How to Cultivate Meaning and Value in Work
How we think, feel, and act. Sometimes the connections are easy to spot and fall right into place. Other times they are elusive, and trying to put things together feels messy and tangled. This guidepost started out as one of those messy and tangled experiences, but with time, I learned about some striking connections.
Early in this research, it was clear to me that living a Wholehearted life included engaging in what many people I interviewed called meaningful work. Others spoke of having a calling. And some simply described feeling a tremendous sense of accomplishment and purpose from their work. It all seemed pretty straightforward, except for this pesky list of words that emerged as being important and so me how connected to the quest for meaningful work:
- Gifts and Talents
- Spirituality
- Making a living
- Commitment
- Supposed to’s
- Self-doubt
The connections, and rebuilt the guidepost. This is what emerged:
- We all have gift and talents. When we cultivate those gifts and share them with the world, we create a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives.
- Squandering our gifts brings distress to our lives. As it turns out, it’s not merely benign or “too bad” if we don’t use the gifts that we’ve been given; we pay for it with our emotional and physical well-being. When we don’t use our talents to cultivate meaningful work, we struggle. We feel disconnected and weighed down by feelings of emptiness, frustration, resentment, shame, disappointment, fear, and even grief.
- Most of us who are searching for spiritual connection spend too much time looking up at the sky and wondering why God lives so far away. God lives within us, not above us. Sharing our gifts and talents with the world is the most powerful source of connection with God.
- Using our gifts and talents to create meaningful work takes a tremendous amount of commitment, because in many cases the meaningful work is not what pays the bills. Some folks have managed to align everything — they use their gifts and talents to do work that feeds their souls and their families; however, most people piece it together.
- No one can define what’s meaningful for us. Culture doesn’t get to dictate if it’s working outside the home, raising children, lawyering, teaching, or painting.
This Article is taken from The Gifts of Imperfection
Written by Arshad. A
