“To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition,” - Samuel Johnson

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time about success. When people think of success in their lives, they tend to think of the office, of money, of acclaim, but not many seem to consider home in this heady equation. Yet life at home affects every other area without question.

I remember once in college a professor made a comment about this subject that struck me as not only profoundly true, but inevitable. He said after the history lecture on Robber Barons of the early 1920’s in this country that a man could be happy at work or he could be happy at home, but he could never be both at the same time. If he was happy at work and doing his job and succeeding, then he was neglecting his family and not spending any time with them. But if he tended to his family and spent his time at home well, then his work suffered. And so at any given time there was always going to be someone displeased with him and therefore giving him grief.

The professor ended his little spat of wisdom with the comment, “So you simply have to choose who to make mad. And the wife doesn’t sign your paycheck.”

I thought at the time that this insight into the working world was true and accurate because at the time it reflected what I had lived. When I thought about it, I had never been happy at both home and work for very long. Something always came along and mucked up one scene or the other. And from what I see every day, there seems to be a lot of people who subscribe to this line of thought as well, and who choose one over the other.

This particular professor had been divorced three times and was headed for another, had several children strung out across the country, but was constantly being promoted in a department known for its demanding career track.

Apparently he’d made his choice. He was happy at work.

And I’d made my choices too, but every day at 5:00 o’clock that fleeting happiness evaporated on the commute home where I faced a rocky marriage and an alienated family.

A few years ago I turned 40, and with this magnificent milestone I began to question this kind of thinking and living. It seems to me that those who tell us to be happy at work are the ones who most benefit from it. We make their lives more pleasant and easier with every committed year there. But it also seems that those who tell us to place all of our energy and time into our homes and families also don’t have to live with the financial consequences of doing that either.

Why can’t you be happy at work and home at the same time? Who says you have to choose? And most importantly, why?

As I go along in life it becomes clearer to me that the answer to these questions is simple: You can be happy anywhere you find yourself whether it’s work or home, you don’t have to choose where happiness finds you. Happiness finds you when you tell it to and no one has to suffer any kind of consequence because of it. Bosses need not be cranky because of your family, kids need not be monsters because of your job, and spouses need not be strangers because of your schedule.

The venerable Oprah Winfrey says that, “If you want your life to be better, you have to change the way you think”. Are you always finding yourself being torn and tugged between your obligations at work and your promises at home?

Maybe you can decide that it’s okay for you to be happy at both places and that each can compliment the other.

Now, can you have success at both places at once? I don’t know the answer to that question yet. But I do know that you can certainly choose to be happy at both work and home and that your happiness can begin at any moment you decide.