All sorts of external factors affect how we enjoy a job or find it fulfilling, but we also have to look at ourselves and be honest with ourselves about what we need from work and how we define success.
Self Worth
Often our issues at work centre on our comparison with others… who has had a raise or praise this month… there is often competition within the work environment which gives rise to self-judgement.
You could change job or even career but still have this sense of conflict or competition with your co-workers and then therefore with yourself. How well we do our work, and how we get rewarded for it connects to our sense of self worth.
As respecting yourself is the first step in respecting others, my feeling is that we need to ask ourselves whether we have found work that is in alignment with who we are and what we value. And we need to look inside ourselves and ask this question all the time.
From Experience
Once upon a time, I thought I'd found the ideal job… working on a small project within a large corporation, to raise spiritual and ecological awareness.
Creatively it had me on my toes and I was in an arena where I could make a difference to peoples lives and be paid well… but on top of the petty politics that beset and weakened the project from the start, the final straw was when the founders who had firmly jumped on board the green bandwagon bought me a ponyskin purse and antelope skin gloves for Christmas… it was so at odds with the ethos of our project, I realized that we were never going to be on the same page.
"Work shapes our sense of self," says Barbara Babkirk who runs Heart at Work. "Work is often the arena in which individuals explore larger issues in life. Therefore, attention to one's life journey is key to most work-related dilemmas."
Honoring Your Values
It does not matter whether you are a city banker or a volunteer in a shelter, your values are important and need to be aligned with the ethos and values of the company you work for. Sometimes there will be a degree of compromise, but essentially we should strive to acknowledge our own virtues and values and this will help us to connect and understand others, even when the other is a big corporation.
"Work lies at the centre of most adult lives," says Nick Williams, author of The Work You Were Born To Do. "One prevailing belief is that work is, on the whole, an activity that necessarily entails a degree of pain, boredom and suffering. It is something we have no choice over - we just have to do it."
In his book and his workshops, Nick points at a different approach: "a deeper part of us is calling us to let our work become a more complete expression of who we are and a more joyful activity in itself. Through our work we can express the spirit within us and allow our energies to flow out into the world. This is the true meaning and purpose of work - and it lies a full 180 degrees in opposition to the traditional economic and suffering view of it."
We Are What We Do
Work is a macrocosm of our lives - in it we see how we deal with relationships, power, creativity, time and our own fulfilment. Work can trigger us as much as our relationship with our partner or our mother as it ties in so deeply with our sense of self. Through our jobs, the universe gives us an infinite number of ways to wake up, get to know ourselves and realize our potential.
If we don't like what we see, then we need to make changes. Usually the changes that we need to make are of our own inner environment and our way of thinking, rather than necessarily our external environment. For sure, we might be in the wrong job, but equally we need to look at our work as an example of how we are in the world.
I made a decision to leave the corporate world which was mentally stimulating but not emotionally rewarding. I worked for a publishers where I helped other people write, where I encouraged other people on their spiritual path, but I realized that I was being a voyeur and that really I wanted to be doing what I encouraged others to do.
Now I am the writer, teaching yoga too. And I am my own boss.
These options aren't open to everyone however and many people thrive on the excitement of the work environment - everyone has to navigate their own way. Simply dropping out of office life and teaching yoga does not necessarily solve your issues around work.
There's a Hole in the Bucket
My friend Joe was a city banker, now a writer and musician. He said that he believed that money was what made you happy and he entered into a profession where it was 99% guaranteed, but he says "I felt like I got to the top of a huge mountain, I was depressed, I was overweight, I was in debt and at the peak of the mountain there was a little note saying ‘fooled you'."
We live in a society which puts material wealth and commodities at the top of our wish list over health, fulfilment and definitely way above spiritual nourishment. Yes our survival needs have to be met, but we also need to create a balance with the other aspects of our selves - the physical, emotional, mental, social, spiritual, creative - in fact all levels of our existence.
Personal Accountability
On a personal level we all know our demons… whether we procrastinate, find it hard to talk to the boss, do not like presenting our ideas, take credit for the work of others, bad mouth people behind their backs… and we all know in our heart of hearts how we can tackle these issues.
If you want to create change at work or if you want to create change within yourself, Barbara Babkirk feels that beyond creating a plan to succeed, we need to develop the capacity to wait and trust the timing, especially if it is different from what we had imagined.
"Allow fears and limiting beliefs to appear, yet not distract you and surrender the timeframe and outcome of your desire." Often our limitations come from our preconceptions - we create so much of a story about something or attach ourselves so much to the goal, that we do not see the new opportunities we are faced with and we are not thankful for the journey and transformation itself.
Resources
Tough Talk Made Easy: 101 Difficult Conversations and How to Have Them - Jenni Trent Hughes
Transform Your Life (Life Coaching) - Carole Gaskell
The Work You Were Born To Do - Nick Williams
The Now Habit: Overcoming Procrastination - Neil Fiore
Check out http://www.spiritualityatwork.com/ and www.barbarababkirk.com/index