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What drives your job satisfaction? When it's based on Spirit your career may take some surprising paths!
Is there really such a thing as a “career track” these days? I used to think there was something like that -- something I was supposed to articulate, find and stay on....but to be honest, any achievements I have had in working didn’t follow a track or pattern, but more having to do with “satisfaction.”
Now, maybe to a lot of people satisfaction is defined by following a set path to a particular career goal (by X number of years I can be partner in a law firm? Managing director of a consultancy? Senior manager of a company?).
To me, job satisfaction has way more to do with internal checkpoints, not punching your ticket with job assignments.
When I was just starting out, I had to be challenged. In my 20’s a headhunter once observed about me that it was death by a thousand cuts if I felt I was coasting in a job – I had to be striving constantly to learn more and accomplishing tasks that were just out of reach. Hard to maintain every day. Consequently, I was mostly dissatisfied in my early work life! Hard on a boss too to keep me engaged.
At one point, I was working at a regional advertising agency and my boss was pretty good at throwing stuff at me that was very challenging. But eventually I felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again. AAAACK! Also, I owned some shares in the agency, so technically I was an “owner.” But it didn’t feel like I had any juice whatsoever.
And then I had a brilliant idea. I heard that one of the majority owners who had one-third ownership was ready to sell his shares. So one day I marched into the president’s office (he was my day-to-day boss) and said I would like to buy all the shares. Hah! That would keep me revved up for awhile!
Well, he was gracious about saying “no thanks” but it was a little too fast. Could be I surprised the hell of him. Not sure why, he was my age (29) when he started the agency.
I hung around for several more months but I really wanted the experience of running my own shop. Around that time, my husband wanted to open a division of his home furnishings company to focus on office furnishings so I jumped to establish that.
During this time I was also getting serious about my spiritual development. I was studying the Bible pretty regularly and figuring out how to apply the insights I was learning into my life, particularly my work experience.
One of the lessons that kept tugging on me was Jesus’ statement “Not my will but thine be done.” Jesus utters this when he asks God to let him off the hook for the crucifixion. Phew! What trust, what love, what humility!
Somewhere in my consciousness I knew that kind of yielding to a divine direction – no matter what – was NOT the kind of direction I had been following. It was more, “gee I’m bored, what else can I do?”
After a couple of years of spiritual study and discovery, I had a new realization about what would satisfy me in my work experience. Instead of continually looking for yet another challenging task, I really wanted to contribute to whatever workplace I was in. How could I make it better? In other words, the job wasn’t about what I needed – what did a workplace need that I could help with? This would be my job.
Interestingly, about this time I did a strategic plan for my husband’s business and it became obvious to him and me that my role was extraneous!
Instead of madly rushing around looking for another job, I paused for several days in deep study and prayer. I asked God, the Spirit of all Life, what did She want me to do? How could I contribute to a workplace by expressing Her qualities of goodness, respect, creativity?
After a couple of weeks of thinking about this and praying to know that not only would Spirit guide me in the right direction, I would recognize it as God-directed too!
One day, when I was reading another of my favorite Bible commentaries, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures , I stopped and said outloud “OK, God, what do you want me to do? I will do ANYTHING – EVEN go back to work for my old boss at the agency!!”
Oh man, this was my moment of total yielding – it was the first time I knew what it meant to believe, “Not my will but thine be done.” It is hard to describe the peace and exhilaration I felt...because at the same moment of utter yielding, it was also a “calling forth” – a total expectation to see and experience what God wanted me to do. No doubt, Spirit was already guiding me to the right place. I felt free!
A couple of hours later – I am not making this up – the phone rang. It is my old boss. “Remember a few years ago when you wanted to buy a third of the agency? Well, I am ready to retire and I would like to sell you my ownership (over half of the total stock).”
Oh, God is so good...and clear!!! Within the month we had negotiated the deal and I stepped in as president of the firm. For 15 years this experience gave me all the challenges and accomplishments I could hope for. But most important, the spiritual lessons I learned became a foundation for continued spiritual growth.
How could it not? The experience was based on yielding to total trust in Her will, not mine. And that is job satisfaction for me. Read more from this blogger at Practical Spirituality .
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