How you define work defines your life trajectory

In this article we're talking about work and how changing the way you relate to it can change your life trajectory.

What’s your relationship to work like?
How does it make you feel when you think about work? Exhausted, energised, depressed, or peaceful?

What does work embody for you?

Now, imagine work as another person. (The same way we in popular culture imagine death as a skeleton with a scythe.)
What would work look like?
What kind of vibe do they have?

Do you imagine them as a mean boss who’s always demanding more, or as a peaceful monk, who sees work as prayer?
Or perhaps as a vehicle through which you hope to prove you’re enough somehow?

How you see work creates how you feel about work.

If it’s a mean boss, you might feel like you’re never enough.
If it’s a vehicle for growth, always meeting you where you are, you might feel excited and in the flow.
If it’s a means for supporting yourself and loved ones, it might feel like a blessing to have access to it.

Now as you can notice, work is what we make it.
So the way you see work, and the way another person sees it, can be completely different.

This also means that you can change your relationship to work, through changing how you see it.

Change how you see work to change your life trajectory

Imagine having a truly excellent, uplifting and loving relationship with work!
Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Now for sure, the real-world nature of your work is clearly also a huge factor in how you feel about work.
If for example, you’re being bullied at work, or you’re doing something you feel is unethical, that’s obviously something to attend to.

Consider the possibility that your effort, your work, has so much more potential than you're making use of right now.

As you bring more awareness to how you feel about work, you might indeed notice a need for some kind of shift in outside circumstances. That’s great information that you can take action from!

However, it’s good to remember that if you're stuck looking at work through a pair of depressing or disempowering glasses, you might still feel terrible about work even with a positive change of outside circumstances.

That’s why it’s so important to get curious about the automatic way in which you’re relating to work.
Otherwise you might not be able to enjoy the great things that actually are here and now in a fresh way.

When you actively take a helpful and enjoyable perspective on work, it can have a revolutionising effect on how you live your days. Choosing an empowering perspective impacts not only:

• what your work achieves,
• the vibe with which you do your work and live your days,
• but also on what kind of impact and reach your work has in the world.

So, my friend, what kind of person do you see your work as? And what if that could change?

How to create a flourishing relationship with work

The first step is to bring awareness to your habitual way of thinking about work.
A straightforward way to figure this out is by journaling.

Here’s a set of prompts:

• How have I habitually been relating to work, and why?
• What would be a new, fresh way I could relate to it?
  • What kind of new and positive effects might that bring me?
• What are reminders I can set up for myself to make this new attitude toward work my new normal?
• What are some practical real-world changes in how I work that would make me feel excited?
  • What’s the first step to making that a reality?

Step 2 is taking action based on the answers you get from yourself, and integrating those actions into your daily life as your new way of being.


I hope this sparked some interesting ideas and inspired action-taking for you!


Sending you lots of love,

Sara