Meaningful Work
Tuesday, April 28, 2009A colleague. Terry Seamon, recently posed these questions: Is there a higher purpose to our work? Can our work be a path to spiritual development? What lies at “the heart of meaningful work,” he asks. This got me thinking…
The “meaning of work” can be gauged only in the context of the meaning of all else. Given the way most of us work today, this sets up a great tension and can generate considerable anxiety even in people who love their work.
Many of the highly accomplished professionals and executives whom I coach struggle to negotiate a peace between two warring forces in their lives. Call this epic battle: Life vs. Livelihood.
Facing mountains of demands on multiple fronts puts considerable existential pressure on finding or affirming meaning — on the job and on the home front.
For people whose occupational endeavors take a prominent place in their lives, work unabashedly strives for dominance against all comers.
The importance you derive from your job and the status you hold among your colleagues or customers competes for the attention asked of you by your family and friends.
The stimulation of the intellectual challenges offered by the problems you must solve, the complexities you must negotiate, the multiple interests you must deftly juggle — all these dwarf most any conversation or mundanely irritating concern emanating from the home front.
The demands on your attention and time, the demands for your significant brain power — explicitly stated or implicitly implied by your employer or clients — seem to trump interests from all other constituencies.
The potential rewards of success from the workplace, then, seem so justifiable in terms not only of your efforts expended, but in support of the other sacrifices you made to obtain them. Miss your daughter’s dance recital to attend a meeting or finish a report? Well, you’ll buy her a closet full of tutus when that bonus check clears!
Work can be as seductive as it is demanding. Much of the modern knowledge worker’s angst can be traced to values competition and confusion.
It is normal and natural to hold competing values. It is equally important to bring those conflicts into the light of day and to sort them out with an open mind, clear eye, and honest heart.
In working with executives in many walks of life, I’ve seen them discover that many of the “irreconcilable differences” in values is often the result of a false dichotomy — having a sense of having to choose this or that.
With honesty in valuation, clarity in prioritizing and boundary-setting, and discipline in execution, many apparently competing values can find reasonable co-existence, even productive and cooperative reconciliation for a much more harmonious, meaningful life.