Whatever You Do, if You Enjoy the Task, It Can Support Your Needs
© 2007 by Eric S. Meyer. 
All Rights Reserved.
 

This article is not about what you should do, must do or can do. It is not about pleasing others, doing what others want to trying to fit in. Rather, it speaks to a different crowd: You! In other words, this essay is a guide to finding and doing that which you already know you can do, may do and could succeed at, only here is a structure to help you a little along the way of realizing your potential. In fact, this is more of an exercise at looking at what is important to you and to teach yourself to put yourself first, then others next. After all, how can you help others be happy and comforted when you yourself are not at the point of attainment of happiness and comfort?
This sort of guide will begin in youth, because that is when most of are taught to do, think and behave as we are told. The purpose may appear benign enough; to try to get us to fit into society in the name of being well-adjusted and socialized. Formal schooling is the major source for most of us of our values, prejudices and what we think we want. Schools tend to be very powerful influences on society and tend to homogenize the culture to a very real and significant degree of intensity.
The first step to empowerment is to identify what we want. The way this step can be done is by identifying that which we were conditioned to believe, think and judge. This may be difficult, but is essential for moving to the next step. Towards this, ask yourself, “what assumptions are being made with this?”
By asking yourself repeatably to identify assumptions, you will get to deeper and deeper layers. Like an onion, there are countless layers, and at first, the layers may seem unending. But, with patience and perseverance, one may get to a core or center, a point at which nothing more can be extracted or questioned. In life, however, we generally don't afford the luxury of reaching an end of questions, or a so-called 'truth'.
Indeed, 'truth' is difficult to find for an individual, but is nearly impossible for a group to attain except through indoctrination and alignment of views. The way views are aligned include by suppressing personal views based on experiences and feelings, while putting in their place that which was conditioned over time to the 'truth'. Alignment is a sort of surrendering of one's own judgments, and is a mechanism to facilitate the harmonious integration of an individual into a group.
With repeated practice, assumptions can be traced to declarations and values that were once imposed into us at an earlier age or more recent past. With such tracing, the assumption becomes definable and able to be articulated to communicate with another person, written about and to propel one to questions that may be harsh and sharp, but nonetheless important to gaining the key to breaking free from the 'truths' of others.
After all, if a 'truth' suits another individual or entity more than it suits us, is the effort to uncover and recognize the assumptions about reality worthwhile? To look at this another way, if by spending a few dozen minutes day optimizing what we think and how we respond to feelings, is that better than having that few dozen minutes be spent assembling a puzzle or watching television while clinging to thoughts that result in behaviors that suit others.
By others here, it is meant to refer to include wealthy corporations that profit from us watching, for instance, some television game show or reality show, and not so much to include co-workers, friends, family and spouse. Precisely, when we watch television, more often than not, we are absorbing and internalizing the views presented, not necessary those of the author, but of the group of writers, and most likely of a media giant company. How often to you see television programming during prime time evenings that speak critically without caution to not upset their own funding sources?
It may be fact that funding is what most people focus on. They look at the moment, what makes the most money the fastest. However, when one looks for immediate payout, they will tend to find certain types of work, while they will tend to avoid other opportunities. This is important to notice, because by steering away from those activities that require time to generate profits also tend to have the highest income potential. Consider the following:
Two friends complete high school, and one attends college, the other immediately finds work in a fast food chain. In six months, the college student will have a very negative net worth, but gain skills for later use. Such skills will generally be provided in an artificial environment, so that on the job following graduation, less learning will be necessary, such as from the employer or the Human Resources coordinators. In one year, the student will perhaps have a huge debt, few personal assets, study long hours and party occasionally. By contrast, the restaurant worker has gained seniority among the general laborers, and has saved several thousand dollars, has no debt, some personal assets, and can party intensely two nights a week. After four years, the student will owe tens of thousands of dollars, and have little more than a piece of paper from graduation and the memories that translate into skills and abilities. The restaurant worker? They may have been promoted to manager, and be paid quite a bit more than minimum wage. However, the college graduate may apply for a job in their field, get hired, and start earning two to five times the pay per hour than the restaurant manager.
Of course, the student could have gotten disabled in injured at any time, which may necessitate a career change, and a potential loss of invested monies from their previous completed education. Consider the next example: the small business owner and the employee. Here, lets say the small business owner has an idea, applies for a loan, then setup up the company. The business owner seeks an employee, who works a well-defined number of hours a week for a specific number of dollars per hour. Other than for bonuses given to the employee, the employee will expect to make an fixed amount each month if they work the same number of hours. This grants the employee a sense of stability and consistency, but the predictability has a price; the price is that the employee will have limited return on contributed ideas or innovations, since such mental work would usually benefit the employer much more than the employee.
Laws state that when an employee develops an idea or invention on paid time on a job, the work generally is a 'work for hire' and is the property of the employer. This includes the content of emails and dialog in phone calls. In fact, many employers monitor such communications to ensure the workers are not 'out of line'. Clearly, the role as employee is such as to benefit the owner of the company, not the many people who contribute to the success of the company and the wealth of the owner or owners. Indeed, in the United States, the highest ratio of pay from a janitor to CEO is 342:1.
To complete the process of knowing what we want, one must examine what and why we think and believe what we do. Here, a few paragraphs are provided for a process that takes a lifetime, and even then, often is incomplete at best. But if we do not try to wonder and question, we are reduced to servants of advertisers and corporate giants. If we struggle for clarity and understanding of what we think we know and see, our journey may get a little more defined in our own interest.
The second step of success in doing what you enjoy for a living is to define what you are looking for. Here, you will notice how you feel and what you value, and seek to find actions that have the highest concentration of leading you closer to that becoming reality. With a vision of what you seek, you may go towards your dreams.
Interestingly, no matter where you are at, even if your dreams are realized, you will probably not notice until it is too late, unless you both have defined what you want and examined where you are immediately at. In other words, you may be standing on a paradise, but you won't realize it until you have left. Often, looking back were we were is easier than taking notice of the moment, and certainly accurately perceiving the direction we are heading and our future takes more effort and practice than both acknowledging the past or paying attention to the moment combined.
For this step, you may want to use an example such as one of the following: to spend more time with your children/family/spouse/elder; to not be required to leave your home due to health, safety, climate, traffic or commute reasons; to be able to travel; to be productive while in a hospital or prison; to pursue a dream; to setup a business with a friend or family member; to not have to be told what do, wear, say and think; to be freed of going to school or college; to have something to show for your hard work; to not have to worry about your job being lost (if self-employed); to work your own hours; to own all your own artistic and creative work; to take a chance; to explore your options; to feel real; to do what feels good or natural; to build towards making your goals and values manifest stronger in reality. Perhaps you will have your own unique reason not listed above. No matter the reason, if the reason is from within you, not extrinsic, then you are probably making healthy progress towards liberation of your soul.
The third step is to develop a plan to reach the goal and priorities as specified in steps two above. The plan should be built around focusing on the joy expected on what you want, perhaps from the list above. The plan needs to be realistic to the point of being able to have progress made towards it, yet intense enough that one does not experience undue idleness and boredom. Remember, it is better to be bored sometimes than to be stressed more or equal to sometimes.
Priorities help one to focus, but it is friends and family that we generally wish to focus on. Put another way, our values change how we look out at the world, but what matters is not so much how we look out, but what we look at and what we make of that perception.
Perception is about an emotional response to a stimuli that connects to past events, both physical structures and mental realities. Thus, feelings are the link between nerve impulses and muscle movements. Therefore, our a means of reaching that which matters to us is critical for maturation and growth of the mind and spirit.
Every person needs and deserves to be able to provide their contribution into the future of their community. Without such opportunity to leave a legacy based on their effort, talents and skills, one's live would be reduced to special form of misery. Such a misery is very real and common.
A consequence of misery is that its victim is often forced to deal with depression and is preoccupied with what wants, needs and desires they believe are necessary, instead of seeking a way to give to the community what they would actually enjoy, to some extent or intensity, providing in the form of work. Such work can take many forms, including the following, for instance:
Book writing, computer software engineering, trading coupons, managing a web site like a blog or forum, game creation, candle making, musical album creation, marketing survey service, writing articles for publication on a web site featuring paying ad sponsors, compact disc duplication, and many more activities may allow one to live an average lifestyle yet enjoy the freedom of being their own boss and meeting one or more of the above motivations.
In summary, doing work should not be drudgery. Work should be an enjoyable means of sharing talents and skills that are the result of one's unique experiences and conclusions about the reality we all have some vested interest in shaping and making into a place where the most people can know they are important and helpful.