WSJ bestselling book, Buy This, Not That: How To Spend Your Way To Wealth And Freedom. Not only will you build more wealth by reading my book, you’ll also make better choices when faced with some of life’s biggest decisions.

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Comments

  1. Millennial Moola says

    September 1, 2016 at 12:14 pm

    It’s amazing to think of what people will do for the money. Idk if anyone like Triumph the Insult Dog from Conan over here but he recently did a special where he asked Democrats to say what policies were important to them. Then he offered them $50 to read a card complimenting Goldman Sachs. All of them chose the $50

    Reply
  2. ARB says

    September 1, 2016 at 11:47 am

    I can definitely relate to the idea that having to deal with crap in your full time job leads to blog material (my own blog is essentially built on that premise), but I’m not quite as masochistic as you. Once I achieve financial freedom, full time work can kiss my you-know-what.

    Making everybody happy is taxing, impossible, and all in all just not worth even attempting. In customer service, every person wants something different, and they all want something directly opposed to what your employer wants. Even businesses themselves don’t understand it, bending over backwards to avoid having a single unhappy customer rather than following the Tim Ferriss 80/20 rule. You can’t make everybody happy. Just do what you can to get ahead and move on.

    Sincerely,
    ARB–Angry Retail Banker

    Reply
    • Financial Samurai says

      September 1, 2016 at 12:09 pm

      Just remember, once you achieve financial freedom, it is actually hard to tell others to kiss your ass! Trust me man… all the fantasies you have regarding telling off your annoying customers probably won’t happen b/c you suddenly feel like Andy Dufresne and stop caring about those annoying folks anymore.

      Reply
  3. SavvyFinancialLatina says

    September 1, 2016 at 8:48 am

    I just started a new job with a new company. At my previous company, I committed a couple of mistakes at the beginning, establishing myself as outspoken. It wasn’t horrible because through my tenure there I was well liked by most of my stakeholders. I was a great individual contributor and people liked my work. But I know that it was a detriment if I wanted to move up. I was lucky to have great managers who didn’t care…Too busy with fighting other battles. It was more get the work done attitude. In my new role, I’m making an effort to be more of a “yes of course you are right” person. It sucks, but you get used to it. Hopefully, it will lead to promotions. I will let you know in a couple of years if it works out. At this point, work is $, and $ is a path towards FI.

    Reply
  4. CPA Housewife says

    August 31, 2016 at 6:03 pm

    “I truly love the pain because pain makes everything else feel so much more pleasurable.”

    I’ve always believed this with regard to physical labor (which is why my kids will always be my lawn care company), but I’ve never been able to embrace it while being thrown under the bus by a coworker. That stuff lingers with me for way too long.

    I’ll try to focus on that the next time things/people run amok.

    Reply
  5. Observer says

    August 31, 2016 at 11:24 am

    God, I have to print this article and give it to every new hire at our work. I hate to sound like a cliché, but I am encountering more and more of entitled attitude amongst the new hires from younger generation. We have brought on a new guy , 25 y.o only a year out of school, as contractor on board to see if we like him for a permanent position. You would think someone in this situation will want to try to impress his employer!!
    We had to teach him to call into work and let us know if he is running late, and once when I told him what our expectations are from him on a daily basis ( basically from every employee). He just said : Well do you factor in my thoroughness? Because I have noticed most of you guys are not as thorough as I am, that’s why I take longer than you guys to perform the tasks !!
    One other thing that I am noticing is that most of these kids really didn’t have a real job growing up ( remember flipping Burgers, or working at Macy’s).
    As you said : Employees are Expandable not Special!!! I suppose some people will learn it the hard way.
    And yeah not wanting to babysit younger employees and fill the gaps left by their own parents in their upbringings is another motivation for FI and saying F-U and walking away when things get unbearable..

    Reply
    • Financial Samurai says

      August 31, 2016 at 12:31 pm

      You will enjoy this article then! https://www.financialsamurai.com/worst-bad-jobs-that-can-make-you-rich-and-happy/

      I feel everything is rational. Your contractor probably doesn’t want to full-time job, therefore don’t give them one. Give it to someone who really cares.

      Reply
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