hWho do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to do when you grow up? These two questions are often confused, but they deserve to be answered separately. If you'd like, take a few moments to answer each of these questions on a separate sheet of paper. Transforming your work life has to do with moving what you do for a living in the direction of who you want to be. The activities you undertake to earn your living make up a major part of your life. Dissatisfaction with your work can put your health in jeopardy. For more than twenty years, I've been working with people who are discontented with their work. I've found that the sources of discontent with jobs and work have to do with the way that your actual experience (what you do every day) diverges from your life purpose or calling (what you sense deep inside that you need to and want to be doing). Discontent with the work you do can have three major sources: the work itself, the work environment (people and place), and your attitudes toward the work or the work environment. Each source of discontent is described below so you can look at the sources of your discontent with your work. What activities describe the work you do every day? What satisfaction do you derive from doing these activities? If you'd like, make a list of each thing you do at work and how much joy or satisfaction you get from doing it on a scale of one to ten. On another sheet of paper, list some things that you would like to be doing that you are not now doing. Compare these two lists. Now, from a gut level, give your satisfaction level with your work activities a summary score on a 0-100 scale. A score of 10-60% indicates that your satisfaction needs to be improved. I've discovered that people often choose work environments that are familiar rather than satisfying. Any group you join can begin to seem like your family of origin. Bosses can seem like one or both parents, particularly if you feel dependent on your job in the same way you were dependent on your parents. Before you beat yourself up for creating work situations that remind you of your family of origin, remember that these setups occur primarily for the purpose of learning and healing. Your work environment may bring up old unresolved feelings and issues from your family of origin so that you can look at them and heal them. Your life experiences may have led you to adopt attitudes toward work that interfere with your discovering who you want to be and what you want to do when you grow up. Healing from these dysfunctional attitudes and beliefs (those that don't work for you) requires first identifying them and then creating experiences that will allow you to replace them with functional attitudes and beliefs. One example of a dysfunctional attitude toward your work is "I'll never be good at anything, so why try?" When someone who wants to get something done observes this attitude in someone from whom assistance is expected, she or he might call that person lazy. Many people have been called lazy by parent figures. Some believe that they are lazy. However, I have yet to meet a lazy person. I have met many who are so filled with repressed anger at what they have been forced to do in their lives that they have given up looking for what they really want to do. Inside all of us is a passion for being and expressing who we really are. Growing up is accomplished when you are able to let go of (heal) the repressed feelings left over from past events and let yourself feel your own energy, your own power, and your own passion for what you love to do and be. Are you bored with your work or the people with whom you work? Do you hate your work or the people with whom you work? These feelings give you the energy for transformation if you let them move through your body. The source of transformation is inside you. The inspiration and motivation for transformation is inside you. Your attitudes toward your work are important indicators of your progress in transformation. The world of work offers you learning and healing opportunities. It's up to you to navigate your way through, step by step. Feelings of discontent indicate a need for change. What is your attitude toward change itself? Do you hate where you are, but feel powerless in moving toward what you want? Often, this is because you are afraid to admit to yourself exactly what you really do want. You may think there is nothing inside, that others have purpose and passion, but not you. This is not true. If you'd like, take a moment and write down who you are jealous of and why. Also list what others are doing that you envy. These are clues. While you're at it, make a list of your reasons for not following your intuition, your deep desires, and your passion. These reasons usually have to do with past family rules and roles and pronouncements by specific authority figures in your life. Don't buy that there is nothing inside. Get help in getting through the blocks to taking one step, then another toward your "right livelihood." The fact that you are reading this article shows that the time is right for you to come out into the light of your own willingness to take steps toward the work that's right for you. Right now is as good a time as any to whisper to yourself the kind of work you really want to do. You don't have to do anything about it yet. For a moment, just bask in the energy of aligning with your own passionate desires. Can you initiate the process of changing your attitudes, your work environment, or your work itself with a dash of humor and good will? Or do you fear that your survival is threatened by moving toward what you really want in your life? If you go into survival mode, do you become grim and desperate? It's okay to feel those feelings, and to move on to others. Feelings of desperation can be replaced by feelings of excitement and joy when you learn to trust the change process itself. When you realize that your present work isn't right for you, it may seem that you are in a predicament similar to the one a baby faces before birth. You are growing too large for the space you occupy, but the way out seems difficult indeed. It is important to remember that your life is not at stake. You are growing. Your professional identity is maturing. You are reinventing yourself. You have already been born once. The type of rebirth experiences you have as you change jobs, careers, work environments, and work attitudes in order to achieve health and balance in your life are the learning experiences that define your growing up. Tom Johnston, M.Ed., L.M.P., is the founder and director of the BodyMind Academy, a state licensed vocational school offering professional certification programs in massage, shiatsu, craniosacral, counseling-hypnotherapy, breathwork, fitness and nutrition consulting, and expressive arts. He can be reached at (206) 367-9060 or (425) 635-0145. |