In times of upheaval, purpose must be prioritized more than ever. Everyone needs to do work that’s “meaning-rich”, in bad times as well as good.
Why do you do what you do? It’s a question many of us are asking ourselves right now.
During lock down, it’s safe to say that we’ve all had time to rethink some of our priorities. The pandemic has produced a realization that certain things we once did without a second thought — hopping into endless meetings or chasing the next promotion — have started to feel hollow.
Without downplaying the tragedy of the pandemic and current world events, this forced ‘time out’ has given us an opportunities One clear opportunity is for deep reflection. And what many of us are contemplating is is to unhook from the monitors and work with genuine purpose.
Times of struggle can pave the way to self-awareness.
COVID-19 is just one of many global hazards that threaten our existence. But the fact that it changed our working lives overnight has been shock therapy and more of us are asking questions:
- Why am I doing the job I’m doing?
- Why does ladder-climbing suddenly seem so insane, now that I’ve checked out of ‘business-as-usual’?
- When this is all over, will I really want to go back to normal?
We’re often bulldozed by social contagion; someone else gets a promotion so we want a promotion too. We humans have a tendency to live on autopilot, following habits and routines that make us feel safe.
Now that lock down has suspended pretty much everything, we’ve been forced to go cold turkey on many of those routines, which can be genuinely formative. We can more easily now see habits and behaviors we have no interest in resuming, and stronger ones we have started. From this upheaval, we now can get a sense of what we genuinely care about.
Read the full article on Medium.
