Listening to the Call of Development: Flowing into Noble Purpose
My co-workers say I’m crazy. I’ve been at my present company over 15 years, and it's been a wildly successful ride. I have been globally successful in setting up an operation. I'm sought after in my company and beyond for my expertise. I am called upon all the time. I have a lot of longevity left in me here. Yet there's something that tells me it's just not where I want to be anymore. But that feeling doesn't make sense on paper. I work for one of the most admired companies in the world; a place in which countless people want to work where I work, do what I do, and make the money I make. And we - my family and I - are living a really good life. We can afford anything we want, and live in a place that grants us access to spectacular nature and world-class resources. Because of this success I have options and paths ahead of me, and the extensive support from many leaders and influencers in my company. Yet, I'm increasingly noticing a change within myself. I am finding that the peaks are becoming shorter and less frequent, and the valleys are becoming longer and more frequent. I just can't help but feel like the spark that I once had for what I'm doing and where I am is just going out. And I am exhausted. I am not sleeping well, not eating well, and can feel my health declining.
At home, I have an impending sense of time narrowing with my daughter. Very soon she's going to be going off to college and not living at home with us anymore. Yet I find myself still getting on planes to go overseas and travel extensively for work. When I am called upon, I am quick to jump… taking away from time and quality of attention with her and with my wife. Recently we all had a chance to go on a trip together to the Fiji Islands, and it was like time evaporated. None of us felt compelled to be anywhere else or do anything other than enjoy each moment fully with each other in paradise. For the first time in forever, I did not give one second of thought to work, and I couldn’t imagine anywhere in this world I would rather be. Yet, despite this clarifying experience, when we returned to our daily life I quickly found myself losing myself back at work. I just can't seem to find the energy to prioritize where I really want to be, even though I know that's what I really want to be doing.
There are so many ideas in me waiting to be born about who I can become. I'm so much more than a corporate executive, even though that's how I know myself and everybody knows me. I know there's a lot more to me than that. I get really fired up when people are not treated with justice and fairness. Equity is a big issue for me. And while I try to do some of those things at work, it always feels secondary and not really in the passionate, focused way that I know I'm capable of.
So, I am still hanging here in this space knowing that joy probably exists in another form, but really not knowing how to get there. And then there's the damn golden handcuffs. The company makes it really hard for me to think about going anywhere else. If I stick around another handful of years, I'll be more fully invested, invested in stock options. And then if longer, there's even more promises of money and prestige. And yet, deep down inside I know we don't really need more money. We're doing great. So why am I staying at it? Even though the joy isn't there anymore, the spark isn't there anymore and I really don't feel like I'm able to be all of who I am. Am I crazy?
“I would like to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its unfolding.”
It’s an old story that we all still largely buy into. The promise of “the good life” provided by your workplace. It’s an implicit contract bound by a powerful historical narrative. It goes something like this:
“Working with our organization will bring you ‘the good life.’ We will reward you with great pay and the promise of even more fortune in the future. We will also give you a wide array of benefits and perks designed to enhance you and your loved ones’ lives. We will give you special access to our company resources, which are vast, that you and others don’t get otherwise. And, we will welcome you into our community of world-class people who are truly the best and the brightest. You will make many friends and we will take care of you when you are here. The only thing we ask in return is most of your time, discretionary effort, and energy. If you give us as much of you as you can, you will be welcome in our company, and you will have the good life.”
Just about every organization, at one point or another, has rested on this contract to varying degrees. And it works - as long as the “good life” centers chiefly around achievement. Our modern world, after all, marches to the beat of global economics. This means realistically that money and resources DO have a material impact on happiness and well-being. Studies have shown that there is a threshold one must attain to address basic needs such as safety, shelter, health, and supportive relationships in one’s life (Seligman, 2011). But those same studies also tell us there is definitively a threshold; a tipping point in which achievement no longer enables the good life and begins to actually inhibit it. At what point do we have enough? To answer this question, we need to explore deeper territory and not just rely on traditional surface-level definitions of the good life, which tend to equate happiness with observable material gain. We need to re-define what it means to live the good life itself.
If we begin with the end in mind, what are we focused on going toward if achievement and accumulation is not the peak? Enter a definitive shift in focus on the target destination in moving to well-being. When we say well-being, this does not mean going only for what feels good to you alone. That is the slippery slope to narcissism and self-indulgence. Rather, the shift to well-being we are suggesting requires a very different energy and focus. It is obtained primarily by allowing a connection to something larger than yourself. Our life experience begins to open to the collective whole and away from the isolated individual (Siegel, 2022). This shift is a critically important one, and is definitively an internal one.
This is where we find our executive in the story (we will call him “Allen”). He is wondering, perhaps for the first time, who is writing the story of his life. He represents the perfect representation of our times: a highly successful individual in terms of achieving wealth and admiration. His is a life that has been carefully crafted around traditional paths to happiness, and as he says himself, he has been “wildly successful” in getting there. Yet, after 15 years, all is not well. His motivation has waned, his health is in decline, and his personal relationships strained. The voices of the traditional path of linear progression (i.e., higher salary, promotions, stock options, etc.) tell him to “be grateful” and to “get over it”, with the message being to “stuff your feelings because you HAVE the good life.” And his interactions with the broader collective - his workplace, society at large, media messages especially - all reinforce the old narrative. It is probably safe to say that this is probably not what Allen imagined the good life feeling like.
So what is the alternative here? It’s a road less traveled by the masses, but not a totally novel one. It’s the path of well-being, facilitated by a fundamental shift to a developmental mindset. We adopt a developmental mindset when we envision our life as a continuously flowing process of learning, growth, and change. This is in contrast to a traditional achievement mindset, which views our life as one of linear progress toward some predetermined destination where happiness can be acquired (Hudson, 1999).
This shift is no small thing. It requires a range of new skills to be built, and a re-focus, re-orientation, and re-prioritizing of our own attention and intentions. It has people like Allen experiencing his current moment not as one of weakness and derailment, but of emerging clarity of a noble life purpose. It has Allen listening to calls, paying close attention to his energy, and prioritizing activities that bring life within the contexts he is a part of. It has Allen giving adequate time and attention to the collective mental, social, and emotional needs FIRST - not just what feels right for him alone. It has him saying “yes” to what wants to emerge and saying “no” to outdated and outworn thinking, relationships, and activities that reinforce achievement at all costs.
In brief, the developmental mindset has him making daily decisions to prioritize where he experiences life-giving energy for the whole - himself, his relationships, and his environments he is a part of. It has him embracing a messier, more flow-like lifestyle rather than a predictable, straight-lined series of milestones to check off. And, this is scary for many. Yet these daily decisions to prioritize well-being may very well lead him to bigger decisions that may change his life trajectory, all in service of a more full and giving life.
Indeed, to embrace the developmental mindset means to embrace a life of learning, purpose, and wholeness. While that has to include some level of achievement, it most certainly is not the same thing. Allen is at an important decision point for his life, one that most of us will face or have faced at some point. Will he take the path less traveled and listen to the call to flow toward noble purpose, or will he take another stock option? Either way, his life is continuously unfolding, and is a product of his own creation and meaning-making. The developmental mindset empowers us with the choice afforded to humans to claim our part in that process to intentionally flow toward our unique path of noble purpose.
REFERENCES
Hudson, Frederic. (1999). The Adult Years: Mastering the Art of Self-Renewal. San Francisco, CA: Wiley.
Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. India: Atria Books.
Siegel, Daniel J. (2022). IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging. New York, MY: W.W. Norton & Company.