Curating your work-energy and pouring it into opportunities that grow you is a pivotal decision to define the richness and success of your professional narrative.
This is the third of a series on our month's theme of Illuminated Order.
We're moving on into the second half of our February journey and can feel the year's energy rising, even as we're drawn to continue creating the greater life order that will support our wildest dreams for the year. Let's move on into another area, as important as the People Landscape we explored in last week's post. This is your Work Landscape. What does it look like? How does it make you feel?
This is especially important life-changing work to do if you've been the loyal, dedicated, and talented high-performer, for whom work has also backed you into places where your work environment is more stagnant than helpful, where you may be repeatedly using and over-using only 2% of your talents while the other 98% go dormant, where despite all your skillsets, you're in a place that diminishes you rather than elevates you.
This post is about clearing out some of the barriers to recognizing the power you hold over your professional journey, the ways it informs your life, and your birthright to change it to be whatever fulfills you the most. It is an invitation to reflect on your relationship with work, your workplace, and where this work-energy is taking you (possibly nowhere, unless you make changes). The goal is to guide you in seeking insights that go beyond the conventional, to help you curate a truly fulfilling, holistically complete life-time-energy pathway.
The heart of Illuminated Order at Work is about taking a bold step beyond the status quo.
Curating Work: Assessing Your Professional Landscape
Your current professional landscape is a canvas reflecting years of dedication, talent, and hard work. It's also a canvas that's been bent, compressed, creased, abraded, and spray-painted with social stigma around work, bad advice, outdated wisdom, the idea of perpetual waiting for advancement, and other unhelpful notions around work and duties. Your life-time energy is the most valuable asset you have. Yet, toxic work ideas, work's "sleepwalking" effect on life and time, the drive to overwork, and societal ideas about work that still linger even though they're wholly outdated, can cause you to end up in a work position that squanders years of your life's value all too easily.
So, in our pursuit of Illuminated Order, now is the time to ask -- Is this the work you are meant to be doing? Is it creating financial advancement for you, as well as advancing your achievement? Are you thriving? Or, are you so caught up in the daily surviving that you are left doubting your worth, wasting your days, and denying your most valuable skills?
You've proven yourself to be loyal, dedicated, and exceptionally talented. Now, it’s time to shift your perspective and reclaim your power.
Metaphors for Exploring Illuminated Order at Work
Metaphors are a fun and powerful way to play with these ideas and surface unexpected insights. They allow you to interact with your inmost thoughts in an insightful, yet indirect way. Here are a number of metaphors you can play with as you explore this important life area. Get out your favorite journaling method, and work with the following questions. Let any answers come up.
"If This Job Was a Wilderness Adventure, What Would It Be Like?"
Imagine your job as an expedition into the unknown. Would it be a thrilling journey through diverse landscapes, filled with learning and discovery at every turn? Or would it resemble an aimless wander through a dense, unforgiving jungle, fraught with obstacles and no clear direction? This metaphor invites you to consider the level of adventure and challenge your job presents. Is it pushing you to grow, offering paths to uncharted territories of your capabilities? Or are you stuck in a thicket, expending energy without progress? Reflect on whether your professional journey is an exhilarating adventure you're eager to continue or a daunting trek that's wearing you down with little to show for it.
"If This Job Were Like Winning the Lottery, How Would the Job and Your Life Change?"
Imagine for a moment that your job transformed overnight in the same way your life would change if you won the lottery. Suddenly, every aspect of your work is aligned with your deepest desires and ambitions, opening up new possibilities for how you live, invest, and spend your life-time-energy. How would this transformation manifest in your daily tasks, your interactions, and the overall atmosphere of your workplace? Would it become a source of boundless energy and inspiration, where each day brings you closer to your personal and professional goals? As your job experiences its "lottery win", do you find yourself venturing into entrepreneurship, crafting a venture that reflects your unique vision and values, directing your own projects, traveling in pursuit of inspiration, or dedicating yourself to causes that stir your soul?
"If This Job Was an Energy Drain on Your Electrical Bill, What Circuits Would You Change or Appliances Would You Unplug?"
Think of your job as an electrical system within your life, each task and responsibility drawing power. Are there areas causing a surge, unnecessarily draining your energy without much return? This metaphor challenges you to identify the aspects of your job that are overly taxing, offering little in terms of personal or professional growth. Reflect on which 'appliances' (tasks or roles) you would 'unplug' to conserve your energy. Are there 'circuits' (career paths or projects) you'd rewire to ensure a more efficient, fulfilling use of your talents and efforts?
Future-Focused Questions for Exploring Illuminated Order at Work
You can also use these future-focused questions to realize where you might be "sleepwalking", i.e. allowing your good-enough-but-not-great workplace role to coast on and on, even when your Inner Self knows you want and need to take action.
"If You Stayed in This Position for the Next 5 Years, Would You Advance, or Merely Be in the Same Work?"
Project yourself five years into the future without any change in your current role. Visualize your daily tasks, responsibilities, and the scope of your work. Has there been growth, or have you been treading water, repeating the same tasks week over week with little to no progression? This prompt challenges you to consider the potential for advancement within your current organization. It's a call to action to assess whether your role offers a pathway to growth or if it's a cycle of stagnation, urging you to consider if your current trajectory aligns with where you want to be in the future.
"If You Stay in This Position for the Next 5 Years, How Will Your Finances Grow or Change?"
Consider the financial implications of remaining in your current role for the next half-decade. Will your salary keep pace with your aspirations and the cost of living, or will you find yourself in a financial standstill, or even going backwards in value? This reflection goes beyond immediate compensation and delves into the long-term financial health and stability your job provides. Are there opportunities for raises, promotions, or bonuses, or is your income likely to remain static, eroding in value over time due to inflation and life's increasing expenses? This metaphor asks you to critically evaluate your financial future within your current role, encouraging you to make decisions that ensure your financial growth and security. When you remain tethered to a job that lacks inspiration, you're not just enduring professional dissatisfaction; you're likely also facing financial stagnation. Often, such positions fail to recognize or compensate your true worth.
"At the End of Your Life, How Will You Look Back Upon This Position?"
Beyond the financial implications lies a deeper question: When will your life be deemed valuable enough to insist for yourself that your work-work is no longer "the daily grind", but that each work day is treated as a respected, sacred, and integral part of your life-time-energy flow? Pause for a moment and project yourself to the very, very final days of your life. Feel how what seemed at the time an endless flow of life-time-energy is reaching its end. Will you look back upon this current role as a wellspring of growth? Will you respect yourself for making the most of your valuable days and time? Or will this work role feel like regret, a barren field where you let your potential go untended until it was too late?
Understand that curating your work-energy and pouring it into the opportunities that grow you isn't just a fleeting choice, but a pivotal decision that defines the richness and fulfillment of your life's narrative.
Key Learning Points
Professional Fulfillment Empowers Growth In All Walks of Life: Aligning your work with your desires, skills and ambitions enhances both present and future health, energy, and life satisfaction.
Financial Stagnation Reflects Undervalued Potential: Remaining in an uninspiring job likely means your talents and contributions are also not being fully compensated at their market value, meaning you're undermining your own financial future.
Curating Your Career is an Act of Self-Respect: Deciding to seek work that resonates with your values is a declaration of your worth and potential.
Action Steps
Remove Your Barriers: Spend time identifying the attitudes that have caused you to put up with life-wasting aspects, "work sleepwalking", overworking without compensation, and other myths and bad behaviors around work.
Assess Your Current Role: Evaluate whether your current role and organizational culture align with your identified passions, and whether your role and organization contain real potential for growth.
Research New Opportunities: Look into skills, habits, and opportunities that appeal to your most ambitious aspirations and skills.
Seek Insight and Opportunities: Connect with individuals in your desired field to gain insights and uncover opportunities.
Create an Action Plan: Taking action towards curating a far better work experience that respects your life-time-energy pathway.
Embracing Illuminated Order at Work is about curating your work into a more satisfying form. It's also a radical act of self-respect. It's acknowledging that every day spent in a job that doesn't value you is a day not fully lived.
As you stand at the crossroads of fulfillment, remember: the choice to step into your power and curate a career aligned with your passions is yours. Curate your professional life to be a vibrant expression of your inner world, a testament to the belief that work can be both fulfilling and financially rewarding.
You alone have both the choice, and the responsibility, to make the radical changes in this area that create fulfillment and recraft your professional life.
How will you explore your Work Landscape as you #reclaimyourwildness and #healworklife?
See you in the next post.
Be well,
Katherine
