This is what I did with my time.
Life is Long
Let’s skip way ahead to your final moments as a human. Your loving family surrounds you, there is no physical discomfort, you have lived many years and your spirit is calm. You are ready to transition to the next job. The future is unknown, but you are moving on with the knowledge that your life was well lived. You might wonder where your life of hard work went. Hopefully, part of your calm spirit is the result of all that you have accomplished. What you are really leaving that goes unsaid are the values you have demonstrated to your friends and family. People often note that you won’t be talking about work on your deathbed because it won’t matter anymore, but it is there as a part of your legacy. Since you have no more work to complete, your friends and family become the most important members of your experience.
Life Matters
What you do with your life as work matters. You may not have started with a plan. If you started working as a teenager, you learned early on that work had its ups and down. The values you learned from these early jobs benefitted you well past those days. These jobs are not usually resume bound, but they may have guided you to the opportunities you accepted early on in your work life. My earliest real job was as a summer activities counselor. It was super fun working with other teenagers and I learned more about alternative music that summer than I expected. And I can tie a mean lanyard. My work life was based on fun activities. Luckily, I knew that it was a special time. It was a great long summer.
Life Style
This takes a while to develop. Your work style might be stolen from someone else. If you work in a family business, you may have a relative that overshadows you until the day they retire. If you work in a large establishment, you might feel lost in the crowd. A smaller workplace might seem like the worst place to be your real self. Eventually your real persona will creep out at work and the more often this occurs, the more you act like you. When you see that you don’t get fired, or your work mates stop staring at you, the inside person takes over. Ignorance emboldens humans. Oddly, some people might like you more. Even more odd is the permission you give to others to be themselves. Being different in creative positions is a prerequisite. Nobody admires a cookie-cutter human.
Lifetime
This month, we explored work and its effect on us. Most humans work most of their lives. It does not need to feel like a sentence. But we can make it into a sentence. Avoid the prisons at all costs. But do take some time to close your eyes, place your hand on your heart, take those deep breaths and think about journalling descriptive words about who you want to take to work as you. If you have worked for any length of time, you know that you can change this person at every new job. Just show up with your hair combed differently, in those newly selected clothes, with that updated thought about who you are and see if this job seems less like work. That should continue to be the goal. Search for great work. Do fantastic work. Meet and support others who you come into contact with every day. The new goal is to have a positive impact on those who join you. That is the best work.
How would you describe your current job? How does your work affect your life? What words do you want your coworkers to use to describe you?
