Work as Part of the Human Experience — Remember you were born for this
One of the secrets you were never told is that work doesn’t suck; you just need to find the right work for you
Remember, you are a human and part of the human experience is work. Part of the shared human experience is not having it all figured out. You were meant to do good work in this world.
You were designed to find something valuable to receive and something valuable to give during your time in this place.
You may not be best suited to show up to a cubicle every day dressed in hundreds of dollars of fancy attire and high-end brand names. Perhaps for you, you work best in your sweatpants at the dining room table after a cool morning run to warm up your creative mind.
Work provides us with consistency, productivity, the chance to learn and to understand what it means to do good work after messing up a few times first. Work allows us to use our time and attention and energy with something which may not only positively affect our lives but also the lives of those around us.
We feel better about ourselves when we have the chance to participate in good work and endeavor upon shared good endeavors.
In the world of psychology, we often toss around terms for the most primitive needs for humans to find some little sense of pleasure or happiness in this life, and guess what… they can all be found through the active participation in doing good work.
Purpose. Autonomy. Competence. Mastery. Connection. Community.
If we can strive to achieve these things, hypothetically speaking, we will be striving towards our greatest actualized sense for true, inextinguishable happiness in life. Look no further than Hello Monday with with Jessi Hempel and her slew of wonderful guests or the work of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Institute Podcast: The Science of Happiness to explore these concepts more in-depth with yourself. Intuitively, if and when we give ourselves the time to think about these things long enough, it all starts to make quite a lot of sense, even without needing all the science and data to back it up.
I’m sure Mike Rowe, who has become the most well-known voice for America’s working class, can tell us straightforward just how valuable work can be and that we have all these things to gain (and more) from participating in work. If you spend enough time with yourself while trying new things, stepping in and showing up, participating in work, you begin to realize that yes in fact, you do appreciate gaining a sense of purpose, autonomy, competence, mastery, connection and community.
We humans thrive when we live and work within the context of a tribe. Alone we are unsafe, insecure, and at risk of danger in this world. We are better together, and the whole is more than the sum of its parts. We work together as a unit, a family, a community with shared similar motives and beliefs, as well as separate and unique qualities we hold as individuals, but we are still better together because of it.
No single and alone color of the rainbow would seem all that magical compared to the entire spectrum of colors banning together in a familiar image that calls upon inspiration and imagination. Red alone doesn’t seem that interesting and blue just seems boring by itself but take all the colors together and we have a picture that elicits our awe each time we have the luck to observe its wizardry.
I encourage you to spend more time with people in your life in person in equal (if not much greater) amounts to that which you normally spend online. Humans were built for in-person experiences. Connections online allow us great fortune as a tool to help us communicate globally and immediately, but no amount of time online will suffice for what our hearts, minds, and bodies truly crave and require.
Technology may allow us to reach distant lands and be exposed to experiences around the world, but may we allow these sparks of inspirational learning put forth a desire for us to capture those moments in person as well, both locally and globally. We cannot dismiss or ignore the history behind our human physiology and biochemistry that works with the natural world and the people within our primordial village.
While we may distract ourselves by the tangible fact that we can survive alone, we can’t deny that we’ll never thriveuntil we are together with others. Just consider why holidays, rituals and family or social gatherings are held in such reverie.
I encourage you to lay down any ounce of guilt, shame or despair or pressure that was handed to you before, and to instead keep an open mind with open ears and open eyes to take hold of the gift to recognize it is within your full power and discipline to continue onward to learn and discern all future voices and opinions, messages you receive in your life.
Take hold of the powerful filter that resides inside your conscious mind and never mind the filters which may reside inside the camera lens and photos we share online. Listen to the messages that restore your power and positive energy, learn to ignore, and dismiss negative energies that may have held you back in the past.
And this may take some time to grow through, as many messages with negative intentions can feel deceptively satisfying at first but end up leaving us off much worse. Take a close look at the ideas and information you’ve been exposed to and regularly consume. Question those messages, interrogate their motives, and decide for yourself their worth for the value they have to improve your life for the better.
Whether online or offline, take time to recognize the values of the individuals and entities, organizations, and company products you use to find what lies behind their messages or marketing. Whether it be a person, a place, or a product, be mindful of the message behind the words and what that message has led you to believe about yourself or the world around you. You can find good work to complete within topics you enjoy and appreciate.
No, you don’t have to hate your work as televised as this perspective has come to be, and easy as it is is to assume for your own mental framework. This is actually a deceptive decrepit pit of pessimism that suggests you have no control, no autonomy, no competence at work; so rather than taking a stereotypical “clock in clock out” job, you might end up taking on that perspective with any kind of work you find yourselves in.
Please be on high-alert for this contagious and pernicious pessimistic view of work; and if you do happen to find it living inside inside of you, do all you can to fight it off like the sick cold and bedridden flu it can be. Don’t let the negative energies of others infect your will or your hope or hold you back in life to keep you from blossoming into all you could possibly ever want to be.
Try not to run away from fear or vulnerability.
These are part of the human experience as well, though usually just an internalized construct built by inner insecurities, trust issues and feeling unsure about our future. We can’t be perfect. We won’t be perfect. We will endure scars along the way.
Don’t get scared and upset if you end up falling down and scraping your knee. Don’t blame others, but rather acknowledge it as just part of the climb, part of the journey we all go through.
Sometimes we get lost in the woods and find ourselves as we find our way back home, that’s part of the adventure. Enable and empower your own physical powers to pick yourself up or reach out for help when and if you truly need it, but relish in the times we can get up on our own, brush off the dirt and laugh it off, only to keep charging forward.
That’s part of the fun. As James Clear and many others now have proved, you too, can seek to improve by 1% each day as you strive for continuous improvement. Just be 1% better every day than you were the day before and you’re headed in the right direction, onward and upward. Celebrate in that 1% improvement and let it ground you as you fly further along your journey. Allow the journey to ease your worries, self-doubts and crticisms. Trust yourself, and trust the process.
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