Starting The Year Right - Work/Career

Although the New Year blog theme has been done to death, I'm going to go against my better judgement and resurrect it - only to kill it once again.  January 1st does provide us a convenient, if not arbitrary, checkpoint to take stock of our lives and set some intentions for the coming year.  The idea is to align our actions and pursuits with what we value in life.  Without taking the time to stop and think about such things we end up expending much time and energy only to be left unfulfilled in the areas that matter most... until now!

Over the next week or so I invite you take a gander within and consider how things are going in various areas of your life (work, social, spiritual, financial... etc).  This exercise is one I came across in my counseling courses in medical school, and is based in the Acceptance and Commitment style of psyhchotherapy.  For each topic posted, I invite you to do three things:

1.  Rate how important the particular area is to you (0 - not important, 1 - moderately important, or 2 - very important)

2.  Rate how satisfied you are in that area (0 - not at all satisfied, 1 - moderately satisfied, and 2 - very satisfied)

3.  Write your intentions in the areas that you rated as important.  An intention is a statement that reflects the direction you want to move in for the foreseeable future.  Value intentions are not goals.  They have no end point at which you can say, “Now I’ve accomplished that.”  It’s simply a statement of how you’d like to live your life.  It should capture what’s most important to you in that area.  

Ready?  Today's topic is Work/Career.  In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell wrote "Autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying."  With that teaser, rate away.

1.  How important is work to you? (0-2)

2.  How satisfied are you with your work? (0-2)

3.  Intention: What do I want my work or career to be about or stand for? What is important to me about my work (for example, financial security, intellectual challenge, independence, prestige, interacting with or helping people, and so on)? 

Take some time to consider your values as they pertain to work life, and check in again as we evaluate life's other important dimensions.

Best,

B

Credit where credit is due:

John P. Forsyth and Georg H. Eifert.  The Mindfulness & Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety. New Harbinger Publications 2007.