The Situation

It doesn’t have to be like this—that so many people are unhappy with work. We know that 83% of US workers are suffering from work stress and that there are 120,000 deaths each year related to it.

Sometimes working people think they are in the wrong career. Or, they are in the right career at the wrong company. Sometimes it’s the right career and the right company, but the people are all wrong. Their boss is unskilled. Their reports are unmotivated. Or there is back stabbing laterally, everyone trying to ‘get ahead’ instead of ‘get along’.

They are depressed and anxious about living like this with no end in sight, and begin to think that if only they had meaning and purpose everything would be alright.

What Meaning and Purpose Is Not

What does that even mean? Meaning and Purpose. And how do we know when we have it? I actually believe I have it, and will address that in a moment. But for some, it seems meaning and purpose has gotten all balled up with ‘I’m the best thing since sliced bread and everyone knows it’.

That kind of recognition actually can be a by-product of living with meaning and purpose but is not meaning and purpose itself. When we go after recognition directly, we are likely to come out feeling we have nothing worth having or doing at all. And we would be right. Hence, the work unhappiness that so many feel now.

What Meaning and Purpose Is

Let’s hear it from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

 “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

Two words come to mind. Alignment and Service. There is nothing better than alignment between our own values and a work context that supports the fullest possible expression of them.

So, for example, when Amy took her spirit of adventure to a start-up, things really improved, even though she still had work to do with her relentless ego, always telling her she’s not good enough.

In my case, my father died of a cerebral hemorrhage when I was 15 years old. Spirited as I was, I always thought he died of me, until the day my mother said tenderly, “No honey, it wasn’t you, it was work.” So now, the opportunity, through my work, to help others find their way to happier, healthier, productive lives—is plenty enough meaning and purpose for me.

And service. When my clients are able to flip their perspectives from ‘what the company can do for me’ to ‘what can I do for others’, just like magic, genuine satisfaction can naturally appear.

One special case of this is when people say with resentment, “I’m just in it for the money.” No, they are not just in it for the money, I tell them, because that money happens to be nourishing them and their loved ones. So they’re in it for the nourishment, not just the money.

All of a sudden, taking care of one’s own through contribution to others becomes plenty enough meaning and purpose after all. They tell me that this reminder comes and goes, but that they can invoke it when they need to and it helps.

Bottom Line

Some men and women I work with do find better aligned companies or careers for themselves. But just as many get better aligned inside their own heads and, in so doing, fall in love with exactly where they are.

For those who can step over the ego’s idea that we are never good enough and that we should, therefore, keep trying to get other people to tell us that we are—deep satisfaction can come from contributing to others and being compensated for it so we can contribute to others some more.

Sometimes, if we let it, Emerson’s life well lived can be as simple as that.

The original purpose of work had to have been something as simple as creating and providing goods and services, tools and techniques necessary for survival for ourselves and our kin—food, clothing, shelter, and so on.

Remembering this, that work began more as something we gave than something we got, should free leadership to be more skilled, teams to be more motivated, and all of us to both ‘get ahead’ and ‘get along’. So that’s my take. Please let us know yours in the comments below.