Meaningful work is something that has been talked about for a while. Yes, I very much agree that work has to be meaningful to a person. Perhaps he or she needs to see the value of the work being done for him or herself, and also the value it provides for others. There should be a point to it.
But when we start to search for meaning in our work because we have lost the motivation or passion to do it, it is like trying to find new chapters in a book we have read a long time ago, hoping that this time the ending will be unexpectedly different, even though the content is familiar and the resolution is known.
Yes, there has to be meaning at work. But above all, your life should have meaning. Work should simply support that meaning and purpose. The meaning of life is not work, the meaning of work is to support the meaning of life. The problem with motivation at work is not always work, but the loss-change-growth of your own life purpose.
In our search for meaning and purpose in life, we lock ourselves into motivational packages, motivational training, motivational events and other superficial problem solving. But that’s usually not where we find what we’re looking for.
Work is self-expression, but first I need to know who the self is that I am expressing. Self-expression can only come from expressing the meaning of one’s life. But the first step is to understand what meaning my life has and then to do the “work” that supports that meaning. And at that point, we no longer call work work, but life’s calling. The life call, when written apart, becomes the LIFE CALL.
