5 life-changing tactics to improve your work life

Life is quite the teacher. In April I wrote a blog about my lessons with impatience as I recovered from knee surgery. There is so much to learn when you aren’t where you want to be. 

My knee has changed my life. In so many ways.

Which got me thinking. Of metaphors. Because that is the best way to describe this process of finding work that matters.

You have heard me talking about the importance of building a foundation, just like a house. What we really want to do is decorate the place. But imagine what would happen if you didn’t have a basement or supporting beams. 

Work that fits for us always begins with us. And who we are. That is the foundation.

Don’t worry, I say. We will get to the decorating part. The part where we find that career that makes us want to leap out of bed in the morning. 

Like all good metaphors, there is so much to be learned when we make those connections between seemingly disparate parts of our lives.

Here is how my knee can help you on your path to finding your dream job:

1.         Be selective about who you listen to

After about 6 weeks of rehab, my knee was not doing what it was supposed to do. Bend. Well, technically it bent, just not that much. I began the process of digging for what was happening. A degree in anatomy would have been handy.

I asked a lot of questions. I got a lot of responses, opinions and advice. There was none that were off the mark; all were full of caring.

I went to the Internet. That’s where it got a little wild. “The thing that helped me was all that walking.” The next one said don’t walk. What on earth do you do with that?

I was an eager patient. I did everything the physio told me. And not much changed. I went to a second physio. A chiropractor. An acupuncturist. A massage therapist.

They all offered ideas, some of which wonderfully built off of another. I fine tuned the exercise program. I discarded some ideas and added new ones. Some of what I was told made perfect sense and some did not.

Ultimately, I had to pay attention to what made sense for me.

When it comes to your career, you will find lots of opinions. You may even solicit them. Not all of it will make sense for you. Listen. Check it out.

Most of all – listen to yourself! Here’s a quote I saw this week about listening to yourself:

Don’t forget to remember that the truth comes in whispers….after we have shut out all of the other voices around us. Be still.

Unknown Author

2.         Follow your own pace

As much as I willed my knee to bend, it wasn’t happening. I had an idea that I needed to push harder. I did this for a long time. Not much changed.

I have seen this before. If something isn’t working, I push. I have seen this in others who are in work that doesn’t work for them and what do they do? Try harder. Negate their own misery.

What I was experiencing was the body giving me some strong messages. I wasn’t paying attention.

What I had to find was my own rhythm. What worked for me.

When it comes to creating a happier worklife, there may be a desire to be there already. You may be a square peg fitting itself into a round hole. The idea is that you stop jamming that peg.

Beyond the fear, how can you find your own pace, the one that allows you to find your place?

3.         There’s more going on than meets the eye

Often I hear people saying that they “just” need to find a new job. Then they find another job and after the excitement has died down, they find themselves unsatisfied.

During my healing process, I was told that mechanically my knee could bend. In fact, during the surgery, the surgeon bent the knee to full flexion. So what was going on?  The answer isn’t really clear.

For sure what the trained professionals know is that it has to do with muscles and tendons and tissues and the brain?

The brain? What was explained to me is the brain is anticipating pain, after a long period of time with pain, and it is sending messages not to bend.

A lot more going on than you might think.

The same with your work life. When you are dissatisfied at your job and want to make a change, what is happening is so much more.

I heard this week about a study of people who lost their jobs either by quitting or getting fired, no one wished they could get their old job back.

How I see this is a person is ready for a change. For a change to be in the direction you want to go, you need to think about that direction. The more you are strategic about where you want to go, the more you will experience satisfaction at work. There probably is some mathematical formula in there.

4.         Work hard; rest hard

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Remember the line about music and how it is mostly made up of rests? The space in between is just as important as what it surrounds.

Resting is so underrated. In my world. Pushing hard is the answer. My knee needed to be kept moving. I began physio the day after my surgery. When I came home, I was exercising every 2 hours.

I was also told about the importance of putting the leg up, regularly icing and being mindful of how much I walked.

Work and rest. So it is when you are looking at work that matters to you. Just as important as doing the legwork of exploring who you are and what you want and looking for your place in the work world, it is also vital to take a break.

Make it fun!

What an amazement to me is when I am in the midst of fun and an idea arises to solve my problem!

Taking work and rest both seriously is quite the concept.

5.         Experience the dejection and keep moving

Photo by Hanson Lu on Unsplash

In my recovery, I did a lot of the right things. Still, they was no significant change. I was discouraged. Big time.

In those moments, because I didn’t know what else to do, I kept doing the exercises.

Then the feeling changed because feelings do. And my knee felt better because it was doing what it was supposed to do.

The discouragement factor arises when we are in the middle of an important change. You will find this happens when you don’t know what to do for the work dilemma.

What you may notice is you are frustrated with your work scene but you have no idea what to do.

The answer is: keep moving. Keep moving in a forward motion. Seek out people who can help you. Look for books, websites, ideas and even metaphors for your situation. Ask a lot of questions to others and yourself. 

There will be an answer.

Was there a life-altering event that happened in your life? What did it teach you? I would love to hear from you. Send me an email message here.

The Gift of Impatience

Patience. On the wall in the physiotherapy room, I spotted the word emblazoned near the ceiling.

The word has tailgated me my entire life. Sometimes as a compliment and sometimes as a taunt.

But mostly my life has been a dance with its opposite.

Impatience is familiar. Even after mindfulness training and the Eckhardt Tolle class, I find it hard to stay in the here and now.

I recognize the trait in a client. She wants a job that isn’t dreadful. She longs to find work that excites her. She wants to quit her job immediately. Being unemployed feels a lot better than this.

I remember that feeling. When I was 20 years old and 5 months pregnant, I woke in the middle of a night dreading the day ahead of me. My work was a series of routine paper pushing, doing all necessary details to clear shipments through customs. I never saw the goods; everyday I saw the same 5 people. Nice people. The same people.

I was in a hands-on learning environment finding out that I was quite challenged to do repetitive work. I felt like a part of me was dying. For a long time before my middle-of-the-night terror, I had a strong urge to quit. I resisted the desire. I tried to emulate the other people in the office. They had done it for years. What was wrong with me?

I tried to motivate myself with pep talks and apple fritters and a fresh perspective.

Some of it worked. For a while.

What I was discovering about myself was I didn’t do very well with routine tasks. Especially repetition. So I changed the routine. As much as I could.

So when my client talked about her grim work scene, I nodded. I remembered my own desire to throw up my hands. What I didn’t tell her was my solution the morning after my abrupt awakening, was to hand in my resignation.

I was young then, having no regard to what I would be doing for the last 4 months of my pregnancy or if someone would even hire a pregnant woman. My patience had worn out.

I didn’t tell my client about how I solved my problem because she had to find her own solution and there are lots of ways to solve a problem other than walking out. 

One of them is to listen to the wisdom that impatience can each. Resisting the force of wanting to do something right now and sit with the discomfort of impatience is a great tool. Much more mature than my impulse when I quit my job.

This year, in my life, my body – specifically my knee – is teaching me about patience. At the end of January, I had knee replacement surgery. Physiotherapy begins within 24 hours of the surgery.

Seven days after surgery, I am in the physiotherapy department. For 7 days I have bent and straightened my leg every 2 hours, pushing myself further than my knee wants to go. I am a model patient.

My degree of bend is measured. 55 degrees.

Six weeks later, my knee is at 101 degrees, an increase of 1 degree over the previous week. A plateau they say.

Even though I have done the exercises faithfully. And pushed hard each day.

In considering my frustration, I realize it is excitement about getting the bend back in my leg that propelled me towards the surgery. I was ready to move. And the fact was that I could not.

I was feeling quite impatient with the process. As I considered my options, I understood that I could not be anywhere other than where I was. As much as I wanted the knee to bend, it did not. How exactly was this exercising helping? 

I started thinking about my impatience companion. All of my experience in life so far with it has led me to this definition – impatience is about being in a place where I don’t want to be. 

All those years ago when I was frustrated with my customs clearance job, I definitely did not want to be there.

By definition, impatience is a lack of patience. But is it something by itself? Does it have something to teach us? 

The biggest trouble with impatience is it is such an uncomfortable feeling. Irritability. Exasperation. Annoyance. Big feelings. There is an immediate desire to do something, just to get rid of the feelings. One of the hardest things to do is to befriend it.

What I noticed when I looked at little harder was there was not much I could do about the situation. No matter how hard I wished it to be different. What I then saw was a deep desire. I longed to move freely. I longed for Zumba class.

The well of desire was primal. Innately, humans need to move. 

We want to create, contribute, expand, enjoy, experience.

Could I look at my impatience in a new way? As a driving force rather than a limiting feeling?

To think about what it is that I truly want.

I was so caught up in doing, I was far removed from being. It is my beingness in the world where my well of desires resided. It was time to regroup. The first stop was acceptance.

As much as I wanted it to be different, my knee had limited movement. 

When I think about my client who was feeling the agitation to be somewhere other than where she was, I know the road that brought her to me was paved with many desires. Somehow she found a side road, one full of obligations and what the world wanted her to be.

Her impatience is what fuelled her to find some other way of leading her life. Her side road had come to a dead end. She was ready to accept that she could not continue doing what she was doing.

Her impatience brought her here. As uncomfortable as it was, it pushed her away from doing what she had always been doing and into new territory.

We are on the cusp of spring where the light of day and night is equal, where the plants are awakening. I am thinking about seeds and the mystery of what comes up from the ground, how a plant pushes its way through unlikely places. My impatience is like that, a seemingly unlikely place where beauty arises.

Review - The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters

"This wise, stirring book argues that the search for meaning can immeasurably deepen our lives and is far more fulfilling than the pursuit of personal happiness."

The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters emphasizes that our search for meaning can be found all around us, right here and right now. Amid compelling research and thought-provoking stories, Emily Esfahani Smith delves into how we create meaning in our lives.

In conducting the research for her book, Emily Esfahani Smith found four themes that arose from her conversations with people living meaningful lives and those who were still searching as well as psychologists who defined what it means to lead a meaningful life. The four pillars of meaning are: belonging, purpose, storytelling and transcendence.

Belonging:

What Smith found was that belonging is the most important driver of meaning. Belonging encompasses the need to "feel understood, recognized and affirmed by our friends, family members and romantic partners." When people feel like they belong, they are in relationships based on mutual care and have frequent pleasant interactions with others.

Purpose: 

Purpose has 2 dimensions: it is a goal towards which we are always working and it involves a contribution to the world. Smith discusses research about how people can find purpose at work by adopting a service mindset. So it doesn't matter what a person actually does; the person who finds meaning in their work see their work as a way to help others.

Storytelling:

"Our storytelling impulse emerges from a deep-seated need all humans share: the need to make sense of the world." In looking at the patterns of people leading meaningful lives, what they all share is to tell redemptive stories, where their suffering has some meaning. 

Transcendence:

When people are in transcendent states, they have a sense of their own self washing away with all its petty concerns. As well, they feel deeply connected to other people and everything that exists in the world. She describes the Overview Effect, what happens when astronauts who go into space and look back at the planet. Astronaut Jeff Ashby says, "You realize that the planet is really small. You could circle it in just 90 minutes. With one or two minor exceptions, you don't see the boundaries between countries.... So I got this sense of connectedness - that we are all connected in some way."

In the chapter titled, Cultures of Meaning, Smith talks about meaning related to work. She remarks on a Gallup poll where 70% of people identified that they were not engaged in their work. This is described as "uninvolved, uncommitted, and unenthusiastic." When people do identify meaning in their work, research has shown it provides a powerful motivativing force.

In addition, having meaningful work has dramatic consequences on health.  Psychologists speculate that people leading meaningful lives take better care of themselves.

The Power of Meaning is a captivating read. With a perfect blend of stories, science and good writing, the book offers a lot to ponder. 

Great advice about work from Einstein

“Can you tell me the work that I should do?”

For work, like so many of life’s biggest challenges, there is a deep desire for the answer to be quick and easy.

Attached to that desire is a buried thought inside of us that we missed something or somebody else knows the answer better. 

After looking at the problem for many years and from many angles, I believe our bewilderment about work is because of how we look at the situation. Or don’t.

I read a quote some time ago that helped me look at this in a different way.

The quote has been attributed to Einstein though it seems there is some question about who actually said it. Still, I believe Einstein would have been the perfect person to give us a good view on problem solving.

“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about the solution.”

Really? 92% of the time considering a problem?

We want the answer and he is suggesting we hold off?

When we are stymied about being in work that sucks and how to find one that doesn’t, the desire to find a solution is intense. We want the answer. We want it now.

Humans are great at finding solutions. In a way we are problem solving machines! Try an experiment when you have a dilemma and ask people what to do.

I have done this from time to time. I get many different ideas, often ones I would never have considered.

Which is great. Except.

Except often we don’t really know what the problem is.

I’ll give you an example.

I met with a young man who was new to town; his first question to me was, “Can you tell me where there are job openings in town?”

I immediately thought of the sign I read in a window that morning. “There is a dishwashing position at the deli.” 

His shoulders fell. He stopped smiling. 

Clearly, not the solution he wanted.

How he was looking at the problem is that he was broke and needed money as soon as possible. And he thought job postings was the solution. If it was, the dishwashing position would have solved the problem.

What if – he was asking the wrong question?

On some level, even though he wasn’t saying it, the problem was more complex. He had a dream which brought him to this town, a dream of living close to nature and getting strong. As he started thinking more, he understood his dream was all about experiencing joy. 

After we talked about the idea that 20% of jobs are ever posted and employers are looking for a good fit, he understood his response to the dishwasher position. 

He would have been a terrible fit! 

He could also see that the problem was so much more than getting money as soon as possible. 

The problem was he had no idea of how to find the right fit. He didn’t even think that way. Up to then, his thinking was – get a job and hopefully it works out. That’s how he knew dishwashing wasn’t for him. He had done it before.

The story is familiar. Jumping onto a solution before really understanding the problem takes us down strange side roads. 

And like Einstein (or whoever) implied, we don’t spend enough time thinking about the problem. 

That is especially true when we are thinking about our work. If we think of it as a problem, it needs to have 55 out of 60 minutes of our time before we can even begin looking at the solution. 

What does this mean? It means looking at some age-old questions.

2.       Who are you?

Gaining a good understanding of your uniqueness, your strengths, your gifts and talents is the best starting point. You like working with people. How can you imagine that? One-on-one? In groups? Selling? It helps to get specific. There is a reason why career exploration programs begin with the first step – Know Yourself.

2.       How do you want to spend your brief time you have on this planet?

Getting in touch with your desires and what you care about is where the spark resides. This is what will get you up and keep you going on those days when life feels draggy. Knowing your spark will also connect you with your tribe and workplace where you will feel understood. And it so happens that spark is what employers are looking for, too.

3.        What is your purpose?

What is important enough that you want to be committed to? Your purpose can be one that extends your entire lifetime. More likely it will change. When I became a mother, it became quite clear to me what my purpose was: do whatever I could to help these people soar. After my children were launched, my purpose shifted. That time in between was a time of soul searching and asking myself a lot of questions. If you are going through a transition, know that it is a rich and fertile time even though it may feel like the rug has been wrenched away.

4.       What makes you feel alive? 

Know what invigorates you and makes you jump out of the bed in the morning. This is always connected to your strengths. Once you get clear about your strengths, this is the time to get some ideas from others. Leading a conversation with your strengths and then asking for any ideas that would help you allows the recipient to be creative in their responses to you.  They may have a thought about a job opening or they may know a person who might be a connection for you. Or other gems to invigorate your quest.

5.       How can I help?

People want to help. One of the key pillars of having a life with meaning according to Emily Esfahani Smith, author of The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters is transcendence. Transcendence is having a deep connection with others and everything else in the world. That connection happens through our contributions to each others’ lives. When you ask yourself how you can help, your own life feels more meaningful.

These questions are great starting places for defining the problem. What has happened to me by considering my problem in a deeper way is I have seen that what I thought was the problem was not at all.

I think there is a reason that the quote resonated with me. When I have got a clear picture of my problem, the solution has come easier and faster. 

I am all for efficiency. 

What do a snowstorm, zoo and work have in common?

Finding your place.

I will begin with the snowstorm.

On January 11th this year, Portland, Oregon experienced an epic snowfall. In city more likely to experience rain than snow, the one foot of snow resulted in many closures. One of them was the Portland zoo.  (See the video at the end of this article.)

Inside the zoo, the keepers filmed animals playing in the snow.

One of the animals, a year-old polar bear named Nora who has always lived in captivity, is seen rolling and burying herself as she experiences more snow than she ever has in her life.

She looks delighted. 

What does this have to do with work?  A couple of things.

When you are in your element, you just know what to do.

Watching her roll around, we understand Nora knows in all her cells the nature of snow. It is as if she had done this her entire life.

When you find the work you were born to do, you will have a reaction like the polar bear. That spirit of delight and feeling alive.

When people discover the work that engages them in the right way, there is a recognition, almost on a cellular level. The work will be attached to your gifts and talents so there is an innateness about what you do.

Play is how we learn

All of the animals shown in the Portland Zoo share an instinct of curiousness about the snow. Their curiosity melds with playfulness as they enter into a new world. They run through the snow, roll their bodies in it and fling it in the air. 

When you are launching into work that fits for you, you will experience a spirit of curiosity, wanting to learn more about it and immersing yourself in all of its facets.

There will be a sense of play, as you have probably heard from others – this is so much fun, you would do this even if you weren’t being paid. 

Anything new includes a leap of faith

As I watched the elephant coming out of its enclosure and being exposed to the snow, there was a slight hesitation. I imagine it wondering what happened. And then off it went into the new world.

The idea of moving into something new in your life, even if it is something that is exciting has an element of stepping out of the familiar into newness. There is a time between leaving and entering where you have no idea what is before you.

Even if you have weighed the pros and cons, created a safety net and planned for potential obstacles, there will likely be a point where you have doubts and fears. And you will take the step anyway because you know that between you and where you want to go, this step has to be taken.

When I work with clients who are at this spot, I think of the Hero’s Journey, a mythic depiction of what humans experience again and again in our lives. The Hero reaches a point where a choice is made and there is no going back.