你真的陷入了工作的牢笼吗？

    陈教授认为，我们习惯于把自己的经历和社会的大趋势联系起来，公司可以充分利用这一点。总统竞选活动中就有这样的实例，奥巴马总统和罗姆尼州长都试图从同样的数据中挖掘出不同的结论，去说服选民我们比四年前过得更好或更差。“公司领导者和政客们一样，都应该把现状和事情原本可能的发展道路相比较。”陈教授说。“要的效果就是，‘也许我们没有达到理想状况，但我们一直在进步。’”

    他进一步指出，苹果公司（Apple）就是这方面的专家，在股东大会上总是强调公司取得了多大进步。当然，苹果公司已经成功地打造了一系列新产品，一个比一个更新潮，并以此为基础编织了多年的美妙故事。只要他们宣称进步，人们就会信服。

    我们作为员工和消费者就是这种宣传的受众。那也不是吹牛，而是实实在在的说法，陈教授说：“人们想要相信现在比过去好，将来又会比现在好。”

    不过贝克尔认为，我们不能指望工作总是让人欢欣鼓舞。那是一种常见的错误想法。“快乐只能在大脑中暂时存在，只是一种情绪，只能持续很短的一段时间。”如果人们想要持续的快乐，通常会大失所望，继而导致挫折感，进一步远离快乐的目标。

    我们的大脑真正想要的是满足感，那是一种对稳定而愉悦的状态的持续追求。贝克尔认为，突然爆发的快乐只是向那个目标行进中的一步而已。

    所以，如果我们重新思考自己的过去，把不良经历放在长远的背景中考虑，给自己的工作感受设定现实的目标，那些牢笼栅栏也许就没那么难以逾越了。如果你还无法解脱，依然觉得受困其中，觉得心情郁闷，你就需要改变现状，开始制定一个跳槽计划。

    贝克尔说：“我猜想，我们其实从来没有自己想象中陷得那么深。”

    Employers can use our tendency to view our experience as part of a larger trend to their advantage, Chen says. You can see this happen in the presidential race, as both President Obama and Governor Romney try to cut different pieces from the same data points to convince voters that we are either better or worse off than we were four years ago. "What leaders at companies as well as politicians should do is frame things in terms of where things could go," Chen says. "Frame it as, 'Maybe we're not in the situation we wanted to be, but we have been improving.'"

    Apple (AAPL) is a master of this, he adds. The company's shareholder meetings always emphasize how far the company has come. It probably helps that Apple has crafted a solid, chronological narrative based on a string of new devices, each one flashier than the next. People believe Apple when it cries progress.

    We -- employees, consumers -- eat that stuff up. Not hot air, but substantive claims, Chen says. "People would like to believe that things are better than they were and will be better than they are."

    Ironically, that doesn't mean that we should aim to feel ecstatic about our jobs all the time, Becker says. That's a common misconception. "Happiness is a temporary state in the brain, it's only an emotion, so it can only last for a short period of time." When people shoot for constant happiness, they often fall short, which makes them feel like they've failed, spinning them further away from their goals.

    What our brains really like is contentment -- a sustained push towards a steady, pleasant state. Bursts of happiness, Becker says, are merely movement towards that endpoint.

    So perhaps, when we retool how we think about where we have been, put the potency of our negative experiences in perspective, and give ourselves realistic goals about how we should feel at work, those prison bars might start to come down. If they don't, though, employees who feel truly trapped and unhappy might need to buck the status quo and start laying down a plan to make a break for it.

    "I would guess," Becker says, "we're never really as trapped as we think we are."