How do you feel about the way you work? Do you think it serves your and the world’s highest and best?
This is a question that I couldn’t stop pondering over Earth Day. So much so that I believe it is a major part of my mission. The path to healing the way we work doesn’t start with process, systems, or AI. It starts with something a little less glamorous, something many of us avoid.
Healing how we work starts with healing our relationship to ourselves and our self-worth.
As usual I have more questions for you than I have answers.
When you’re done with a day of work, do the people in your life get the best of you or the worst of you? Do you spend more time feeling numb – or finding ways to numb – than feeling alive in your life? If you took a moment to listen to your body, what is its tension trying to tell you?
Is all of this worth it? What are you trying to prove?
The people that matter most get the worst of us. We numb so much we’re no longer present to ourselves, what’s underneath, and the people around us. We bully our one and only body until it has only one course of action.
Mental health deteriorates, avoidant habits pick up so we don’t have to feel what we don’t want to feel, loneliness creeps in, our nervous systems maintain a constant state of dysregulation, hope is hard to muster, maybe we start to act against our own integrity and treat others in ways we’re not proud of.
When I look back there are countless times I chose work over what brought me joy, my health, taking baby steps to bring into my life what I really wanted. I know at the time, it felt so urgent and important, but looking back I cannot remember why, and I know the “juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.”
This is what hardscrabble trying to earn our worth feels like.
But it doesn’t work, because if you look at the words and the meanings, worth cannot be earned, it is inherent. You are born inherently worthy.
When we heal how we work and align our actions with our highest self-worth – how we work would start nurturing earth, our relationships, ourselves, our dreams and desires again. We’d be present, we’d see the people around us rather than hiding in our shells or worse yet, attacking with bullying.
Healing the way we work is how we find our way to happy, and so many, in addition to ourselves, will benefit including the earth.
I have a knack at helping people remember their worth again. nicole@eloiandstella.com.
