Work That Matters

a mindfulness-based guide to finding right livelihood

happy readers from the book’s release in Dec 2017!

This week I’m celebrating my first-ever royalty check by sharing an excerpt from my book, Work That Matters: How to Create a Livelihood That Reflects Your Core Intention (Parallax Press, 2017). My sincere thanks to everyone who has bought a copy of the paperback or e-book! If the book is new to you, this excerpt will give you a flavor of what it offers. I’d be honored if it can support you to find or create work that you love — something many of us struggle with.

In the past seven years since Work That Matters was published, I’ve so much enjoyed teaching an online course based on it (which may make another appearance soon here on Substack) and offering one-to-one coaching to support folks making a career transition.

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 2: “What is Liberation-based Livelihood?”

The essence of Buddhism, as I understand it, is about freedom from suffering. The word “liberation” turns up over and over in Buddhist texts, but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to want to be free. If you drill down deep into your own life, you’ll begin to see how many of your choices are driven by a desire to free yourself from suffering.

The problem is that our attempts to end our pain can often lead us into more suffering. Not that we intend it that way! Without some kind of contemplative practice and the insights that come from it, it’s easy to engage in not-so-helpful strategies like avoidance or addictive behaviors that may offer short-term relief but actually perpetuate our unhappiness.

Most of us spend the majority of our time each week engaged in our work and we give it a large portion of our vital energy. According to a 2016 survey from the Harvard School of Public Health, nearly half of working adults in the United States say that their current job affects their physical health, but only twenty-eight percent of those believe that the effect is a good one. People with disabilities, and in dangerous or low-paying jobs, are most likely to say their jobs have a negative impact on their stress levels, eating habits, and sleeping patterns.

When we’re unhappy in a job, that suffering permeates every aspect of our life. Conversely when we’re doing work that we love, it has a profoundly positive impact on the rest of our life and the people around us.

When I reflect on my work history over these past decades, I can clearly see how some jobs brought me joy while others I suffered through—sometimes a little and sometimes a great deal. Before I had a mindfulness practice, my tendency was to escape the dissatisfaction I felt in one job by jumping into another without giving much thought to what was going on inside me. Not surprisingly, I often ended up feeling equally miserable in the next job. It might take a month, it might take a year, but I’d find myself in the same predicament. Worse yet, I couldn’t understand why.

The attempts I made to figure out this dilemma through things like career counseling and aptitude tests were of limited help because they only tapped into one layer of my personality.

Mindful awareness has helped me to understand that real change takes place primarily at the level of our mind-set and beliefs. We may try modifying external conditions only to discover that nothing has truly changed, as I learned from all my job-hopping. Freedom is an inside job: that’s the fundamental principle of this book.

At the same time, it’s important to recognize that there are unhealthy, even dangerous work situations that no amount of mindful reflection will change. When this is the case, it’s entirely appropriate to call for reforms, and if you’re the one working in that situation, to get yourself out of it as soon as possible.

The Buddha taught about Right Livelihood as one segment of the Eightfold Path. Right Livelihood, in this context, is a way to earn a living in which you don’t harm others or yourself. Traditional teachings on Right Livelihood were fairly simple and focused on avoiding work that had harmful consequences for the worker as well as those who purchased his or her product or service.

The times we now live in are different from and often more complex than when the Buddha lived and taught more than two thousand years ago. For example, particularly in Western cultures, our sense of individuation is highly developed, for better or worse. And the speed and technology in which we work and live has exponentially increased. Work has become an extension of our identity and a primary way to express who we are….

All these factors, combined with my own personal experience, inspired me to look for updates to this teaching on Right Livelihood and create the concept of Liberation-Based Livelihood. In addition to not causing harm to yourself or another, this is livelihood that is an expression of your Core Intention, work that you can fall in love with and that no longer feels like “work”: work that matters.

Freedom is at the heart of this definition—freedom from limiting beliefs about what you’re capable of and what work can look like, and freedom to fully express your Core Intention through your work. The late Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop and a dedicated human rights and environmental activist, described the spirit of a Liberation-Based Livelihood beautifully:

“I have always found that my view of success has been iconoclastic: success to me is not about money or status or fame, it’s about finding a livelihood that brings me joy and self-sufficiency and a sense of contributing to the world.”

Another way to describe this way of working comes from Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo, a textile artist based in California. For Leslie, a Liberation-Based Livelihood is present when “the things that I say I love and value and are important to me actually show up in what I do each day.”

When I use the word “livelihood,” please note that it’s a placeholder for an entire constellation of work options. Some of these include:

• full-time job

• part-time job

• job sharing

• starting your own business or organization

• contract work

• paid internship

• volunteer work

• working in exchange for room, board, and stipend at a spiritual center or work trade

• a combination of any of the above

I invite you to consider that your livelihood is bigger than a job title. It’s about your commitment to embody your Core Intention through the activity of work, in whatever position you hold (or create for yourself. When you start thinking about work like this, you’ll stop trying to box yourself into a way-too-narrow job description. Instead, you focus on this commitment and begin to see innovative ways for your work to take form.

One of the most important things you’ll take away from this book is the ability to radically redefine what “work” means, so you can be more creative about how it looks for you. Perhaps my own journey can serve to illustrate how this functions in real life.

I chose my first career as a mental health professional because of my desire to help others. Eventually I realized that my choice to enter that field was driven by co-dependency and an over-identification as a “helper.” Over the years as I’ve gotten to know my personality better and work through some of those issues, I’ve discovered that a genuine wish to be of service is still at the core of who I am—but I’ve been able to do it from a more wholesome place. What’s also true is that I find a great deal of nourishment in Buddhist teachings and practice. When I had the opportunity to enroll in the Upaya Zen Center Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program in 2010—which culminated in receiving ordination as a lay minister and chaplain—I saw it as a chance to deepen my understanding of both those streams: service and Buddhism. The essential skill of a chaplain, as I’ve come to understand it, is to accompany people through suffering in a way that empowers them to find their own source of strength and meaning.

While I occasionally offer spiritual mentoring, officiate weddings, and give Dharma talks (the Buddhist version of a sermon), my everyday occupation isn’t directly related to chaplaincy or ministry. Instead, the training has given me another way to express my Core Intention: helping people to make discoveries and connections. For me, this means helping people to discover the resilience and spark that is deep inside of them, and supporting them to connect with others who will value them for who they truly are.

Even though I don’t work as a professional chaplain in a setting such as a hospital, I bring those chaplaincy skills into every aspect of my livelihood, whether I’m guiding an organization through a marketing strategy or coaching an individual through a career transition.

In a Liberation-Based Livelihood, you are consciously and consistently connecting your Core Intention to your work, whatever your work may be. You learn how to be flexible and fluid with how you define your livelihood, and this allows you to creatively respond to ever-shifting circumstances.

One of the obstacles to realizing Liberation-Based Livelihood is that we tend to believe our own “press release.” We can get attached to a professional identity that gives us a degree of security, financially and psychologically—but it can also confine and limit us.

We might think and say, “I’m a teacher.” This can be a source of legitimate pride and we spend years building our knowledge and skills in our chosen profession. We attend conferences, publish articles in professional journals, get certifications and licenses, and so on. At the same time, this kind of identification can cut us off from what might be a deeper calling, a more whole and authentic version of ourselves. This is what was happening as I got further into my career as a mental health professional. Sometimes when we over-identify with a role it can also build walls that separate us from others.

Watch what happens when you shift from nouns to verbs. Rather than getting attached to being a “teacher,” put the emphasis on “teaching.” You may notice that you love to teach but that it might take a different form than having a job title as a “teacher.” Your teaching may happen outside a typical educational setting. Ram Dass often says, “Identify with your soul, not your role.” You may want to sit with this question: How much am I identifying with a job title rather than what I intuitively know is my work to share with the world?

The road to a Liberation-Based Livelihood is not finite. It doesn’t come to an end when you accept a certain job or decide to follow a profession—it evolves as you do. Your path will become more conscious and more intentional as you go through the processes outlined in this book. As you integrate these concepts into your life, you will discover that you are no longer stumbling blindly from one job to another without a sense of cohesion or meaning or, worse yet, stuck in a workplace that is in opposition to your values. This book will show you how to create a career path that is deeply aligned with your Core Intention and discover work options that are responsive to the realities of your life.

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If you’ve read Work That Matters, I’d love to hear how the book has impacted your life and choices around work. If you haven’t read it but are curious or have any questions, please leave a comment below!

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