You are your life's work

If you ask people - what is their life’s work, or how to discover what your life’s work is, the conversation will likely become about what you do. In fact, the Collins Dictionary defines ‘life’s work’ as: the main activity that they have been involved in during their life, or their most important achievement. The Cambridge Dictionary says: Your life's work is the work that is most important to you and to which you give a lot of time and effort: Her garden was her life's work. It is a state of doing, striving for or towards something.

Our level of doing influences our social status through achievements, allowing us to have social mobility. Social mobility is an important vehicle for people to have an acceptable means of achieving their personal goals and expressing individual aptitude. Goals may become so important that if the institutionalized means—i.e., those means acceptable according to the standards of the society—fail, illegitimate means might be used. Greater emphasis on ends rather than means creates a stress that leads to a breakdown in the regulatory structure i.e. the means justify the end.

We are taught to seek approval from a very early age – I am a good girl mummy. Pleasing others and doing things that gain praise and attention makes sense, being accepted into our ‘pack’ is important for our survival when we are young and carries on through our adult life. An individual not at ease with their pack feels socially isolated and anxious; in a larger, societal context, generally accepted beliefs and standards of conduct are weakened or disappear and our society becomes unstable if too many people feel like this.

A state of being involves accepting what is, without feeling the need to change it. We have a rich sense of what is happening in the present moment, through our senses, our thoughts, our bodies, and our emotions. This allows us to be present in our lives, rather than miss the whole thing while we are thinking of something else: in other words, being makes it easier to savor the pleasures in life as they occur.

Physiologically, being helps relieve stress, treat heart disease, lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, improve sleep, and alleviate gastrointestinal difficulties. It is one of the ways we maintain homeostasis which is the state of steady internal, physical, and chemical conditions maintained by living systems.

By being mindful on the here and now, many people find that they are less likely to get caught up in modern maladies many of us suffer with and often feel powerless to change: worries about the future or regrets over the past, feeling preoccupied with concerns about success and self-esteem, lacking to opportunity to form deep connections with others (remember how being connected with your ‘pack’ creates stability?).

What if I said to you there is no truly selfless act? Our ego is attached to the idea that we make sacrifices for others, that we are in service to what others – people or society or work - demand of us. In truth, all our acts are expressions of what we value and believe in. How is that thought sitting in your body? When we are stuck in one mode – either doing or being – for too long, we lose contact with the knowledge and awareness of what we value and believe in.

Whether we give up the last piece of cake for someone special, say yes to an extra work project we really don’t have the space for, respond to a message when we are enjoying a moment of peace or take on the care of an aging parent, we are taking action that expresses what we value and believe in. Underneath the fatigue, the interminable movement, the disappointment there is a sense of feeling good about ourselves. A moment of righteousness. When we are in a constant state of doing, we may become overwhelmed and be more aware of our resentment rather than our righteousness. Think of something you feel resentful about. Take a few quiet breaths and feel into that sensation. How does that feel in your body? Does your world feel smaller, darker or heavier? Does your field of vision feel narrower? Is there a heaviness in your chest or stomach? Now think of something you feel satisfied about. Take a few quiet breaths and feel into that sensation. Notice the differences? Does your world feel more expansive and centered? How does your body feel now? Is your field of vision more open and alert? Would it surprise you to know that you can learn to choose which state you are in?

You are your life’s work. It is essential that we develop an intimate relationship with ourselves so that we can take the appropriate action that truly reflects who we are. When we are in a space where we can choose our state – resentful v satisfied – we have more control over our experience of life. In NLP we choose the pre-supposition that ‘the person with the most flexibility controls the system.’ Or, put another way: the person with the most flexibility of thought, feeling, language and behavior always has the edge over their life. They are operating from cause, i.e. taking responsibility – recognising that they have the ability, the ‘response ability’, to respond rather than just react to whatever life throws at them. As opposed to someone who is operating from effect, i.e. they are saying “I am not responsible for what I feel or how I react; everyone else is.” They have given their power away.

How does one go about learning to have an intimate relationship with themselves? No doubt some part of you is familiar with “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.” I’m not attached to any particular religious beliefs, but this is as good a metaphor as I have heard to capture my meaning here. Rest is important, being in a state of being. Being provides us with the opportunity for reflection, study, contemplation, daydreaming. And in this space, this quietness, we learn to listen to ourselves. To hear what is important to us, to learn who we have become over the years, what we now value and what we now believe in.

This is a learnt skill. In a society where we are constantly being exposed to the message that striving is to be admired, having more means you are more and overwork is held as a virtue, we likely haven’t learnt the skill of being still.

Regular reflection practice, ongoing education, investing in coaching, spiritual investigation, annual retreats, commitment to your sabbatical are all ways you can learn this skill for yourself. How do we know what we are meant to do if we don’t know who we are? And the doing is important: important enough that we learn to make considered choices about what we do and that the doing also makes it easier to savor the pleasures in life.