07/18/2019
Right Livelihood: "What makes our work, our livelihood, and our lives 'right' is not only about the nature of the work or activities, but of the qualities of our hearts and minds that we bring to our work. In other words, it’s not what we do but how we do what we do.
As a career coach, I see how a person’s job can turn into the biggest cause of suffering in their lives. The suffering caused by a job is many times a case of the second arrow. The stories we tell ourselves about how demeaning the job is, or how cruel the boss is, or how our co-workers are impossible to work with are the cause of our suffering. The stories we tell ourselves fill us with suffering. I understand that there are some jobs where all of that is true, but many times we are the ones poisoning our work environment and our work experience with our stuck perceptions and storytelling.
I doubt there are many who feel they have the perfect job. Each job has aspects that are unpleasant or exhausting, and that you dread. Most jobs aren’t 100% drudgery or misery. This may sound uncaring, but it’s true. It’s true based on Buddhist principles and it’s true based on the reality of everyday life. You can change your job or change your attitude. And I’ve even experienced working with coaching clients who take the second arrow from a previous job with them to their next job, turning what might be a positive environment into a negative one.
No matter what the situation in life—school, jobs, or days off—they are not inherently bad, nor inherently good. And they aren’t permanently bad, nor permanently good. Because we know nothing in life is a discrete thing that isn’t affected by the people and things around it. And nothing in life is permanent. Everything changes. This means that even if you hate your job there is almost always a way to find some good or something enjoyable about it. In pushing some clients to describe a part of a hated job that they like, I discovered that most people, despite their initial claims otherwise, have something they like about their jobs. Or something they take pride in or feel fulfilled by."
~Wendy Shinyo Haylett (excerpt from my upcoming book)