You question and reflect on why people do what they do and why society expect us to live a certain way.
You are unsure about your work life and think that there must be a better way of doing it than dragging your exhausted self out of bed every morning to go to a job that doesn’t inspire you.
You don’t want to work exclusively for paying the bills and getting your pension after decades of labor.
You want to make sense of your purpose on this planet and feel like what you do is somehow important.
Then, I urge you to read and reflect on “The work we were born to do” by Nick Williams.
Here are my favorite quotes to inspire you:
“We are encouraged to think about how we will find a job and make employers say yes to us in a world where we believe there aren’t enough jobs and we’ll have to compete. So we marginalize our creativity, our spirit and joy.”
“I would like to reinvent the idea of a proper job: it has many strands, a portfolio; its hours suit our lifestyle; it allows us to find and utilize the best and most creative parts of us; it incorporates and accommodates us as a whole person; it affords the opportunity to grow, expand and discover more about ourselves; it is based on win/win and co-operation; it allows us to expand into being a whole human being – mind, body, emotions and spirit. That is proper work!”
“Our belief that we have to work can be very deep, even to the extent that we may not know what to do with our lives if we don’t work.”
“If you are called to be a street sweeper, sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great sweeper who did his job well.’” Martin Luther King Jr.
“The key to the work we were born to do is that we can change our attitude, our state of mind, our motivation, even the consciousness with which we work. We can make the transition from working with resentment, boredom or dissatisfaction to gratitude, pleasure and happiness. In doing so we can see our existing work differently and even begin to transform it, see new possibilities and begin to enjoy it in much greater ways. Changing our attitude may or may not ultimately involve us in actually changing our job.”
“Every decision is a choice between love and fear.” A course in Miracles
“Intuition is the language of the soul speaking through the heart. (…) Intuition, rather than logic, is often the way we break out of old struggles, mindsets and limitations. (…) When we follow our intuitions, we rarely see the complete picture, but are shown how to take each step one at a time.”
“To be nobody but yourself in - a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” e e cummings
“It is not the change that is painful, but it is often our resistance to change, our attachment to old ways, beliefs and concepts that causes our pain. Sometimes a letting go of an old way of being can feel like a death, but when we persevere, the rebirth always follows”.
“’Who the heck do you think you are anyway? Who are you to think you have anything of value or use to say, write or share? It’s all been done before, so why bother?’ We can often use our cleverness and intellect to fuel our doubts. The most enlightened approach is simply to smile at them and know that they are tests to see if we take them seriously or not.”
“A traveler came to a work site and saw two men carrying large blocks of stone, one looking bored and frustrated, the other looking happy and fulfilled. He asked the first one, ‘What are you doing?’, and his response was, ‘Moving stones.’ When he asked the other one the same question, he responded, ‘Building a cathedral.’”
Please share your stories with us!
How were you sure about the work you do?
Have you read a good book and would like to recommend it?
Leave a comment below.