Do You Understand Work?
I mean, do you really understand it? Most people look at work as a way to earn money so they can put a roof over their heads and food on their table. While that isn’t wrong, it is an understanding at the most simplistic level. (Just because you can add, subtract, multiply, and divide does not make you a mathematician.)
Many people I work with are very successful businessmen, but they just sort of stumbled into their profession. Some do what their father did. Sometimes, they got a summer job while in college, and the work reasonably resonated with them, so they ended up staying in that vocation after college, some with the same company where they did their summer internship. You might say that the flow of life just carried them along into that vocation. Or, perhaps it was “karma”. (In my case, I grew up in the household of a successful small commercial general contractor. I started working on construction projects in the summer when I was 12. I knew that when I went off to college, the last thing I wanted to do was be in the construction industry. I got an engineering degree and, after college, went to work in an industry where I could ply my engineering skills. While I was reasonably talented as an engineer, the vocation didn’t fit me, and so you know what I did? I went back into the family construction business. It's like I was “destined” to do it. Almost like I didn’t have a choice, I call that karma.) But my point remains that many, many of these successful businessmen also just kind of flowed into their vocation. Because they were well suited to it, they became successful. I suspect (many) other people have similar types of stories and settle into vocations where they also seem to “fit” reasonably well.
And then we grow.
And many of us get to the point where the challenges that are part of “job satisfaction” disappear, and we wake up one day and discover that the only thing we are getting out of our job is money. (Or maybe, worse, we got a job where we never really had much job satisfaction to begin with.) We never really had a plan that got us here; we just floated along on the flow of life. And we think that is just the way it is. So we do nothing. We wait around for the next decade (or two, or three) until our retirement account reaches some magic number, and then we “retire”. This is what Ben Franklin was talking about when he said, “Many people die at twenty-five and aren’t buried until they are seventy-five.”
No.
“Work is the only thing that brings substance to life” - Einstein. “All happiness depends on courage and work,” - Honore de Balzac. “Work is the best teacher of a man.” - Proverbs. These quotes are not all saying the same thing, but they are all suggesting that there is something to work for besides money for the roof over our heads and food for our table. If you are not connecting to what these three quotes are describing and wish you could, understand that bridging the gap is possible!
I facilitate peer group meetings, and in one of them, I once suggested that there was great value in writing in a journal. One of the very successful men sitting at the table, very much self-made and now wealthy, said, “If you think I am going to sit down every morning and write about my feelings, then you are crazy.” I thought this was fascinating because I never suggested what he might write about. My point is this. While I am not going to suggest here that you write in a journal (though it is an excellent idea if you have never done so), I am going to suggest something that seems likely to fire off something in you that I also do not intend, much like it did with my contractor friend. So, hear me out.
You need to jump in the pool to get wet.
You need to dive into an inner journey. The idea of an “inner journey” seems to many to be as scary as “writing about my feelings” was to that businessman. But he was missing the point, and if you find the “inner journey” scary, then you are, too.
We are all constantly on an inner journey. When we are doing our job, eating our dinner, taking a shower, sleeping, playing golf, whatever, we are also on an inner journey. We are never not on that journey. It's like the two fish that are talking, and the one is saying to the other, “What’s all this I hear about water? I’m not seeing water anywhere.” Our outer world experiences, especially in this article, our work, feed that inner journey all the time. When our job satisfaction wanes, it's because our inner world is no longer being fed with what it needs and because we are not listening to what it wants from us. Because we spend so much time engaged with our work, it is a driver of life satisfaction, not simply a source of money.
So, the idea of an inner journey is not something to be feared, and if it is scary, it is mainly because we don’t fully understand the concept. However, addressing an area of lack in our lives helps us understand what is really going on. If the leaves on the plant are turning brown from lack of water, you don’t spray the leaves, you water the roots.
With our two fish, if we want them to understand water, what might we do? We could pull them out of it and up into the air! How might you do that for yourself? Assuming you “get” that you are always on an inner journey, how do we get you that experience on an inner level? How do we get you to better “water the root”?
1 - Own it. Hopefully, you’ve connected with what I’ve shared and understand that if you want your current situation to change, you can benefit by embracing an inner journey, watering the root, to treat the areas of lack in your life or work (the browning leaves).
2 - Put your attention on it. The most powerful tool any of us has is awareness. And, only awareness can expand awareness. Turn inward and listen. Scripture says that god speaks to each of us in a still, small voice. (1 Kings 19:12) It comes in the gap between our thoughts. But we need our awareness tuned in for it. For most of us, learning to “listen” is a lifelong adventure that we never master, but no reason not to start now! (Your golf handicap may be 18, and you know you will never be a 1, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the golf or you shouldn’t play). When it comes to “listening”, everyone already knows how to do this. It is hard-wired into us. But we need to practice it to get more effective.
I have another metaphor I love for this process of connecting with our inner journey and “listening”. You are standing at the bottom of Niagara Falls with an umbrella. The water is pouring down all around you, constantly. It never stops. All you need to do to get wet is move the umbrella. The great thing about this metaphor is that if you are standing at the bottom of Niagara Falls with an umbrella, it is a massive effort to stay dry, to keep the umbrella upright, because of the power of the water. Most humans unintentionally work very hard trying to avoid their inner journey. They are like the person at the bottom of the falls, fighting to stay dry. No wonder they can’t wait for retirement! It just isn’t that hard to let go of the umbrella.
We have created tools and a map to help navigate this journey and expedite it. If you are interested, you can learn about them at www.whatsnextcourse.com. But the reality for us is that you already have all the tools you need, hard-wired in. You simply need to start exploring their use. All What’s Next does is speed up the process and help you avoid missing essential pieces.
If you found this issue helpful and want to hear more from Greg, be sure to subscribe to his podcast, Pants Around Ankles Prevention, where each episode delivers a punch of truth to help you wake up, gain perspective, and live with greater clarity and purpose. Listen and subscribe now on Apple Podcasts or YouTube.