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Self-Expression

Work is a natural vehicle for self-expression because we spend most of our time in its thrall. It simply makes no sense to turn off our personality, squelch our real abilities, forget our need for stimulation and personal growth forty hours out of every week. Work can be a means of allowing the varied and complex aspects of our personality to act on our behalf, translating our attitudes, feelings, and perceptions into meaningful productivity.

It may help to think of yourself as an artist whose work is obviously a form of self-expression. His first efforts may appear to be experimental, scattered, bland, or indistinct. But as he applies and disciplines himself, as he hones his skills and comes to know himself, his paintings become a signature of the inner man. In time, each canvas speaks of the artist's world view, his conscious and subconscious images, and his values. He can be understood through his works, almost as if he had written an autobiography.

Though the medium may be different, physicians, carpenters, salespersons, bicycle repairmen, anyone who uses his work as a means of self-expression, will gain the satisfaction of growth and self-understanding, and will single himself out from the crowd. Even entrepreneurs, who comprise a large part of my client base, tell me that there is "something within" which finds outer expression through their businesses. This expression allows their ventures to thrive. The remarkable thing about such self-expression, they say, is that it breeds confidence both in themselves and in their customers and employees, who quickly recognize someone whom they can count on.

Commitment

When we are pursuing our Right Livelihood, even the most difficult and demanding aspects of our work will not sway us from our course. When others say "Don't work so hard" or "Don't you ever take a break?" we will respond in bewilderment. What others may see as duty, pressure, or tedium we perceive as a kind of pleasure. Commitment is easy when our work is our Right Livelihood. As social activist and former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare John Gardner once said, the best kept secret is that people want to work hard on behalf of something they feel is meaningful, something they believe in.

I met with a young man last year who had drifted into a far-from-satisfying, but lucrative computer career. After much inner struggle he decided to leave his secure niche to return to school and study psychology. Recently, I received a letter from him and a copy of a straight-A transcript of his first semester courses. He was elated about his grades, but was having a hard time making ends meet, a condition he had never before encountered. Yet his certainty that he had found the right path for his life allowed him to excel and also gave him the power to respond resourcefully to the trials his new choice presented. He used his former skills and contacts to find part-time work and eventually decided to take a semester off to earn the lion's share of his tuition. "Once upon a time I would have quit when the going got rough," he reflected, "but now I'm eager to do what I must to stick to my choice." Because he is committed to his choice, he has gained a new level of vitality which fuels his ability to see it through to completion.

Successful people not only have goals, they have goals that are meaningful for them. They know where they are going and they enjoy the trek. Like this young man, when we are excited about what we are doing, when we are progressively moving toward the realization of meaningful goals, the difficulties become solvable problems, not insurmountable obstacles. I know that nothing will stop him from becoming a psychologist, and he will probably be a fine one at that. I knew it when he wrote in his recent letter, "The courses have been difficult and challenging, but I feel at home in this work and I am experiencing great joy for the first time in my life."

Mindfulness

If we think of what we do every day as only a job, or even as only a career, we may fail to use it fully for our own development and enrichment. When we are bored, frustrated, constrained, or dulled by what we do all day, we don't take advantage of the opportunities it offers. Moreover, we don't even see opportunities. The kind of relationship to work that is manifested in drifting attention, clock watching, and wishing to be elsewhere also robs us of energy and satisfaction.

In contrast, anyone who has ever experienced active, concentrated attention knows the truth of the statement by well-known Quaker writer Douglas Steere: "Work without contemplation is never enough." You may have played a game of bridge, read a book, gardened, pieced together a ship in a bottle. Afterward, you realized that you had lost track of the passage of time and forgotten your cares.

A friend's experience of a tennis game illustrates the power inherent in mindfulness during work: "It was a slow-motion game — everything lost its ordinary quality, everything seemed more vivid. I could almost see the threads on the tennis ball, that's how fully I was in the moment. I was entirely free of caring whether I won or lost. I played without my usual ego and emotion. I just played with total attention and my game was unsurpassed. More than that, I felt completely happy and fulfilled."

What can be achieved in such momentary pursuits is the result of a quality of mind — a mind fully absorbed in its task, in the present — that can be available to us daily when we are working at our Right Livelihood. Absorption is the key to mindfulness, the deep involvement in the work itself and the way in which each task is performed. Mindfulness puts us in a constant present, releasing us from the clatter of distracting thoughts so that our energy, creativity, and productivity are undiluted. You become your most effective. Attention is power, and those who work in a state of mindful awareness bring an almost supernatural power to what they do.

If you are asking, "How can I do what I love when I'm afraid...when I'm uncertain of the outcome...when I have to make ends meet...when I don't even know what I love to do?" read on. You, too, can find your Right Livelihood, and when you do, it will enable you to pay the bills and will richly reward you with a sense of meaningful participation in the one life you have.

Note: Right livelihood was popularly addressed in the mid-seventies in Seven Laws of Money (co-authored by Michael Phillips and others). Professor Theodore Roszak's book, Person/Planet, contains an entire chapter on right livelihood, and Chop Wood/Carry Water also discusses it. Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind has had a profound effect on my vocational life. Further information on these books may be found in the References section in the back of this book.

Copyright © 1989 by Dr. Marsha Sinetar. Excerpted by permission of Dell, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Tags: Career & Money

About the Author

Dr. Marsha Sinetar is an organizational psychologist, mediator, and writer who for the past several years has been increasingly immersed in the study of self-actualizing adults.