|
The Beatle's song "Eleanor Rigby" can be viewed as a commentary
on the tragedy of living without personal fulfillment. I still
get tears when I hear this tune. What happened to her? Why did
her life turn out to be such a sad story? Why was she forgotten?
In the town where I grew up as a boy, it seemed like everyone
could be Eleanor Rigby. I ran away from there as soon as I could.
After college I found my way into corporate America, and there
she was again! All the lonely people, where do they all come
from? Maybe we should ask Father McKenzie. In the workplace it
seemed to me that very few people were pursuing much of anything,
just buying time at the salt mines. The phrase "this is
as good as it gets" was boldly stamped on people's foreheads.
The game most were playing was how I imagine Eleanor Rigby's
life, "put your time in and plan for retirement, in the
meantime, take longer lunch breaks to make the day go by faster."
Later, I found that many people had set out to have their career
and lifestyle be "average" on life's aliveness scale, a way of
living that was built into their success ideology.
As today's global economy excites more competition and the
workplace spews out more of everything, increased demands on
people's time and commitment make more apparent the underlying
discontent that was once the status quo. Simply put, once work
hours start cutting into "personal" time, people begin
to see just how much they are compromising themselves. What was
once a routine way of life is no longer tolerable.
Unknowingly, and with good intentions, many people carry ideas
of success handed down to them from parents, grandparents, and
great-grandparents who worked hard as newcomers to America. One
hundred years later these ideas are still driving important life
decisions such as career choices and marriage. Today, opportunities
and possibilities are boundless, people can now make choices
that satisfy their inmost desires and passions. As they say,
all habits die hard. It's incredible how many people are still
largely living by great depression-like values. At the same time,
the world is teeming with new ways to live fully. Many are struggling
to adapt their internal value system to the changing world. It's
more the norm than not that people feel trapped in work they
don't enjoy. Even my youngest clients say their friends ridicule
them for trying to find work that fits them perfectly.
Human beings are extremely adaptable, we learn to live with
discomfort. We rationalize our way up a tree like cats and work
really hard at fitting ourselves in ill-suited places. The squirrels
are laughing at us, if you listen hard enough you can hear them
giggling! To make life in the tree tolerable, we design remedies
like flex-time, telecommuting, and child-care leave to temporarily
ease some of the longing to have more control of one's life,
but only you know what you'd rather be doing. No matter how well
you hide your lack of genuine enthusiasm for your work, others
see it anyway. Most likely, your hidden desire to be elsewhere
will silently wither away at your health and well being, often
affecting your relationships and other areas of your life.
One way to move yourself into new possibilities is to look
at your notion of what success is. Where did it come from? Is
it aligned with who you are today? Does is fit with how the workplace
has evolved? This is an individual process, you'll find that
the most truly successful people created a unique road map to
follow. Like Captain Bacard, they did not allow themselves to
become a robot-like automaton assimilated into the Borg. If you
hear yourself saying or experiencing some of the work/life scenarios
below, your personal definition of success may need an overhaul.
- I feel trapped in this dead-end job. Going to work everyday
has become a real drag and I can't seem to find something better.
Long lunch breaks have become my escape from the horrible reality
of the lack of passion in my work life.
- My talents are wasting away and my brain may turn to mush
if I don't start using it soon. I know that there's something
I can do that would use my potential. Pretending to enjoy my
work is getting harder and harder, I'm experiencing physical
symptoms due to the stress of wearing this heavy mask to work
everyday.
- I've got to keep busy somehow, who said work was supposed
to be fun anyway? I look forward to the doing domestic chores
around the house. I have the neatest yard in my neighborhood
and the highlight of my week is cutting the grass.
- I'm miserable, but I can't change. I need to ensure my financial
security and comfort. My parents want me to make sure I have
plenty of money for retirement. I took this job because it was
supposed to be a stable industry, now I'm afraid of the layoffs
coming.
- I extremely bored in meetings, I don't care about the subject
matter of my work. I play every trick in the book to keep from
nodding off and slamming my sleepy head against the table. Unfortunately,
I'm the project manager; I have to keep up the image that this
stuff is really important.
- I'm going to retire in ten years, I hope to do something
more meaningful then. I've worked long enough at something I
don't enjoy, I look forward to taking it easy and live a little.
I wonder what I'll do with all my free time?
- I make excellent money, but something is still missing and
I'm not sure what it is. I've tried all the career books, changed
jobs several times, nothing seems to help me find my direction.
My friends all have suggestions for me, but nothing stands out
as exciting.
- I want to make a difference, only there's nothing in the
world that really interests me. I never really had strong passions
in my life, I mostly fell into jobs as I went along. I never
intended to stay as long as I did, but it's tough to change when
you get comfortable.
- I feel a great sense of freedom as I walk out the door everyday
to go home. Being at work feels like being in a prison cell.
- I never found my niche, I'm eager to be really good at something.
It's frustrating to know that deep down I've got some latent
talents that aren't being tapped. I feel so under utilized, but
I can't put my finger on what comes natural for me.
- Maybe I'll win the lottery. Last year I almost got struck
by lighting, my chances are pretty good.
True confessions like these are kept secret inside the workplace,
but they're heard routinely in career coaching sessions as highly
educated professionals share their life stories. Yearning to
be engaged and fulfilled, they want a career with more gusto.
They want to feel alive and make a difference.
Sometimes I feel like Hawkeye Pierce. Being a career consultant
is like being in a MASH unit on the front lines of the American
workplace; nobody wants to be there and most have plenty of good
reasons why they have to stay stuck. There's the nurse who was
irritated by uninformed patients who cause their own illnesses,
the computer geek who's not really a geek but a classical musician,
the high school English teacher dreaming of being a writer who
is tired of baby sitting the misbehaved kids of other professionals.
None of them had planned to have a career that would turn out
so dull. "I did what I thought was the right thing to do"
most say, "all I wanted was to be happy, to do better than
my parents did. Where did I go wrong?" "I've achieved
the 'success' that I thought I wanted, but I'm still not happy."
It's interesting to see the popularity of the cartoonist Scott
Adams, just peak into the cubicle next door to see the Dilbert
comics triumphantly displayed. He's done a great job of showing
how accepted it's become to be unhappy with work, and how easy
it is to blame somebody else for your boredom and discontent.
These cartoons speak to people, they see themselves living these
scenarios out in real life.
Now and then you'll come across an enthusiastic person who really
enjoys what they do. In the Dilbert zone they are often viewed
with skepticism and disbelief, this behavior is outside the box
of what's possible in the workplace. For the most part, there's
an air of comfortable numbness and a serious sadness on people's
faces, nearly every act is cleverly camouflaged with dutiful
obligation, cynicism, and distrust of management. As if in a
Twilight Zone episode, everyone's participating in a nightmare,
protecting the idea that work is supposed to be drudgery.
Although you often see executive management teams make this situation
worse by pretending that everybody'll be happy with a competitive
salary and benefits, what's not talked about is how most employees
pretend to be satisfied with a good paycheck and benefits, and
how good it feels to blame the workplace for how crappy things
are. In their chagrin, most hide their personal compromises declaring,
"This is a business you know, we're here to make the company
money." Yet, one-on-one, people will admit behind closed
doors that it's really their personal responsibility to be fulfilled,
ridiculing the workplace "agreements" they once proclaimed.
Most grumble, "I think I'm the only one that sees the predicament."
"Doesn't anyone else see that the emperor has no clothes?"
A new commitment clients often make as they design new careers
is to have colleagues who really love their work. Deep down,
people really want to be with other self-motivated and energetic
people.
People are realizing that they are not having any fun pretending
to enjoy their work and that it really is possible to do something
you love. The secret is out. Recently the Wall Street Journal
did a story on how the Big 6 accounting firms are trying to keep
talented people. They are competing against each other to see
who can give their employees the best work schedules; people
are giving up on the attitude that you must sacrifice your life
to get ahead. Turnover rates are high, people are bailing out
in search of a more balanced lifestyle. Frankly, a flexible work
schedule doesn't really solve the core problem, no matter how
you dice it up, a poor career fit still causes unnecessary stress.
If you don't really enjoy what you do, doing it at home or on
your own schedule is a band-aid. The real cure is to define success
in a way that has you doing something you care about, and that fits what you do
best.
As you begin to design a fulfilling livelihood, start by recognizing
the definition of success you are living by. In other words,
you may find that you got exactly what you asked for, only, until
now you did not realize that the mission you were on was not
very well thought out.
The following is a inquiry to guide you in defining your personal
success commitment. If you are currently not fulfilled in your
work and don't know why, this inquiry is for you. IMPORTANT:
no judgments while doing this exercise, there are no right or
wrong answers.
1. Who was I when I first made my career choice? What are
the real, most basic reasons why I made this choice? What attitudes
and points of view were driving my decision then? Do these ideas
serve me in getting what I want today?
2. What "shoulds" or "should nots" are running
the show for me? Make a list of your most potent shoulds. Should are
personal rules or standards that you now realize are keeping
you from going after what is important to you now.
3. Take a look at the stuff your dreams are made of. What definition
of success have you been living by that is not working out as
you hoped it would? You may need to think this through carefully,
someone else's concept of success may have snuck it's way into
your life without you knowing it. What parts of this definition
do you want to keep? What do you want to throw out?
4. Who am I now? What has changed for me in how I view myself,
the community, and the world around me? What is most important
to me now?
5. If I had 1 billion in bank and didn't need to work at all,
what would I be doing all day that would make me feel energized,
alive, engaged, committed? Before you begin writing your definition
of success, imagine that you've already traveled around the world
several times, visited your favorite exotic beaches, bought yourself
and your friends and family the perfect house, achieved the perfect
body, and found the perfect mate. With all this already done, what's next?
Re-write your definition of success using very specific "sensate" details. You
want to be able to see, hear, and feel your future before you act on it.
|
