Create Your Best Life at Work with One Question
On ManagingWithAloha.com we have been talking about the Hawaiian value of ‘Imi ola this month; it means to create your best possible life. Let’s consider this; How do you accomplish ‘Imi ola while you are at work?
The biggest bang for the buck strategy is to choose the right work to begin with. There is a lot of basic common sense in the notion that you’ll never toil at a job again if you’ve chosen the right work for you in the first place. The “right” work is the kind you leap out of bed for each morning; work which makes your heart sing because you’re fully engaged in getting each of your talents to fire on all cylinders. It’s work that you’d do every single day if you possibly could because you enjoy it that much; getting paid for it is just icing on the cake.
What’s that? You don’t have that kind of job yet?
It’s definitely something you can have; your first order of business is to go about making it happen. Keep looking till you find it!
Meanwhile, if there are reasons you’ve got to stick it out for a bit in the job you’ve got right now, how can you still make the best of it? How can you create your best life at work?
You milk it, by continually asking yourself, this one question: What’s in this for me?
When I am called in to a company to coach, I study workplace behaviors. The one thing that saddens me most, is the amount of time that people willingly give away in their lives. They perform their work robotically, without energy or joy, in the most routine, blah sort of way because they are doing it for someone else or to pay the bills. Period.
You shouldn’t be so easily tamed.
When you create your best life at work, you milk it for whatever it can possibly mean to you and for you, even if it’s not your best possible world – yet. You have the attitude that, If I have to do this anyway, I may as well get the most that I can out of it. Value your time and make it yours. Value your life and make it yours. How can you give away something so extraordinary? How can you give away something so uniquely yours and so precious?
Reinvent. Learn more. Go for the unconventional. Get others involved. Tweak and experiment. Do it louder, goofier, or fancier. Ignore boundaries or limits, and push toward edges. As the saying goes, Whatever turns you on.
Who knows? You just might find that ho-hum job of yours begins to reveal that job of the lifetime you’ve been looking for. You’ve experienced ‘Imi ola; creating your best possible life instead of simply allowing life to happen to you.
Related Post: To Do and To Stop with ‘Imi ola – a different approach to the traditional To Do List.
Post Author:
Rosa Say is the author of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawaii’s Universal Values to the Art of Business. You can also visit her on www.ManagingWithAloha.com where she regularly writes about value alignment in business, as with ‘Imi ola.
Tags: 
Loading ...
Comments
Mind says on April 27th, 2007 at 2:10 am
This advice sounds reasonable in theory, but in real life, not everyone can choose what to do. I know quite a few people who just have had to take what is available to them. It’s not that easy as the article suugest.
Me says on April 27th, 2007 at 4:31 am
What happens when I have what I don’t want, but I don’t know what I want either?
I says on April 27th, 2007 at 6:30 am
You at least want money or don’t work at all. That solves both your problems.
Jimazing says on April 27th, 2007 at 9:36 am
I hear the frustration in the comments that we cannot always get what we want. If someone seems have the perfect”best life at work”, it means one thing; I do not know them very well. No one gets it all… However, to say I have no choice is a copout.
It is not about one big choice, but a bajillion little choices every day. I may not be living my dream today, but I can still dream. I can examine my life today. I can ask questions that tell me whether I am the best me I can be or whether I am merely falling back into those inevitable patterns of behavior that keep me content (and down). It isn’t a destination, but a journey.
Marcus Buckingham says in “The One Thing You Need to Know”, find what you do not like doing, and stop doing it. It is a lifetime process of learning and adjusting. Jesus put it this way, “What good is it to gain the world and lose your soul?” I have spent too many years trading my soul for a paycheck. I for one plan to keep asking myself what I love, dreaming about my best life at work and intentionally moving in that direction.
Rosa says on April 27th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Well said Jim, thank you! ‘Imi ola is a value you live your life by each and every day, continually asking yourself if you’re fully present, and if you’ve brought the right attitude and the right intention to all you are doing.
I fully understand that we can’t have it all, and that it takes some of us a lifetime to figure out exactly what we’re aiming for, however making the intentional effort to look for it has to happen or we’re just being victims of complacency and happenstance. Said another way, you may not want to pursue the meaning of life, however you can make some magic happen when you deliberately set out to make the most of each day, or make a difference to someone each day, or add your personal signature to the work you ARE presently doing —no matter what it is. That question, —What’s in this for me?— is not selfish, it helps you eventually figure out what it is you really want to work at all the time. Then, finding the right workplace in which you can do that becomes easier.
‘Imi ola, and creating your best life at work, at home, or in anything, is about attitude, intention, and effort. It’s not an overnight fix, but when you have best-life work, so much else falls in place for you in a wonderful way … certainly something worth working for!