A friend posed this question the other day and although it is a bit intimidating as a blog post, I want to see what I can do. Always gotta push ourselves, right?
- Why do we work?
- What’s in it for us besides a paycheck?
- Is there a ‘bigger purpose’ that we’re taking baby steps towards?
Why do I work? Because I cannot sit still. Not because I’m wrongly diagnosed with ADD like most of this country, but because I am know I have bigger things inside of me and the fear of mediocrity outweighs that sedentary feeling. When I got to college to play football, I gave it my best effort for as long as I was able to wear a uniform because that is who I am. Not defined as a football player – defined by my work ethic. I carried this into the furniture company, often working 80 and sometimes 100 hour weeks. Albeit back then I wasn’t working as effectively as I am today, I was working as hard and as smart as I knew how to in those days. One thing I noticed throughout both of those experiences, especially football, is that so many people waste the talent they have been given.
I watched football players much better than me fizzle out within 6 months of getting to school. I watched excellent sales people have moments of brilliance, but didn’t want to work to have that consistently so they’d quit. And now I see so many people have the opportunity to do more with their lives but they’re too content with their current situations. I’m not saying that everyone needs to have multiple businesses and try to take over the world, but just to have a job to have a job is a sin in my eyes.
A job can be a means to an end and give us the money we need to live life while our passions lie in the side projects we take on. The way we make money doesn’t necessarily have to be the one thing in life that we’re passionate about and it’s sad that we teach kids in school this. A lot of kids love music but most aren’t good enough to make that their life-long career. Some are fortunate enough to get into the music industry, but the ones who have that as a hobby when they get home from work give themselves a way to release from the stresses of life. Nobody is passionate about cleaning port-o-potties, but someone has to do it.
Some people are fortunate enough to do exactly what they love, and I commend them because that is often not an easy path, nor is it obvious. There is the typical example of the car lover that owns a body shop, there is my Mom that is a personal trainer and works with upwards of 60 clients each week one-on-one or in small groups, and there is the marine biologist that travels the world scuba diving on reefs all day. But most of us are not in that situation. Some because we don’t want to work that hard for that one thing we’re passionate about. And still others because we’re not really sure what we’re passionate about…yet.
It took me a while, but I realized that I love working with people and I have a passion for building things. I am a bit introverted, which may come as a surprise to some, and I like to work by myself on a lot of things. But I love to spend large chunks of my time helping others achieve their goals. I have achieved so many of mine in life that I know how rewarding it can be, and I didn’t do it alone. I was fortunate enough to help build a football program from obscurity to a championship and I was fortunate enough to help build a small business into a dynasty. Now I’m working on building a website with a life-long friend and I’m able to work on writing/building my book in the spare time I can create.
So I love to build, but what about you? This blog is not about me, it’s about you and sharing my knowledge with you. If you fall into that category of ‘not really sure what we’re passionate about yet’ don’t worry there is plenty of time. I just read about a man that found out his BODY of work, not some of it, was validated when he was 85. For me, it took a lot of alone time to figure out what my purpose was. I found that two activities in my alone time helped me figure out the why in life: running and writing.
When I run I have all the time I want to get lost in my thoughts. If there is something that is one my mind and I cannot seem to shake it I’ll review or write out the problem/idea/question why before I run (no headphones) and then give myself 30 minutes or an hour and 2 hours, or as long as it takes to get that thought all the way through my head with clarity. And the second thing is writing. Even before I was blogging I kept a journal of things that happened in order to help sort them in my head. I would ask myself tough questions that I didn’t want others to know I was struggling with and write them through.
It is easy to have a thought rattle around in our brains, we have millions each day. It is harder to speak those thoughts and put them into words, articulating them in conversation. But it is most difficult to write them out and tell a story (even it’s to ourselves) on paper and make IT make sense. At one point this blog post was over 1300 words… And I needed all of them to noodle through my thoughts to get what you see now.
As we all struggle with the big question of why? Go to the goals we’ve set and the big aspirations we have in our personal lives, those will shine a bit of light on what we’re looking for. I heard Todd Henry say that our bank accounts and calendars will let us know what we deem important even if we don’t readily know, so start there if there are not any concrete goals on paper.
I hope this sheds some light or at least my perspective on ‘why’ and I love that was asked about it. If you have something you’d like to see from me in a post, please leave me a comment, tweet me, text me, email me, or get a hold of me some way and I’ll do my best to work through it.
