Teachers experience an enormous amount of stress, with almost a third saying that teaching is a “very or extremely stressful” profession (Borg & Riding, 1991; Kyriacou, 2001). Job stress is often cited as a major reason why teachers leave the profession after just three years (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003). Factors that contribute to work stress include a variety of factors, including role overload, disruptive students, overly demanding parents, lack of support from school management, poor relationships with colleagues, and high-stakes testing of students (Kyriacou, 2001; Manthei, Gilmore, Tuck, & Adnair, 1996; Montgomery & Rupp, 2005). It is no secret that highly motivated teachers can help realize the goals of education, but reforms in the education sector tend to reduce teachers' autonomy over their work. Educational policies such as the creation of a national curriculum, the implementation of pre-packaged curriculum materials, and the development of an accountability system have led teachers to have less control over how they should teach in schools (Bowe, Ball, & Gold, 1992; Connell, 1995; Mok, 2003). Teachers' workload also increases without taking into account the time needed to complete them. Non-instructional tasks such as documentation, report writing, after-school activities and school public relations have overshadowed the time available for instructional and educational tasks (Ball, 2003; Hargreaves, 2003; Smyth el at., 2000). These bureaucratic reforms pose major challenges to work-life balance and erode a sense of identity and commitment, especially when teachers find themselves in the stressful dilemma of having to balance the demands of their families with their career progression (Fink, 2003 ; Gardner & Williamson, 2006). Furthermore,...... half of the paper... commitment, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: the self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 546–557. Sheldon, K. M., Kasser, T., Smith, K., & Share, T. (2002). Personal goals and psychological growth: Testing an intervention to improve goal achievement and personality integration. Journal of Personality, 70, 5–31. Smyth, J., Dow, A., Hattam, R., Reid, A., & Shacklock, G. (2000). The teacher's work in a globalized economy. London: The Falmer Press.van der Doef, M., & Maes, S. (1999). The control (support) model of job demand and psychological well-being: A review of 20 years of empirical research. Work and Stress, 13, 87–114. Zounhia, K., Chatoupis, C., Amoutzas, K., & Hatziharistos, D. (2006). Greek physical education students' reasons for choosing teaching as a career. Studies in physical culture and tourism, 13(2), 103.