Getting The Work You Deserve -- What's Stopping You

I take great joy from being able to help someone who is struggling with something in his or her life. If I didn’t struggle myself, I doubt I would care as much about other people’s struggles, either. It is that basic fact that makes struggle itself something that can connect us, and is perhaps something we can eventually be grateful for. I often wonder if the world of self-improvement is only for those who struggle, and I fantasize that somewhere there are people who never struggle at all, and perhaps they are the ones we should seek out for guidance. However, I think if people didn’t have experience overcoming some form of adversity, they would really have no basis for helping someone else to overcome their own. It is difficult for me personally to contextualize the path of self-improvement and personal growth, for I wonder if the issues I face and the solutions I uncover are truly universal, or somehow limited to my relatively small world. I wonder if what I find as revelation will be perceived as such by anyone else, or if anyone else would be interested in it, or if what I have learned is simply obvious to everyone else. I recognize that many people love to discuss their struggles—the difficulties we face in areas of our lives that are universal—like love, money, happiness, career, spirituality or existential angst. I find myself coming up against timidity about it, as though broaching the subject is some kind of offense. Conversely, I can also have a revulsion response to many forms of self-help because they offend me in some way. It can be the use of language or phraseology that narrows the depth of a personal experience, or perhaps because it gives me a sense of being patronized or infantilized. I suppose the sensation is about feeling misunderstood, or that the immensity of my personal feelings is going to be undermined in some way. It’s a simple issue of being afraid to be vulnerable. This was a strange preface to the substance of what I wanted to impart, which is about breaking through, or overcoming a struggle, or creating transformation in our lives—and I suppose I had to ensure that it was a welcome message, but also I suppose to offer myself as broken and vulnerable. For a long time I have struggled with the whole idea of work and career and vocation, and I have listened to many different perspectives. I have seen that many people have very guarded opinions about the matter, and trying to change their minds about it is like trying to pry open a very heavy safe with a plastic fork. I have observed that we form our opinions about what work is from a very early age with the help of our parents, and often that ‘help’ is more like complete ruin. The thing I notice the most is that belief systems built around work become very rigid, and it is very difficult to change them. Work becomes a direct reflection of how we feel about ourselves, ultimately, and our success or lack thereof is rooted in these beliefs. A common theme for many people is the idea that they somehow don’t deserve to be successful because success is reserved for other people. The collective disdain for the wealthy is likely linked in part to this belief as a justification post hoc, so now we have a closed circuit. In career creation, we need to have an open circuit. So many people fall into careers out of necessity, and work becomes so sewn into duty and obligation that the idea of finding meaningful work becomes a preposterous and impractical concept. That experience is another divisive and polarizing means to stay entrenched in labor, demobilized by workaday habit, and it leaves us without any real means to advance. It would appear as though finding a meaningful career is really a luxury, and of course luxury is framed as something perhaps only other people deserve, not me. Perhaps a good first step is to see what really is at work inside us. What are our beliefs, how did they become formed, and are they in line with reality? We can see if we suffer from a misguided sense of our value and worth. The results can be jarring. It also helps to break free of any sense of limitation, for when we are trying to re-create our lives, the less limitations we place on ourselves at the outset will allow us to fly higher. Once we can overcome the bondage that keeps us tied to the ground, then we can see how high we can truly fly. I believe the sky is the limit. The world cooperates with us generally, but often we don’t even realize how we are setting the game in motion. If we are chained to wages and that’s how we view the world, it cooperates. Imagine.