My boss made me read this book
Real Happiness At Work.
I think this portion might be a good read for you:
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I AM NOT MY JOB
In an ambitious meritocracy such as ours, it’s especially easy to identify
excessively with our position, profession, or role. This is true whether you
are a steel worker or a meditation teacher, a gardener or a fashion model.
Especially in competitive environments, it is a constant practice not to
confuse our true identity with our public persona, or to “believe our own
PR” in professions requiring self-promotion. In New York City, strangers
at parties will often ask one another, “What do you do?” as the opening
salvo to getting acquainted, as opposed to “How are you?,” “What do you
love?,” or “Where do you live?” Using the ancient philosophical
distinction between “doing” cultures and “being” cultures, ours is one
defined by doing.
This is not to say that what we do for a living doesn’t affect our off-thejob
quality of life. Certainly, work provides self-esteem off the job, a
structure for the day, a purpose for getting up in the morning and going to
do something. Work can offer friends, a social group to belong to, a sense
of being a contributor, part of something with a bigger purpose that’s
valued by society. However, while work may give us these benefits, it is
risky to make it our reason for being.
Many jobs do not provide the social status that our ego might wish to
project in the world. In the professional pecking order, we may feel like
peons. An office worker named Tracy struggles with this. “It’s a huge
challenge to not see myself as just a secretary,” says Tracy. “The fact that
my work life is full of nonchallenging tasks is also an ongoing struggle.
Many times it appears to me that my boss looks down at me. I do my best
to be of service at a job that was never a great fit, practically or spiritually,
and try not to let personalities get in the way of what my fundamental job
there is. But it’s wearing me down.”
Tracy’s story is all too common. So what can you do when your job
fails to give you the ego satisfaction you might like? How can you
maintain your self-respect in subservient positions where others may treat
you, condescendingly, as a functionary instead of a whole human being?
This is where the rubber of spiritual practice meets the road. Like all
conditions that disappoint us, push our buttons, or challenge the image we
hold of ourselves, inferior jobs offer an excellent—if not always pleasant
—opportunity to work with negative emotions, practice humility, and
strengthen mindfulness of unhealthy attachments to status,
competitiveness, appearance, greed, and so on. Regardless of how much
you hate your job, you can always learn from your own responses and use
the experience to wake up. This may seem like cold comfort, but in
spiritual terms it could not be more beneficial. From a spiritual
perspective, while it’s lovely to get what we want, of course, it can be
more beneficial, more self-strengthening, and more enlightening, not to get
it, since challenge and loss have the power to reveal where we are deluding
ourselves (“If only I got a promotion, I’d be a more worthy person!”), and
shift our awareness to what is true; namely, that job titles, salary,
impressive responsibilities, have nothing to do with who we really are.
This inevitable gap between what we want and what we get, serves a vital
function: to remind us of impermanence, directing our awareness toward
what truly matters.
As the songwriter Leonard Cohen puts it in one of his songs, “There is a
crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.” In other words, when we
experience dissatisfaction at work, which everyone does sooner or later,
regardless of how impressive their job is, we can use our disappointment
as fuel to wake up. So you thought that your job would solve all your
problems? Big surprise! So you believed that job success and appreciation
would render you forever secure, shore up all your self-doubts, your
craving for esteem, and your faith in universal fairness? Hello! Waking up
from our most cherished illusions is a vital step in spiritual maturity.
Realizing that everything changes and nothing satisfies completely is
comparable to no longer believing in Santa Claus, shocking at first but
fortifying in the long run. Like intense disappointment on other fronts,
such as family dynamics, romantic heartbreak, and the concerns of aging
(which a friend of mine calls Miracle-Gro for your character defects!)
letdowns at work may bring out the worst in us in order for us to heal and
free ourselves of false expectations.
Mindfulness is the tool we use for forging this path. Realizing that our
jobs are conditional and impermanent, like all relationships, we learn to
perform these jobs well without losing ourselves to these temporary roles.
Jessica, who works as a cocktail waitress while waiting for her break as an
actress, has discovered that she can enjoy her work without it coloring her
self-image or clouding her larger purpose. “I have always felt I could
survive in this job as long as I maintain my own boundaries,” Jessica
explains. “I am happiest when I’m able to keep everything totally separate.
This has always been my goal since waitressing was not what I wanted to
do with my life. A lot of people I work with get really frustrated because
they take work-related stuff too seriously. For me, it’s just a job that
provides me really good money to do what I really want to do.”
As a police officer, Caitlin is more devoted to her job than Jessica is but
equally determined to keep it separate from her personal life. “As much as
I can, I try to relate to my work as though it’s just a job, to maintain a
sense of life outside of police work. I have friends who are not in law
enforcement, who have interests that are different from mine and who keep
me grounded.” Staying connected to life outside the precinct house enables
Caitlin to perform her professional duties without losing her civilian
identity.
