Stress, work, values, and meaning

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about work and its importance in our lives, from everyday mundanities like being able to pay the bills, to its ability to provide a sense of meaning and purpose in life. The problem is that I’m struggling with the notion of work, and what it means to me…

I’m in the process of ending a salaried position and reestablishing my consultancy. My salaried work paid well, and I worked with some great people – but I struggled on an almost daily basis and found myself inordinately stressed a lot of the time. It took me quite a while to realise that this sense of wrongness was there because it really was wrong – what I was doing simply wasn’t working because it was highly removed from what I believe to be important, both to myself and to others.

And when it came down to it, it wasn’t the hours, or the corporate environment, or the suits and the open-plan office. It was the fact that I didn’t feel like I was doing anything meaningful, wasn’t helping people, and wasn’t forming meaningful relationships through my work. Don’t get me wrong, my job was probably ideal for many people – but it left me feeling empty.

Now, it did occur to me that maybe I was simply being naïve. Maybe I needed to grow up, grow a pair, and just get on with it. After all, I was earning good money, and the work was at least interesting. Perhaps the things that were stressing me were just things I needed to get used to, and shying away from them was simply pandering to my subconscious issues… All of this is possible – and believe me I’ve struggled with this – but I don’t think that’s what’s going on. In my case, I do have the luxury of being able to choose something else. I can decide to do something that I find more meaningful. And although my new line of work has no guarantees about regular income, I believe that it can be both meaningful and sustainable.

So, all of this got me thinking further. Not all of us are able to choose what we do, or how or when we do it. Victor Frankl has a lot to say about this – sometimes we’re forced to exist in terrible situations where all choice is removed. But I think that for many people, the choice is there, but they’re not aware that they can make it, and wouldn’t know what to choose even if they were. It comes down to not actually having taken the time to figure out what’s valuable or meaningful in our lives. Many of us assume that earning money is what’s important, or getting a promotion, or saving for a holiday or new car, and we’re constantly surprised when none of these things provide sustained satisfaction – we always feel a little bit empty.

Csikszentmihalyi proposed that the most important thing to humans is the ability to be able to work meaningfully. This implies more than pursuing a good or happy life (a hedonistic life) and requires us to work to understand what is meaningful to us and to then work toward something larger, bigger than ourselves (a eudaemonic life). For me, this means doing something that allows for connection with others, the opportunity to help, to be exposed to new ideas, to be able to balance my work with other parts of my life, and to feel that I’m moving forward. I think it’s probably very similar for most of you.

So, I’ve quit my job, and I’m working hard to build up a psych and consulting practice. I’ll keep you posted…