Why do we do what we do

Listening for what makes you light up

Have you ever had the experience of talking to someone who wants your advice and realized that what you are saying to them is actually what you need to hear? Like you catch yourself talking to yourself?

I’m in recovery, and regularly talk with other people who are in recovery, and in those circles, it happens often. But we also have tacit permission to give each other suggestions. We’ve signed up to better understand ourselves so we can stay sober, and much of that understanding comes from other people telling us things we can’t yet see about ourselves.

Recently I heard myself talking about why I do the work I do. And I surprised myself.

There are many reasons why we work. For money, or health insurance, or to save for retirement. To support our family. To make the world a better place. And those reasons may change as our seasons of life change.

For me, it’s easy to forget the why and get caught up in the endless logistics. I have sheets of paper decorating the walls of my office with my goals and the plans to get to my goals. The why is implicit, but it’s easy to lose track of the implicit.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve started a podcast called Bad Boss Brief the strategic guide to how not to be an asshole at work, with my friend Eugene S. Robinson. After we record it, I listen to it again to choose clips we want to edit down and put on social media. So I listen to myself talking with Eugene.

And I find that I’ve inadvertently outlined why I spend time doing what I’m doing. Sure, there’s the marketing myself with thought leadership aspect, and I do want to eventually get paid for all this writing and podcasting. But that’s the engine, not the fuel. The fuel, the raw energy for this, is that I want to help people be better bosses. Really – that’s not me marketing me, that’s why I do this.

I believe that our social system has placed an unhealthy amount of power in the hands of people who run corporations, and by extension to managers and bosses. I believe people who lead could and should be more intentional about how they treat the people who are dependent on them for their livelihood.

I got here by being treated badly by several bosses, from the manager who slid his hand along the side of my breast when I was a waitress in college, to the President of the company who fired me when I had FMLA coverage for taking care of my son, who was profoundly disabled with a brain injury. Those things made me angry. Which was, for a while, fuel. Both of these bosses were middle aged white men, and I do tend to use the phrase middle aged white man as an epithet. But for the most part, I’ve shifted my energy from anger to an intention to get other bosses to unlearn their assholery.

I pay attention to body language. When I’m with an executive coaching client I notice what their body is saying, especially when what their body is saying doesn’t match the words coming out of their mouth. The client who paces around his office in front of his standing desk like he’s in a cage. The quick motion to put on lip balm, the moment of soothing, the swift pause. But I don’t usually watch myself – I minimize myself on video calls. So, watching the video of the podcast I saw myself. And I noticed as I do with clients where the energy rose, the way we talk when we’re fired up and it’s like highlighter on what we’re saying, body English on the words. People really can light up.

I light up when I talk about why I do this work. And it was good for me to have the implicit made explicit, to recognize I’m fueled by more than the desire for money or an audience for my work. I think what I’m doing can make a difference.

Since I realized how alive this purpose is for me, I’ve felt more energy. One of my clients said I was on fire in a coaching session last week, and I should run off and record another podcast episode. It something they don’t tell you about in coach school, that while we are seeing our clients, they are also seeing us. He saw me light up because I was reconnecting with my own personal why.

There have been seasons in my life when I have not felt any specific purpose to the work I was doing. I heard a saying once “if you don’t love what you are doing, love why you are doing it.”

When I was selling television airtime, I didn’t love what I was doing, but I loved why I was doing it – to support my two kids. I kept a picture of them on my desk to remind me of why I was in that especially soul sucking span of my career – because it paid for the braces, and the food for the kids and the white minivan I drove.

I usually had a why. When I was selling airtime, I hoped I would help the small business owners who were my main clientele to sustain and grow their businesses. I wanted do it with honesty and integrity.

But not all of my motivations were positive. When I sold airtime, the 30 second blocks of nothing, all of my clients were men and many of them were relentless in their harassment of me. I was in my late twenties and they made comments about my body, what kind of underwear I had on. Since I couldn’t do much about the sexual harassment, I decided to take their money as often as I could, and I channeled my anger into my negotiation skills. If any of those men had bothered to look at my eyes rather than my breasts, they would have seen a special gleam as I started a negotiation with a middle-aged white man who treated me and other women badly. It did not bode well for them.

Now that I’m older and have the privilege to decide who I do and don’t work with, I can focus on the more positive motivations.

If you’re wondering about your why, here is a writing prompt you can do.

An exercise I personally do to write an Ideal. What is your Ideal way of showing up? I’ve written lists of my Ideal for how I show up as a parent, as a partner, as a worker. Sometimes I suggest to my clients that they write about their Ideal as a leader. Here’s the prompt.

• Who or what am I working for?

• Why am I working?

• Who does my work help?

• What brings me energy/joy/satisfaction?

• What drains me?

• Who could I hurt and how can I avoid hurting them?

• What three traits do I want the people who work with me to see from me?

• What traits do I NOT want the people who work with me to ever see from me?

Some people like to write personal mission statements, which can work as well. But I prefer the Ideal because it lists specific traits and situations I want to do more often as well as the ones I want to avoid. It can be a moral yardstick.

Give it a try. Because we should all get to light up sometimes.