Someone asked me what topic I’d be writing about today. When you’re doing your work, people want to see more of it.
Oh, work. Something we can all relate to.
Our work is what we put out into the world to enhance it. It’s where we provide value to our communities, and in turn, to ourselves. It’s what we’re here to do; it’s what we use our gifts for. Our gifts are the how and our work is the what we produce with them.
Yet, our work is meaningless without a why.
This morning I sat in a meeting and listened to someone in my community talk about their why.
It was powerful, and not just for me.
After much moving around the country, when this family finally landed in Orlando, they knew it would be home for the long haul. With stakes planted in the ground, it became important to this individual that they make a lasting and positive impact on their community. It was from this place that his work was born. Everything he does, everything his business engages in reflects his desire to leave Orlando and the people in it just a little bit better than he found them.
And as a member of his community, I can tell you he’s done just that.
As an entrepreneur, ever mindful of cash, I’ve spent many days in his name-your-price coffee shops without feeling pressure to purchase or shame for leaving just what I could. It’s one of the first places I walked into in my city that I felt “got it.”
That providing a service wasn’t just about the bottom line, it was about the feeling and the energy you emit into your community through your business.
And before your business mind goes into the yeah sure, but does he make a profit speech, he does - every single month.
When this individual began his journey into building a business he started in an interesting place. He first structured a manifesto, a written representation of his values. He felt if others adopted this same attitude towards life, the whole community would benefit. He uncovered and articulated his why first, then he crafted a business around it.
His values are the foundation of his business.
My enthusiasm around my own work is about just this: to find your work, you must find yourself first. That’s the part of his story he didn’t tell, but it’s the part of my story I’ve told many times before, and it’s quite literally what I’m doing here through this writing.
I’m showing you my work.
Not just my work as in the final product, but the process of how I got to teaching and what makes me able to coach. If I didn’t practice digging deep down and pulling this out of myself, there is no way I could hold a space to help others do the same. Or even if I could hold the space, I would have no idea what to do when they fell apart, or how to help them get back up. I’d have no idea how to celebrate with them, how to share in the joys of deliberately climbing up a mountain or spontaneously scaling a wall had I not done it with my self first.
Coaching is the gift, teaching and writing is the how, but the why is much more interesting, the why is the reason my work resonates, the why is my expertise.
My why is because I too desire to leave this world better than I found it.
One interaction, one client, one friend, one deep bond at a time, moment by moment, choosing to pour out from my heart into my world.
One of the biggest misconceptions I’ve held around work is that it must be drudgery.
If you’re enjoying it, you must not really be working – or you’re not working hard enough. But time and again in my studies and experiences of companies I’ve learned that the most impactful, the most meaningful work that’s being done out there is by those who don’t see their work as drudgery or feel pain when they wake up each morning to do their work.
Those doing the most meaning things in our world LOVE their work.
Steve loved his work.
IDEO loves their work.
Credo loves their work, and you know this because it shines through everything they do, from the inspiring founder, to how they source their coffee and what they charge, to the passionate baristas. And you know what’s special about that?
It attracts others who love their work too.
I can’t tell you how many interesting people I’ve met at those little coffee shops around town, there are too many to count. And I know if I walked in tomorrow, I’d find a host of interesting people doing what they do in love.
When I said I wouldn’t settle from living from a place of fear, this is what I meant. I would not stop my search, my internal search, until I could show up for my work with pure love and passionate commitment.
All this is not to say our work is easy.
The world has its momentum and its roadblocks. And an aspect of our work is to press on despite what appears to be in our way. But rather than taking it harshly, our opportunity in these moments of tension is to reassess ourselves and our commitment to our work. Like anything you commit to, there are days where it will break your heart. But if it is truly our work, it’s easy to wake up each day and say, let’s try this again.
Here’s to the work of our lives.
Love,
Natalie