Why do we work?
Why do we wake up and, day-in, day-out, put ourselves through a routine of boredom, stress, and putting on a nice face for other people? Even if you love your job, why do you do it?
We go through school in order to graduate college with a degree so that we may get a “good job,” but do we ever consider why?
Allow me to take you back to a time before jobs as we know them.
Human beings were pretty new on the scene and they were trying to figure things out. They wandered the wilderness, looking for food with the odds stacked against them. They were slow, uncoordinated, weak, fearful, and unnecessarily violent with one another.
Then, between 17-13,000 years ago, people began to communicate with one another, and it was within this communication that we brought to reality something that had never existed before: imaginary concepts. Not once before the dawn of humankind had any other creature come up with a conscious idea, and it was within the use of our newfound tool of imagination that people took a leap forward on the food chain. In this newfangled world, humans began communicating ideas back and forth on how to make survival easier, and in doing so, invented jobs.
Some of us weren’t so good at hunting, but could tell a mean story about the hunt and keep morale up.
Some of us couldn’t whittle a spear to save our life, but we could tell the difference between good and bad mushrooms.
(Have you ever seen a movie where the villain gives a glass of wine to a lowly servant to make sure it isn’t poisoned? I wonder if there was a group of people whose job it was to figure out which foraged foods were okay to eat…)
The idea of having a job was brand new, and people ran with it. Hunters, gatherers, builders, inventors, shamans, storytellers, and telemarketers (who knew?) soon populated communities, and they knew their role and the purpose of that role: survival and the survival of their families and communities.
Fast forward from this world of scarcity and struggle to survive to a world of abundance and on-demand TV.
We go to work to get paid so we can support ourselves and our families, so while it feels like we work to survive, we live in a world with abundant resources, so focus can be shifted from simply surviving to thriving.
How?
We live in a world dominated by an imaginary currency, imaginary companies, an imaginary internet, and imaginary beliefs on what it means to live a good life. If humans disappeared, none of these concepts would survive because we created them (hence “imaginary”). Since large-scale human cooperation was based on imagined concepts such as these, we have the power to create new concepts and ideas to transform our current jobs into tools that can be used to further the capabilities of people. All we have to do is share these concepts with the people around us, make this cause one that they can believe in, and hope that they share with the people around them too.
What if we looked at work as an opportunity to advance humankind and make the world a better place for our children?
I don’t know about you, but that’s way more exciting than working toward retirement.
No matter your job, you have an opportunity to create for others.
For example, when I started speaking, my focus was on getting more gigs so I could entertain, educate, and inspire more people, but it felt like something was missing. Now that I realize the value of being a creator, my focus has shifted to creating a better experience of reality for those I have the opportunity to serve. I want to create excitement and energy in others so that they use their position, whatever it may be, to create excitement and energy in even more people. By focusing on this, I get more excited and energized and work becomes more than just getting booked – it becomes a daily opportunity.
Added bonus: the more excited and energized we are, the better work we do.
What do you do for work now?
What product, service, or experience do you sell?
How does your product, service, or experience help other people thrive?
What would it look like if it helped even more people or helped the people it’s already helping even more?
How can you use your talents, skills, and the tools already at your disposal to make this a reality?
We have the power to share the idea that all of our jobs, no matter what they are, exist in order to further humankind, not to simply earn a paycheck and maintain the status quo.
Maintaining status quo breeds stagnation, and stagnation breeds disease.
What do you want to create in the world with your work? Stagnation or energy?
What do you want to inspire in others? Stagnation or energy?
It all starts with the story you tell yourself about your work.
We work to create opportunities for ourselves and others to thrive.
Pass on this story, because without sharing it, sure, we’ll survive, but what’s the point of just surviving when we have the power to elevate ourselves and thrive?
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