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This book is intended both for people seeking a career transition and people who just want more satisfaction from what they do right now. The main point of the book is that the best starting place for both groups of people is to develop a deep-seated sense of wholeness—a feeling that, no matter what happens in their careers, they are complete, worthwhile and valuable people. When we have this conviction, the anxieties that prevent us from focusing and enjoying ourselves in our work fade away. The book is packed with exercises intended to help people realize their wholeness.
The Importance Of Wholeness
No matter what your career situation, a feeling of completeness is critical to finding fulfillment in your work. Many of us closely identify with our careers, treating our jobs almost like they were parts of our bodies that we can’t survive without. Though our society encourages this identification, I suggest, it ultimately leads to suffering.
When we feel like our careers are part of who we are, we’re gripped by a constant fear of loss and failure. We end up losing sleep worrying about our performance, second-guessing the work we do, and distrusting our colleagues. When our identities are tied to our careers, the idea of taking a risk by starting a business or pursuing a career change seems too frightening to contemplate.
When we recognize that we’re complete and worthy beings regardless of our career circumstances, we become more productive and fulfilled in what we do. As the fear of loss is no longer so threatening, we actually become able to enjoy our work. We start getting more done, because we’re no longer paralyzed by the possibility of our superiors’ or customers’ disapproval. We become easier to be around, as our minds aren’t constantly preoccupied with what might go wrong in our jobs. Finally, we become more willing to accept the risks that come with entrepreneurship and career transition.
Most books and articles on career satisfaction contain strategies for improving what we might call the “outer” aspects of your career situation—what to say in a job interview, how to persuade customers to close a deal, how to look confident in a negotiation, and so on. Many of these techniques are clever and effective, but if you lack a deep-seated sense of wholeness they aren’t likely to bring you lasting satisfaction in your work.
No matter what you accomplish in the outside world, if your self-respect is dependent on what’s going on in your career, you’ll be plagued by a constant fear of loss. Even when things are “going well” in our jobs, by whatever standard, it’s impossible to appreciate our success and abundance when the possibility of failure seems so ever-present and threatening. My goal in this book is to help you dissolve that fear, and thus free you up to develop real passion and focus in what you do.
The Four Guideposts
Career Satisfaction From Within is organized into four “guideposts” to guide your journey toward the sense of wholeness needed for genuine career satisfaction. Each guidepost contains a series of exercises, usually involving meditation, visualization and conscious breathing, to help you realize your essential nature as a complete and worthwhile being.
The exercises are based on my work coaching clients in finding career satisfaction, and the teachings of others who have inspired me, including authors in the areas of business, psychology and spirituality. I’ll briefly introduce you to the guideposts here.
1. You are not your career. As I said earlier, many of us rely heavily on our careers for satisfaction in our lives. Unfortunately, this means we have a hard time feeling adequate when things aren’t going the way we’d like. Even when we’re “succeeding,” by whatever standard — maybe we’re getting our superiors’ approval, regular raises and so on — we still harbor the nagging worry that something may go wrong and our gains will disappear.
The exercises in this section help us fully experience our fear, let it subside and see that we remain on the other side. This helps us physically experience the fact that, in our essence, we are greater than our fears, our jobs and anything else we face in our lives, and gifts us with a deep sense of peace.
2. Let go of your resistance. In many aspects of our relationship with our work — whether we’re in the office trying to get a project done, dreaming up plans for our new career paths or something else — we encounter part of ourselves that resists our efforts. When we come into conflict with this part, it’s as if every cell of our bodies angrily opposes our attempts to accomplish something. This is the aspect of us that’s in charge when we’re procrastinating, and when inertia keeps us from exploring other career possibilities.
I call this part our “inner resistance.” This part of us simply wants to be, and is sick and tired of constantly striving to do and achieve more. As I see it, this part needs us to acknowledge and appreciate its desire to just be, without doing anything or proving itself to anyone. To give our resistant part the understanding it needs, I suggest we should hold our compassionate attention on it until its rage subsides. The exercises in this section provide ways to greet, acknowledge and even love your resistance when it comes up.
3. It’s okay to have wants. Some people experiencing a lack of fulfillment in their careers have this problem because they have trouble admitting or serving their own wants. At some point, they learned it was selfish or inappropriate for them to go for what they wanted. Because they chose their careers to please their loved ones and friends rather than themselves, it’s no wonder they eventually realized they weren’t in the right place.
Sometimes I find that people with difficulty acknowledging their desires just need a safe place where they can tell someone what they want, without fear of being judged or mocked. Others just need to practice asking themselves what they want in each situation they face in life, rather than falling back into their habit of trying to figure out what everyone else wants them to do. The exercises in this section are intended to help you get comfortable with your wants.
4. Give yourself permission to enjoy what you do. When we aren’t feeling passionate about what we do, we usually assume something in our choice of careers or working environments is responsible. Sometimes, however, it’s simply because we’ve cut ourselves off from our ability to experience strong feelings.
When we’re confronted by intense pain, fear or some other uncomfortable sensation, we sometimes — consciously or otherwise — adopt strategies to avoid feeling those emotions. For example, perhaps we dissociate — our awareness leaves our bodies — or we freeze — we clench our muscles and hold our breath to numb ourselves to how we feel.
Unfortunately, when we shut down our capacity to feel strong unpleasant sensations, we also shut down our ability to feel intensely pleasurable ones. If we do this, we can’t get particularly excited about our work, no matter how fun, lucrative or prestigious our jobs may look to the outside world. The exercises in this section are intended to help you regain access to the sensations you want to feel about what you do.
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