Job, Career, Calling

June 17th, 2007

Are there times when your life just feels out of control?  I’ve been feeling that way lately – given all the travel, the fast growing company, and all the preparation for the launch of another book.  Fortunately, this weekend I went back to a practice that my good friend Jon Staub and I have been enjoying for years and years (but one I’ve neglected too often lately).  Each season, Jon and I would come up to his mountaintop ranch in Sonoma and do a three and a half day organic grape juice fast interspersed with meandering hikes, long steam baths, and the occasional nap.  It’s amazing how a fast can slow you down and put you back in touch with what’s essential in who you are.

While up here, I’ve been reading a fascinating book by Darrin McMahon called HAPPINESS: A HISTORY .  McMahon charts the history of that ephemeral concept called happiness and how it has morphed through time.  My favorite philosopher that he’s been quoting is Jean-Jacques Rousseau who wrote in the mid-1700’s.  On a fast, how can I not be drawn to writing that suggests our happiness can be “nothing external to us, nothing apart from ourselves and our existence”?  He made the point that happiness is not pleasure.  He went on to write, “The happiness for which my soul longs is not made up of fleeting moments (of pleasure), but of a single and lasting state.”  Rousseau questioned the era of Enlightenment with its modern concepts and new age of aesthetics.  He pondered, “What if the advance of modern civilization was the cause of this conflict, leading human beings not closer to their intended end but farther away, farther away from themselves?”

There’s something about Rousseau, Thoreau, and Maslow – beyond the fact that these three scholars have names that rhyme – that suggests the true purpose in life is to strip away the non-essential crap that tends to weigh us down (although they didn’t put it in those terms). Rousseau wrote, “Let us begin by re-becoming ourselves, by concentrating our attention upon ourselves, by circumscribing our soul with the same boundaries and limits that nature has given to our being; let us begin, in a word, by gathering ourselves here where we are.”  McMahan, in the book, suggests that “this language, with its suggestion of self-exploration and retrieval – finding the self, collecting the self, returning the self – is so common to our modern vocabulary that it is easy to miss both the novelty and the essential strangeness of Rousseau’s words.”  Rousseau – more than a quarter-millennium ago (yes, that’s more than 250 years) – wrote a very Maslovian statement when he penned, “As soon as man’s needs exceed his faculties and the objects of his desire expand and multiply, he must either remain eternally unhappy or seek a new form of being from which he can draw the resources he no longer finds in himself.”  This is the dilemma of modern man – constantly striving for things just beyond our reach (that typically have some external motivation).  Strangely, we pursue happiness when, in fact, we should settle into happiness as oppose to chasing it. 

Such are the meandering thoughts of a writer/CEO/overworked American who hasn’t had solid food in nearly 70 hours (yes, I do remember my last meal very well…but don’t get me started as I’ve done a phenomenal job of not thinking about all my favorite San Francisco restaurants).  On a fast, one has the time to do some serious self-reflection beyond how many inches will I lose from my waist.  What’s most been on my mind is something I write about in the last chapter of PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow.  It’s the idea that we have one of three relationships with our work or how we make a living.  As with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, the goal is to transcend the tangible base of the pyramid to find what’s more essential and personal at the intangible peak of the pyramid.

People with JOBS focus on the financial rewards of working more than the pleasure or fulfillment of what they’re doing.  Many of these folks may find their true enjoyment outside of their 9-to-5 existence.  Those with CAREERS focus primarily on growing their talent and advancement.  While they may gain quite a bit of satisfaction in their work, it is often associated with the esteem that comes from external sources (like recognition or raises).  The lucky few who pursue a CALLING find their work fulfilling in its own right, without regard for money or advancement.  Those pursuing their calling would recognize Maslow’s statement in their own life: “One must respond to one’s fate or one’s destiny or pay a heavy price.  One must yield to it; one must surrender to it.  One must permit one’s self to be chosen.”

Each of these three approaches to work correspond to a different level of what I call the Transformation Pyramid (Sustain / Succeed / Transform) or the Employee Pyramid (Money / Recognition / Meaning) – to learn more about those, buy PEAK when it comes out in September.

How do you know which level you, your friends, family, or work associates would be placed on this pyramid?  Based upon my fast and the reading I’ve been doing, it’s clear to me that happiness takes hold of us when we turn off the external antenna and tap into the internal.  The fact is, a spirit greater than you may be calling to a particular path in life but you and I put up such a collection of distractions and excuses that we can’t even hear the whispers of this calling in our ear.  Personally, that whisper has become a shout for me lately as the mud-wrestling between my career and my calling has been entertaining (if you’re the observer) but grueling. 

Given that this talk of job, career, calling, and just the basics of happiness have the risk of being vague, I created a test in PEAK for the reader to try and understand where they are in their life.  Feel free to take the following test, although beware that your answers will be influenced by your current state of mind, which means you may want to take the test twice, at least one week apart, to really gauge your accurate score.  Read each of the following statements and place a check next to the five that best describe your relationship with your current work.  Be careful, as it’s easy to think broadly about how certain statements SHOULD reflect your work life. What we’re looking for here are the statements that actually reflect your work life today:

1.  While I enjoy what I do at work and am very good at it, I often feel like I’ve “topped-out” and I have to look elsewhere – my home, my spiritual life, my friends, my hobbies, my community service – for inspiration or fulfillment.

2.  I tend to lose myself in my work.  I just feel like I’m in the “flow” and I lose all sense of time.

3.  I like what I do, but I don’t expect a lot from my work.  It just provides me what I need to do the other more important things in my life.  I enjoy my leisure life more than my work life.

4.  My work truly makes a difference in the world.

5.  The greatest experience I have at work is when I’m truly recognized by others for what I’ve accomplished.

6.  If I had to choose between receiving a 10% raise at work or finding a new best friend at work, I would probably choose the raise.

7.  I quite often feel like the work I’m doing is coming from some source bigger than me.  I’m just channeling this energy or this talent and I’m quite often amazed by its power.

8. I’m often not that excited to go to work on Monday morning.

9.  My goal in life is to rise to the top of my field.

10.  There are moments when I think to myself, “If I were independently wealthy, I’d probably still be doing this work.”  I do what I do because I just love it.

11.  I’ve thought pretty deeply about where my work will take me the next ten years and what I need to do to excel in this field.

12.  I’m pretty conscious to use my vacation time and sick days off so that I can create more  balance and  ensure that work doesn’t dominate my life.

13.  I often feel like my work allows me to show the “real me.”  My work lets me use my deepest creative gifts. 

14.  I think work is overrated when you consider what percentage of our lives we spend working as compared to enjoying life.  I don’t think much about work when I’m not there.

15.  I will do what it takes to become a success in my work.

Okay, I know that wasn’t easy. You may have had either a hard time trimming down to just five, or you may have found it difficult finding five statements that represent your perspective on your work.  Here’s how we’ll score them.  The following statements reflect someone who has a “job” perspective: 3, 6, 8, 12, and 14.  The “career” statements are: 1, 5, 9, 11, and 15.  And, the “calling” statements are: 2, 4, 7, 10, and 13.

How many did you have in each category?  Your dominant category will tell you a lot about your relationship with your current work.  If your dominant category wasn’t “calling,” don’t be alarmed, as most people find their calling outside of their work—whether it’s as a Girl Scout leader, a gardener, a tri-athlete, a devoted friend, or an ardent political activist.  The big question you need to ask yourself – and you don’t have to go on a half-week fast to figure this out (and credit to poet Mary Oliver for a portion of my phrasing) – is “Left to your own choice with no external influences, what would you do with this one precious life you’ve been given?”  Or think even bigger, “What’s the legacy you’ll leave long after you’re gone?”

With those audacious questions hanging in the air, I’m off to pursue my calling of this very moment: a deep-tissue detox massage.

Entry Filed under: Miscellaneous, Books