I think today I started realising what work is all about and how it should make you feel. To be honest, I am still trying to put it into words but in the end it will all make sense.
So let’s get going.
In one of my previous articles I was talking about the Inner Child and why listening and learning to deal with it is so important. It tells you what you love and what you don’t. It let’s you recognise your true nature.
But do you also remember situations when you got this nice toy for christmas and within a few hours you were already bored by it? I want to argue that this is not your inner child, but to be totally honest, I only started realising today, that I have interpreted a lot of things to be motivated by my inner child when they haven’t actually. I almost get the feeling that when that happens it is based on pure desire, wishes and wants, and once you get what you want, you lose interest, because the desire goes away. But an inner child does never react like that. Is that possible? I almost think that an inner child never feeds of the desire of wanting something, but rather of true being. I also believe that the inner child is something that you can act upon immediately whereas a desire is something you cannot easily end. Wishes, desired and dreams, like wanting a big car, might never happen. Does it matter? No not really. But let’s say you feel like being an author, or a fisherman, or anything else, you can basically start with it right aways. You can start to write a book, or you can start taking fishing lessons, even while you are still at your regular job.
Remember when you were younger, you might have been part of a sports club or orchestra. Once a week you would go and be part of it, this is my understanding of taking care of your inner child. You wanted to go back, every week. It was important and you never got bored enough to just stop.
Now here is how this translate to finding work you truly love. Right now, you might have a job to pay for your mortgage or your next holiday. But all those things are more wishes and desires. So you work to quiet your wishes and desires. (Gosh, now that I am writing this, I realise how ridiculous we live – do we honestly waste our time with a job we hate just to fulfill our desires?) AHHH, I am not getting over this realisation. Does that also mean we never truly are who we are meant to be, because we confuse desire with true nature? This is a very important lesson right now. We live from desire to desire, we are busy quieting our wishes and dreams, but we never actually live our true nature. And this is why we can’t grow into who we are meant to be, this is also why growing up is so hard for some of us, this is why so many people are unhappy. Because in the end, having everything we ever desired, will leave us empty. Desires don’t let us grow into being better at something, or being a better person.
So here is what I believe helps us distinguish between who we are and what we desire, or even desire to be:
Work is like a hobby, you want to do it everyday, and you get better at it, or you develop something. It is like learning to play an instrument, a job is something that you start and eventually reach a goal with, but while you walk towards that goal you enjoy the ride. The word career is probably better to describe the growing process. A job to me is something that is the same every day, a career means you grow, develop or learn something.
This is not that easy to understand. You know the saying “the journey is the goal”, but that is not it. It is actually not true. Because that could mean having a regular job is what makes you very happy. Let’s say you work at a fast food restaurant – you do the same thing every day. For the last ten years you have been doing the same thing, here is my question, why did you live those ten years, if every day was the same? What changed? Why was it relevant to do the same thing for ten years. In school you learned something new everyday, so what changed? So saying “the journey is the goal” is not cutting it, you actually also need to get somewhere. Let first look at Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote: “The end if a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either.”
So here is the important bit and actually something we have done through out our childhood but forgot about. Whatever we did, we made sure that while we were doing it, we worked hard and enjoyed it, but in the end also achieved something with it. Either we graduated or we were now a good musician or something else. Even nature forces us to grow, we grow physically, we eventually might become parents, then grandparents, etc. Growing older is the natural way of life. So why are we not doing the same with what we occupy our daily lives with. Why are so many people in a job that does not lead to anything. I use a very drastic examples now, it is almost like being addicted to drugs. You do the job to quiet your next desire. And of course it is never enough. Eventually you need more, hence you need to work harder at your very frustrating job. And then when you have saved up some more money, you go on the next shopping spree. If you are so addicted that you can’t wait any longer you might even get a loan to pay for your next holiday. And then what? The holiday sucks and you have to pay of the loan?
All this has nothing to do with who you truly are.
Listen to your inner child and start today with doing those things that reflect who you truly are, and you will see, step by step you will grow. You might only start an hour a week. You might start you own blog, like I just did. You might want to do something with cooking, or something social, or become a painter, or start your own business. The important thing is to realise that you can start today, everything else is a desire and not truly who you are.
What an AHA moment!! Start today and enjoy who you truly are, and you know that you are on the right way when you “ENJOY THE NOW”!
Growing Up is the Art of Life Itself!
Some people live so they can work, others work so they can live.
Are you are encouraging the former over the latter?
Are you asking/informing/educating people to ensure that there work life involves the things that they do want to live for?
I certainly agree that is the case, for me, but can it be the way for all people?
For sure it is not that way for all people – but the question i pose to you is, could or indeed should it be that way for all people? – we are all different and we should remain so.
For sure “Enjoy The Now” is something i would love for me to experience, but i feel there are people that “Enjoy the almost now” because they know they are doing one thing ( boring work perhaps) to facilitate doing something they really truly love and enjoy, and of course people enjoy the things more that are not always available…..
thanks for your very interesting comment. So here is what I think.
– this might sound ridiculous to you, but disliking something that you can’t change, is waste of your life time. Let’s say you don’t like driving your car, but you have to go somewhere by car, would it not be a lot less draining if you just accepted it and made the most out of it, which is, you might just well like it. Or otherwise, change it. If you don’t like your job, either start liking it, or use the energy that you would otherwise use for hating it, to find out what you truly love and work towards it.
– I am just saying 
1) Everyone is different and that is the way it should be. The important thing is however, that whoever you are, should define what we do, because only that will make we happy. I believe that your work should be your hobby, because you spend so much time with it. That said, work is not always pleasant, but neither is a hobby. Learning an instrument can be very draining at times, but the important thing is that it helps you grow and that you have more good days than bad days.
2) Here is what I think about “Enjoy the Now”. Let’s say you have to so something that you don’t like, but you have to do it, then: Why not just “like it”? You have to do it anyway, so you might just way enjoy it
3) So if people “Enjoy the almost now”, they are already further into the process than most people, because they already know what they truly love. So let’s say they truly love going to the movies, than start you own blog (like I just did) and start writing reviews, send those to big magazines, and who knows, maybe one day you write movie reviews. So by taking the first step towards growing, you probably even experience more things that right now are not available to you. Maybe if it is watching movies, you might end up going to the Oscars one day
I do understand that I might sound very black and white, but the most important thing in life is to at least try and give it a chance to really happen, right? And I just want to motivate myself and maybe other to at least try
I decided to do another blog post on whether we are all driven by curiosity. I think if that is the case, we all want the same thing and that is spend our time doing what we love.
You remind me so much of myself when I was younger. I am 45 now, and feel so compelled to comment to you because I see you dancing so close to a truth that I didn’t fully realize until 5 years ago.
If I try to answer this question for you “do we honestly waste our time with a job we hate just to fulfill our desires?” but substitute the word desire for needs…the answer is yes. You have probably heard of the “Hierarchy of Needs” and we work because we need shelter, food, to pay our bills etc. We are also conditioned as we grow and mature by our parents, friends and society (especially advertising and media) to believe that life should be lived a certain way…so we start to believe that things, the house, the car, the designer jeans, will bring us happiness, which of course, it doesn’t.
We start disconnecting from what you have nicely called the inner child, or otherwise known as the soul, the inner self, our connection to the Universe – the place where all love and pure potential comes from. Our “self” is governed by two things – the ego which is unemotional, and the soul (or your inner child) which is love. Unhappy people tend to let the ego do all the thinking…happy people are in touch with both and choose to live life joyously by nurturing their inner child – seeking opportunity for gratitude, compassion, love, forgiveness, friendship, creativity, exploration, growth!
Things in themselves can be nice, there is nothing wrong with having them if you enjoy them for what they are. Acquiring “things”, however, is not truly the goal. There are a lot of very wealthy people out there who are truly miserable. Money does not love you back.
Our goal in life is to be happy, to have love and connection to others, to experience gratitude for everything, and to give freely of ourselves to others which leads to a life that is fulfilling spiritually as well as well as physically. True wealth is a blend of the financial, the emotional and the spiritual.
To go back to your article – The woman who works at McDonalds for 10 years may actually be truly happy if spiritually she feels fulfilled because she truly enjoys helping others (love, giving back), if she feels her co-oworkers are like family (connection) and if her paycheque provides the certainty she needs to provide for her physical needs (shelter, food etc.) If there is enough variety in her job to keep her interested that also keeps her growing emotionally. If this woman came from the same background that many of my students do, one that was filled with poverty, emotional abuse and addictions, then having a job at McDonalds may be an enormous success for her, a breaking of a cycle and evolvement into something better than she was conditioned to expect.
We each have our own journey, and the joyous embracing of this journey is the goal. I think you are so advanced in your thinking for someone your age, you are on the way to having true personal power – embrace life and keep on this path, you are heading for great things!