Strategies for a Better Work Experience: Secure Sources of Support

Aim & Conquer Strategic Insights for a Better Work Experience Secure Sources of Support

This is Part 4 in the Aim & Conquer series "Strategies for a Better Work Experience." See Part 1 here.

A lot of great guidance has been offered about what people can do externally to support themselves in relation to their career. Connecting with mentors ... continuing to develop new skillsets ... expanding one’s network ... and being willing to take bold action ... are all helpful themes that can facilitate progress.

In contrast, relatively little counsel has been provided on what people can do from an internal perspective to support their professional growth and development. This is an equally important piece of the puzzle.

Careers are long. Most last somewhere between three to six decades. Over such a duration, small imbalances are inevitably magnified. Any unsettled thoughts or emotions, and any unmet expectations, can gradually become so glaring that it’s difficult to maintain a high level of focus and commitment.

What is more, the payoffs from alleged “achievements” tend to decline over time. Whereas promotions, pay increases, and other forms of recognition were once sufficient for generating motivation to engage, year by year, it eventually becomes clear that they alone are not enough to produce a lasting sense of satisfaction and inspiration.

Because of this, it is critical to develop sources of internal support. Managing the environment on the inside is a tall task for anyone to do on his or her own, especially when various traumas from the past may remain unhealed. When it becomes clear that performance at work is not a solution to the true underlying problems, the only option is to take a step back, reevaluate, and consider what beneficial changes can be made.

This is where it is critical to design a system of support that recognizes the reality of the big picture. You have no choice but to spend time in external environments, so it makes sense to bring a high degree of purpose and thought to what they are. Similarly, you have no choice but to spend time in your internal environment, so it makes sense to take care of it with such care that climatologists would approve. Lastly, you have no choice but to experience regular interactions between your external and internal environments, so it makes sense to optimize the level of harmony that they’re able to reach with each other.

How have you designed your support systems to ensure that you are operating at your peak work capacity? How do you orient yourself in relation to what is outside of you in ways that stimulate and sustain your levels of energy? How do you manage what’s going on inside of you to guard against self-sabotaging thoughts or emotions? With what level of sensitivity do you stay consistently aware of how life is evolving, both externally and internally?

In this section, Aim & Conquer offers three strategies to aid you in stabilizing your sources of support:

Plug in Wisely
Manage Your Charge
Know How You’re Wired

Enjoy!

Plug In Wisely

When it comes to work, most people prefer to “unplug.” 5pm is “quittin’ time.” Fridays bring with them the promise of hours of upcoming freedom. Holidays are savored, and vacations are eagerly anticipated. In a general sense, “getting away” is a source of excitement and aliveness.

Such a perspective broadly positions work as “energy draining” and non-work as “energy recharging.” There is an underlying implication that work, as a whole, is a depleting activity, and the only question is the rate at which that depletion occurs.

Does this have to be the case? For many people, these types of beliefs are developed at a young age. Parents may unknowingly pass them on to their children. Entry-level jobs early in people’s careers can solidify and perpetuate them. It is rare to come across those in business with different points of view, those who are willing to encourage individuals to pursue an energetic relationship with work that might be seen by society at large as unachievable.

From a big picture, energy is exchanged based on connection. It flows from something to something. Primed to see things through this lens, someone who is curious will naturally start to examine the comprehensive picture of energetic flows in his or her life.

What are you choosing to connect to on a daily basis? How are those things influencing your level of energy? It is relatively common to assess how well you are sleeping, how much you are exercising, and how healthily you are eating, but there are many other aspects to consider.

How are you engaging technology, whether it’s social media, streaming services, news articles, text messaging, or something else? Is the time that you are spending doing so leaving you feeling more or less inspired to take on the responsibilities of your day?

What effects are your close relationships having on your mental-emotional aliveness? Are the people that you are choosing to spend time with interacting with you in a way that boosts your enthusiasm?

When you consider the patterns of thinking and feeling that play out inside of you on a regular basis, are they more closely tied to understandings that are rooted in a sense of “what you don’t have” and “what you are losing,” or to understandings that are rooted in a sense of “what you do have” and “what you can gain”? Is your focus solely on “getting work done,” or is considerable attention given to enjoying it?

It is generally not supportive to take on work from a position of being “behind it” or “underneath it.” This can create the feeling of being burdened by it, as if it is an uphill battle in which completing all one's responsibilities and being "not too" exhausted in the process is the best possible outcome.

This is not the only alternative, and developing a perspective that is energetically supportive ... one that empowers you to work “as life” rather than against it ... can facilitate a transformation in how you approach the time you spend working.

Manage Your Charge

People can experience many different types of charges internally, everything from anger to depression to panic and more. Those charges can be in response to the past, the present, the future, or a combination of the three. Some people are moving away from things, some people are moving towards things, and some people are moving based solely on what they are experiencing in the moment.

What is common to all of these situations is that people are seeking to move. Traditionally, a charge represents a kind of differential. There is an orientation towards some aspect of one’s life which has been identified, labeled, and assessed in such a way that movement is the selected response.

This is all well and good. Movement is necessary and healthy. It is when that movement consistently stems from a lack of full acceptance, or deep ease, with what is going on in one’s internal environment that issues can arise. Said another way, life has all kinds of charges, so you, as a representative of life, have all of those charges as well, and developing the ability to be with them in a state of both power and peacefulness can grant you greater authority as you respond purposefully to the various situations you encounter.

What charges do you regularly feel in relation to work? How do you respond to them? What are the short-term and long-term effects? Are there any recurring sequences where a certain charge leads to certain action ... which leads to another charge ... which leads to another action ... and so on?

In society at large, the concept of neutrality seems to be under-appreciated. It’s not as "dramatic" as positivity or negativity, so it can seem bland and flat. Such a perception can turn people’s consciousness into internal ping-pong balls. If there is a rejection of neutrality in relation to an experience, then people limit the degree to which they can be present with it, and they are constantly reacting, never truly settling in. Not only is this exhausting, but it also denies people access to a more fundamental "charge," or source of energy, in life, one that exists underneath all the activity that is layered on top of it.

All of this is to say that, when you have an interaction with some person or some content at work, or when you have a particular thought in relation to your work, one beneficial way to grow your self-leadership capabilities and reclaim command of what comes next is by breathing and allowing yourself to be exactly as you are. You grant yourself power, peace, and the ability to respond with clarity. You expand your ability to be present.

Know How You're Wired

For many people, careers turn out differently than expected. It is rare for individuals to know, with a high degree of certainty and alignment, what is the right path for them before they get started, and it is similarly rare to progress through the decades without any deviation in those sentiments.

Most people choose an initial job based on the wide variety of influences they’ve been subjected to up until that point, including those from parents, teachers, friends, tv shows, media and pop culture, and so on. From there, things can evolve based on a number of factors, including financial concerns and desires ... location preferences or requirements ... and personal relationships and responsibilities ... among others. By the time it’s all over, it’s not uncommon to look back and see the various jobs one has performed as coalescing to form a big part of one’s “identity” while still wondering whether that particular path was truly representative of “who one is” and “what one was here to do.”

The primary challenge is that no other person can know with certainty what is “right” for you, and yet there is little guidance provided to people at a young age that supports them to look internally and explore how life has designed them. The overwhelming majority of advice that’s provided is based on what others think is best given their own interpretations of their own experiences, and it’s clear that this is not as personally relevant as what might be discoverable internally.

What complicates this further is that, as careers progress, it becomes seemingly more difficult to make changes. Family and financial responsibilities rarely lessen during one’s 30s, 40s, and 50s. Even those who are willing to make a dramatic shift may not be able to say, in moments of true sincerity, that their decision to leave one thing and pursue something else originates from a deep connection to their own essence.

There is no catch-all “Step 1 / Step 2 / Step 3” solution, or “hack,” to this challenge. The best support you can give yourself is to invest time in understanding who you are underneath all of the ideas that others have placed upon you and that you have placed on yourself. This is a private process. It happens when others aren’t around, when you can be genuine and heartfelt in your connection with your higher self.

Who are you when you are living in harmony, beauty, and joy? When have those sentiments showed up in your work experiences? If you are vulnerable with yourself, what are the areas where you can change your approach to eliminate the possibility of future regret, and what is stopping you from doing so?

Work is a part of life, and, fundamentally, there is no reason why there needs to be a noticeable difference in the level of aliveness you feel when you engage it versus when you engage anything else. To the extent there is disagreement with that sentiment, it is a function of personal interpretation rather than an inherent restriction the cosmos has imposed. That interpretation is something you have the power to transform.