Assessing Your Work Life, Part 2

I suggested, in part 1 of this conversation (April 30), that your work life will best serve you if you appreciate it as a fundamental relationship that you maintain between yourself and the world. That relationship should be valued, nurtured and developed. Whether or not you are contemplating a firm or career change or disengagement, periodic assessments help you live your life to its full potential

I urge you to assess your work life from a perspective of appreciation. We become so inured to our work’s benefits that we often forget about them. We focus our attention instead on work’s detriments. Unfortunately, that is the nature of our species. Humans are keener to identify threats to avoid potential losses than to appreciate benefits and opportunities to achieve gains. However, just because that is how humans are programmed, doesn’t mean you can’t “override” the system.

When someone engages me to coach on career issues, we explore work from a number of widely different perspectives. We often begin with appreciation, simply because a career move likely will result in a loss of underappreciated benefits that have been ignored or forgotten. If nothing else, an examination of what you appreciate will force you to examine whether these benefits might be lost, will continue to exist, or have the potential to be enriched in your prospective new environment.

Returning to the appreciation inquiry (See part 1), your responses call for further probing. For example, if your response to the question “How does my work engage me in my personal growth and development?” ranges anywhere from “not at all” to “almost fully,” the question remains: “What would it take to change this for the better?”This is where using your work as your “laboratory” for exploration comes into play.

Let’s assume, for purposes of discussion, that you believe that your growth and development are being stifled by a controlling boss. A change for the better would be - “get a new boss.” A series of relevant inquiries follow:

“How do you know that to be true?”

“If true, is the control justifiable, based on the boss’ perspective?”

“What could you do to understand that perspective and, if possible, change it to allow for your growth and development?”

Often, simply in proceeding into the inquiry “How do you know that to be true?” information surfaces that suggests that “being controlled” is not simply an issue at this time and only with this boss. Rather, through your exploration, you may come to see that control has been a recurring issue for you. The issue of “control” is not limited to your work domain. It manifests in your personal life as well. Obviously, as your assessment exposes control issues that extend beyond the workplace, a firm or a career change may be less appropriate. Better to take the time, here and now, to deal with issues of control than to kick this can down the road through a more radical work adjustment.

You pursue a similar path in examining the question “How does my work enable me to contribute to my own well-being and the well-being of others?” No matter what your response, the subsequent investigations - how you know this to be true and what it would take to change for the better - likely will yield both surprises and new perspectives. We too rarely consider that our work should contribute to our wellbeing in broadest of fashions. This is about more than the money, status, power triad.

This is about allowing your work to fulfill you, thereby empowering you to contribute to others. You innately are a caring and generous human being. When your work supports those qualities, it becomes more than a job or career, it becomes your calling.

Let’s assume that you find that you work brings you little joy. In response to examining the subsequent inquiry “How you know that to be true?”, you might examine how you chose your career in the first instance.

Using myself as an example, I can tell you that I had hoped to become a Foreign Service officer upon graduation from Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. But, with Richard Nixon in the White

House and the Vietnam War raging, the 1971 State Department held little appeal. I signed up for the LSATs at the suggestion of my roommate, and applied to law school in lieu of seeking an advanced degree in foreign affairs. I attended law school with the understanding that the education wouldn’t hurt me in whatever future endeavor I chose. The next thing I knew, I was a law school graduate, opening my own solo practice in San Francisco’s Jackson Square.

As I approach my 40th year in the practice, I recognize that I had found a use for my diplomatic career through engagement in local politics via my land use and environmental practice. I originally viewed law as my “default,” one highly favored by my parents and teachers. But if you perceive your work as a default, it is difficult to find joy. My lab work allowed me to reframe my career perspective. In my late 40s, and with my discovery that indeed I had pursued my passion, I formally gave myself permission to be a lawyer.

A critical part of the joy inquiry involves your ability to find self-satisfaction without outside validation. As you currently assess your work, are you self referencing? Or do you defer to the values of others?

The source of your values is, in itself, an important inquiry and a challenging one. Understand that a value can be yours, even if it originated, for example, with your parents. The values that cause confusion and stress are the ones that you

unknowingly carry for someone else. You often can detect these values by quietly contemplating whose voice you “hear” in connection with that value. You can also detect an external value by carefully attending to your body’s reactions. If you find yourself ill at ease, or holding back from, examining a value, it likely isn’t yours.

The plight of the perfectionist is one of seeking external validation. The perfectionist’s life is a continuous course of running through a minefield, seeking peace, fulfillment and joy which never can be attained because the perfection is not for the seeker. It is for someone in the seeker’s past, whose voice is heard in the seeker’s thoughts, who may have wished the seeker well but failed in that undertaking. Too many of us have such voices, which sit in judgment of our imperfections. No work can ever satisfactorily become you until your voice and your values are all that matter. Then, joy becomes attainable.

Next, we will examine work related stress and learn to distinguish that which is self-imposed versus that which is a product of the workplace environment.