Home   >   Ask the Expert   >   Changing the “WHY” you work

Changing the “WHY” you work

By on April 19, 2018

In the same way that junk food isn’t a healthy way to satisfy your body’s cravings, it can damage your long-term well-being to attempt to resolve career cravings with solutions that don’t address their root cause.

Last month’s article promised to reveal the root cause of career cravings so here it is: Stop focusing on where you work and shift to why you work.

If you’re like most people, you’ve invested a fair amount of energy determining what work you want to do and where you want to work. What you may have lost sight of is that work, defined as “activity involving mental or physical effort done to achieve a purpose or result”, is made meaningful by the purpose and results of your efforts, not by your efforts alone.

What you’re trying to achieve with your work – your “why” for working – is the key factor that impact your career satisfaction and fulfillment. With more than three decades working with people in all stages of life to re-calibrate their careers, I’ve found that their “whys” fall into four main categories:

• Security & Survival

When security and survival are the key purpose of work, people favor careers that represent a “sure thing” and define a “good” job as one with a decent wage, good benefits, and in a stable company. Around the world, careers such as doctor, lawyer and engineer are popular with many parents simply because they believe these careers guarantee income security for their children.

Unfortunately, job security is a relic of the past. The idea of lifetime employment with large companies is disappearing as workforces globalize and technology dramatically disrupts or eliminates whole industries. Small businesses worldwide account for more than 50% of jobs in the private sector, but only 50% of these businesses make it past the five-year mark. Finally, research shows that 85% of the jobs people will have in 2030 do not even exist yet.

If survival and security are your core purpose for work, your natural tendencies to make safe choices based on what has worked in the past are going to jeopardize rather than secure your future in the new economy. In the new future of work, the only way to create security is to become secure in who you are and what you want, and to constantly develop the strength, confidence and character you need to reinvent yourself as the world changes around you.

• Status & Stuff

If status and stuff is driving force behind why you work, your career choices will be based on where you gain the most money, power, recognition and status. Work will feel fulfilling or frustrating depending on the degree to which you are (or aren’t) achieving and accumulating.
Some of the common challenges experienced by people with this “why” of work include pushing themselves to the point of burnout, damaging relationships to get ahead, making career limiting mistakes or leaving a wake of destruction behind them in their rush to stay at the top of the heap.

To make this “why” work for you and avoid the pitfalls it can bring, get clear on the internal purpose of each of your achievements and acquisitions. The more each one serves a positive purpose both for yourself and the world, the more likely it is that your drive to achieve will energize rather than exhaust you for many years to come.

• Ease & Expression (Alignment, Authenticity, Creativity & Balance)

If this is the driving force behind why you work, your career choices and level of fulfillment will be based on the degree to which you are able to develop your strengths, align with your values, express your creativity, and do work that matters to you in some way beyond money, power and status. This work “why” typically emerges once you realize that all those achievements and possessions you’ve accumulated haven’t delivered the level of happiness you thought they would. What people have traditionally termed a “mid-life crisis” is simply the changes that occur when a person’s “why” shifts from creating status and stuff to creating authenticity and alignment. How dramatic this shift appears from the outside and how difficult it is for the individual depends on the degree to which their pursuit of status and stuff was out of alignment with their true self.

The three main fears that hold people back from aligning with this “why” of work are the fear that you can’t make money doing what you love, the fear that you will lose status, credibility or respect if you follow your dreams and the fear that it is too late or you are too old to reinvent yourself and do what you really want to do. To overcome these fears and fulfill this purpose of work, it is important that you invest enough time to get clear on who you really are and what you really want before you start trying to figure out how to get there as most people cripple their ability to live their passions by dismissing them to soon.

• Evolution & Integrity & Actualization

This final “why” of work is the most rewarding in the long-term but requires the most skill and courage on a daily basis. Work at this level is fulfilling to the degree that it allows you to actualize your potential, grow your integrity and contribute to the positive evolution of humanity. It requires that you are constantly deepening your awareness of your strengths and weaknesses, developing the courage to act on your principles, and cultivating your understanding of how the world really works. Work will be as filled with frustrations, challenges and pain as with any of the other levels, but this pain will be fulfilling in the same way that the pain of working out to build physical strength is.

Take a moment to consider which “Why” is the driving force behind your career choices and ask yourself how the frustrations you are experiencing might be linked. Then step back and reflect on what you want the purpose of your work to be and identify how you need to shift your actions and decisions to get there.

Note: For a more detailed description of each of the 4 “Whys”, e-mail Andrea via her website below.

About Andrea Jacques

Andrea Jacques is the founder of Kyosei Consulting and the author of Wabi-Sabi Wisdom: Inspiration for an Authentic Life (available on Amazon.com). She has spent more than 30 years developing the potential of people and businesses worldwide, five of which were in Japan. A dynamic speaker, coach, and facilitator, her work integrates spiritual insight with top-tier leadership, wellness and sustainability consulting to help individuals and organizations build thriving, purpose-driven cultures where employees know their work truly matters. She can be contacted through her website at www.kyoseiconsulting.com