Work-life Poetry

Well, what a shame, a crying shame
Nine to five, it's all the same
But you won't take those wasted hours
To your grave

~Shane Smith and the Saints, “What a shame”

Joy, excitement, love, passion, disappointment, sadness, grief, anxiety, fear, and anger.

Which of these emotions belong at work? If they don’t belong, where do they go?

What happens when we feel them? 

What happens when others feel them?

I have often heard, “I need to keep my feelings, my struggles, my ‘home life’ out of my ‘work-life'” and I get it.  It can feel inefficient, disruptive, and maybe even selfish to not just express these feelings when they show up at work, but to feel them at all.

It’s as if the most natural experiences of human life don’t belong where much of human life is being dedicated, and where, hopefully, some aspect of our inner world has a chance to impact the outer world.

So many of us bottle things up, and implicitly (through our own behavior) or explicitly (by what we say, or how we structure workday agendas, etc.) ask others to do the same.  By doing so, we are denying the fullest experience of life, to ourselves and those around us.

These emotions have to go somewhere. So where do they go? 

I think we turn to television, social media, political drama, and gossip, to experience the feelings we have denied ourselves, outside of ourselves.  

So the world is getting angrier, sadder, more stressful, and more painful. Meanwhile, companies run “engagement surveys” and attempt to create “psychological safety” so that people can be more creative in their jobs. This is window dressing on the cell walls imprisoning our humanity.

If we want to be engaged in our work, we must first stop denying the fullness of our human experience.  

This might mean we stop denying our feelings about our job, careers, and workplace, which could mean we need to change. We may find that we are deeply unsatisfied with the work we do. We may find that we use work to escape from the rest of life.  We may find that we have not reconciled our work with our values.  These discoveries may require some grand life changes, so it’s understandable that we would avoid them,

If we are leading an organization or team, we may need to change to permit others to bring the fullness of their experience to work. Also, not easy, quick, or painless.

Faced with this challenge of facing change, I have asked clients to try the “tombstone” test.  Simply put, this perspective shift asks us to reflect on our life by imagining the inevitable end.  

How would we like to be remembered for the short time we will be remembered after we are gone?    

When we can longer put off change, what action would we regret not taking?

How do we want to positively influence those around us and those our legacy will benefit? 

Done once, this tombstone practice can be useful.  Done as a practice, it inevitably leads us to live a life richer in connection, emotion, courage, and the adventure of being more fully alive.

This adventure is not just the inheritance of the poets and bards or archetypal heroes and heroines of our human dramas.  It is yours, and those who work with or for you.  

Adam