Work – Do we consider it a burden or a joy?
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Work – Do we consider it a burden or a joy?
Work, especially paid work, has always been regarded as an important feature of life, regardless of where we live in the world. It’s common for people to use work as a means of establishing self-identity and as a foundation to build and maintain a certain desired lifestyle. It’s also used as a status marker, especially if the work is on a paid rather than a voluntary basis.
People often place enormous emphasis on building their career and put a lot of effort into gaining qualifications and finding their dream job, yet even when that is achieved, there is still a high level of discontent that can be seen and felt in most workplaces around the globe. Behind the exterior façade there remains massive amounts of dissatisfaction and restlessness. It’s obvious that people are not coping with the gap between work experiences and their idealised picture of what work means, be it in terms of recognition, identification or financial reward, and there is a heavy price to pay both personally and at a community level.
When we look around we see that people are exhausted – they come into work with a coffee or some other sort of caffeinated drink in their hand. Then the clock watching starts with people regularly checking how long it is until their morning break, which generally means more coffee and something to eat. The focus then shifts to the lunch break, followed by the afternoon run down, often coupled with something sweet to eat along the way for a quick shot of energy, until it’s finish time. People can’t wait to escape out the door. There is the rush to pick up children or go to the gym or the shops to buy some last-minute items to cook for dinner and then home to the next series of tasks, sometimes with the aid of an alcoholic beverage or other form of legal or illegal drug to take the edge off things. Before the day ends there is some ‘me time’ squeezed in to browse social media, watch something on television or play online games before heading off to bed. It’s subsequently quite common to hear people say that they had to drag themselves to work because they didn’t sleep well the night before, and the cycle then repeats itself.
As time passes the lethargy builds and along with it an attitude that coming to work is a huge imposition. It seems we can’t wait until the weekend or our next day off, our next annual leave and/or when we can take our long service leave and lastly, claim the prize of reaching retirement with great plans to escape. Regardless of how we started our working life, the purpose and joy of work has become buried under the heaviness of fatigue and the daily grind of our lives. The whole momentum is dizzying in its relentless pace with time driven demands and expectations, both our own and those coming through others. We find simplicity has been replaced with complication as people are needing to put in more and more effort just to keep going.
We are conditioned to think our lifestyle is normal because when we look around, it seems everyone else is caught in the same loop, regardless of how successful or otherwise they may appear to be socially and career wise.
"How you choose to live can be your greatest form of medicine
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume II, ed 1, p 439
or the poison and/or ill that will bring you down."
Work becomes the scapegoat and is seen as the cause of our exhaustion, high stress levels and declining mental and physical health. We search for solutions and indeed many workplaces are introducing staff wellbeing programs due to the high levels of staff absenteeism and turnover. But the problem is that when we are living in a perpetual state of looking for answers ‘out there’, we lose sight of how we blame one area of our lives i.e. work, when really, what we are being shown is that we need to step back and take a holistic perspective. We develop a love/hate relationship with work whereby we want the lifestyle and status it affords us, but we also resent the responsibility and keep looking for a way to escape. However, a quick glance at the rising rates of domestic and family violence, drug and alcohol abuse and mental ill health etc. all show that our home lives aren’t running smoothly either.
We keep overlooking that everything we do is part of the one life – there is no difference between when we are or aren’t at work as our bodies are still bearing the brunt of our choices regardless of the location.
What if the missing ingredient was a connection with our body and through that connection a level of stillness where we can feel that part of us we call our inner heart or soul? How can we truly feel vital and ready to bring our all to wherever we are and whatever we are doing if we are at the beck and call of our minds and leave our body and inner being-ness out of the equation? Our body does do what it can to keep up with the demands we place on it, but ultimately exhaustion and illness either creeps in or suddenly brings us to an abrupt halt. Yet we override the body’s messages because it doesn’t suit us – we want to keep going along the same path, pushing on through despite the niggles and aches and pains and poor sleep quality we experience along the way. We turn up for work and expect our bodies to be ready for action but over time find that the fatigue is so widespread we haven’t even gotten out of bed before we are wanting some form of stimulation to help us get through the day/night ahead. We look for something to blame for how we are feeling and naturally work is a convenient target. It’s also convenient to go into blaming others, yet the reality is we are responsible for how we live our lives and the subsequent impact our choices have on others, including our work colleagues and patients/clients/customers.
"To go into your head to live, requires nervous energy to sustain it.
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume I, ed 1, p 576
The nervous energy comes from the anxiousness the body is placed under as a result of it not leading the way but being led by a single organ (front part of the brain) in dis-favour of the otherwise whole. The body is in affect, under constant abuse thereafter, an abuse the single organ then has no choice but to perpetuate and further the abuse ongoingly."
Have we ever stopped to consider how far reaching and important it is to take responsibility for the body we bring to work, physically, mentally and energetically? Most people will squirm if they answer this question truthfully as it is much easier to see luck, genetics, and/or financial situation as the main markers determining a person’s state of health and wellbeing. The above question is not designed to ridicule or denigrate anyone, but rather it is offering an opportunity to do a holistic stocktake of how we have been living because most would agree that there is a lack of ease and flow across all the different parts of our lives.
A lingering sense that there is more to life than what we have been shown or are living tells us that there is a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle we are not yet applying to life. So how do we hit the refresh button and start to re-imprint all our ingrained patterns of behaviour and ways of thinking and seeing the world?
One place we can all start is through developing a harmonious relationship within ourselves where we allow a union of body, mind and soul to be our guide. When we take a multidimensional perspective, we are given more clarity about the true state of affairs and what needs to change, not just in terms of our attitude towards work, but also life in general. If we start with building a relationship with our bodies, we will find the rest will flow. Connecting with our body can seem strange at first if we are used to living in our heads, but even pausing and take several deep breaths gives our body the opportunity to communicate with us. Noticing how we chew our food or place our feet and move our arms while walking are other basic ways to connect with our body. Placing one hand on our heart and gently rotating anti- clockwise is another simple body reconnection tool many people enjoy. Perhaps it’s taking note of what happens when we replace the cup of coffee we find ourselves reaching for with a glass of water. Our mind will initially fight the shift of attention onto our body, but every little step we take leaves an imprint and over time it becomes easier to recognise the messages coming through our body.
"The true answers are in your inner-heart and
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume I, ed 1, p 87
never will they be in your head."
Work environments are particularly notorious for running on a hard, driven, competitive energy, however this way of living is not our natural state. It is an abusive energy that dishonours the fact that we are all sensitive, tender beings in our inner hearts. People often want to apologise or bury any sign of these qualities, believing that they signal weaknesses. Yet the more we connect with our bodies and what is in our inner hearts, the more our innate qualities come to the surface and the greater the sense of power and authority that can be felt, and when embraced and applied wisely, we all benefit. It’s an upgrade that is long overdue, both in terms of what we bring to work and to every other aspect of our lives.
Who knows what transformations are possible if we let go of our fixed ideals and start to really value our multidimensionality? Our relationship with work will definitely be remodelled and we may find we have much more to offer this world than we ever thought possible…
"We are designed to work in one way or another until our last breath,
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume I, ed 1, p 303
always engaging and letting humanity in.
Let your last breath be your retirement.
And before then, serve until you drop."
Filed under
Career, Energy, Exhaustion, Responsibility, Work stress
