Employee ID: Work As Self-Expression

IMYJOB: Week 2

If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that there are lots of ways to perceive work challenges. For some people impediments to being happy at work roll like water off a duck's back. For others, not so much. From obstacle to growth-opportunity, the ways we frame the world around is of our making and has real impact on the quality our life experience. The comments submitted by readers of this series give great illustration of this - ranging from (paraphrasing) "I love my job if not for all those irritating people I have to deal with", to "It IS our work to interact with each other".

But what IS your work? Is it part of your identity? Although there's a cliché that Americans live to work and Europeans work to live, in both equations work is somehow separate from life. Taking a clue from nature, all living things work and live. A tree could not be a tree without doing the work of being a tree (photosynthesis, etc.). While all other plants also conduct this work, the essential nature or treeness of the tree is what that work (photosynthesis) supports. The work supports the tree's essential nature, as our work supports ours.

Consider this example: when asked what his greatest work was, passion-driven workaholic, inventor, artist and renaissance-man Leonardo DaVinci responded, "Leonardo DaVinci". His sentiment contrasts with our modern demonization of identifying with work. I remember at a party asking someone what they did for work and being lambasted with indignation that such a question has anything to do with who they are suggesting that only people reminiscent of the greedy banker character Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street so identify with their work. But wait - if we are on a path of cultivating satisfaction in our lives, shouldn't EVERYTHING we do somehow be an expression of who we are?

Back to the tree example: imagine a tree that does less that 100% effort in photosynthesis - not much of a prognosis for survival. Suggesting there can be no conditions applied to how we embrace and exert in all venues of life, Martin Luther King Jr. said this:

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: "Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well."

Ego, status, self-conscious competition, and co-worker drama aside, King suggests - as many ancient wisdom traditions from the Bible to the Bhagavad-Gita do - that connecting full-heartedly to what we do is our real work. This concept is expressed by the term dharma meaning one's righteous duty (wikipedia).

This week's practice surfaces your insights about the identity-work connection. At any gathering of adults, often the first question exchanged is "what do you do for a living?" Set aside any conditioned guilt that this is the easiest way to break the ice with strangers, and take a new look to see just why that question yields so many pieces of information that allow us to learn about each other.

1. When held with fascination these conversations provide subtle clues that allow us to connect and establish common ground, and insight about un-familiar territory. Beyond job title, what do you learn about others by asking this question?


2. Notice what you surmise about other's education, interests, skills and social networks. How are these assumptions validated by further conversation? How do people's complexities surface? Can you allow people to be full human beings even in this conversation?


3. When you meet people you assume you have nothing in common with, how can you learn about and respect them? How do you connect with them even when you're not sure where to find common ground?


4. Do you get a sense that whomever you speak to is passionate for what they do? Do you perceive that they have interpersonal and executional challenges that arise in the course of "getting the job done"? Do they allow both passion and imperfections to coexist within this conversation? Do you?


5. What about outside passions? When you meet people who convey simply "working to make a living", do you find they typically have an outside passion? Do you find people with passions for work are the people with passions outside of work or do you find people who use passions outside of work to compensate for their lack of passion at work? BONUS: Would you say that passionate people are simply passionate no matter if the topic is work or leisure?

Wherever you go this week, don't forget to ask these questions of yourself as well. Notice how you express aspects of yourself by talking about work. Rather than allowing your work-centric conversations to be habitual venting or complaining, simply allow work to say something inherently powerful or meaningful about you and the people you meet. In embracing work as a form of self-expression, you practice an aspect of dharma integrating work into life and life into work.

Let me know how it goes.

Be well,

Tevis

IMYJOB - The Series:

• Jobs: Love The One You're With
• Black Holes & Illumination
• Employee ID: Work As Self-Expression
• Rut, Routine or Ritual?
• The Difference is YOU

Related Topics:

• Mind, Body, Spirit: Member Discussion
• The Good Life Neighborhood
• Emotional Wellness - get helpful tips in your inbox