As a Well-being Strategist, my mission is to empower people take charge of their well-being and to develop strategies to live well on their terms. Each issue of my newsletter focuses on one pillar of well-being, this month is Career Well-being: You are energized by work.
In 2018, I left a leadership position at a technology firm to set out on a quest for work I love. I was driven by the desire to do great work with a diverse group of people and to establish more meaning and purpose at work. I was hopeful this path would lead to greater satisfaction in my career and life.
Ironically or not, my quest for work I love led me through a personal journey akin to Dante’s Inferno (part one of Dante Alighieri’s epic poem The Divine Comedy). Fortunately, I survived, and this newsletter shares my hard-earned wisdom.
Career well-being occurs when you are energized by work – think vitality, enthusiasm, determination. This description does not infer a certain income level or job title, nor does it box you in to a category of work deemed successful by society. It provides space to determine the contributing factors that lead to you to being energized by the work that you do, and the opportunity to position work to complement your life, rather than compete.
Do what you love and never work a day in your life. This common and lofty phrase may sound good in theory, however pursuing your passion can lead to a career riddled with confusion and angst, because the more we focus on doing what we love for work, the less we can end up loving it. The Self-Determination Theory (SDT) shows us that following your passion is a bad strategy for most people because it relies on your passion being able to deliver on the three nutrients required to feel intrinsically motivated for your work:
Autonomy: the feeling you have control over your day, and that your actions are important.
Competence: the feeling that you are good at what you do.
Relatedness: the feeling of connection to other people.
A working life well lived is one where your passion is not responsible for producing intrinsic motivation for work, or providing income, benefits, community, and all else that work can entail. Working well on your terms can be achieved when passion is the spark that amplifies your natural abilities and energy in the work that you do. The key is to extract the spark from the passion so that it can be applied to your work, here is how I have done that for myself:
I began with this question: When I am at my best, what beliefs lie just beneath the surface of my thoughts and actions?
I pondered this question (for years) and began to isolate moments when I was experiencing flow; a cognitive state of being fully immersed in an activity when the sense of time and self fade away. Some of the activities where experience flow are when I am mentoring people, teaching yoga, and writing.
When I am at my best, I am present, engaged, and singularly focused and the underlying beliefs are that I am creative, of service, and useful. I apply these qualities in the work I do as a Well-being Strategist and in my corporate work as a Communications Director, and these qualities are the spark that differentiate me from others and ignite being energized by work.
Don’t follow your passion, instead let it follow you in your quest to be so good they can’t ignore you. -Cal Newport
So Good They Can’t Ignore You, by Cal Newport, is one of my most recommended books on the topic of career. It focuses on de-bunking career advice to follow your passion and instead apply discipline to develop the sought after skills which will lead to a great job. The book outlines the key elements for becoming so good they can’t ignore you:
Career Capital: Rare and valuable skills.
Craftsman Mindset: Relentless focus on what value you are offering the world.
Deliberate Practice: Deliberately stretching your abilities beyond your comfort level and receiving ruthless feedback on your performance.
Making the mindset shift from finding the right work to working right on your terms is the first step towards career well-being.
It starts with understanding the spark that amplifies your natural abilities and letting this spark illuminate your way to being energized by work.
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Read the about the one change to significantly improve your well-being in my January 2025 Newsletter.
Wishing you peace, health, and happiness!
-Sharman
