Meaningful work
Recently I’ve been talking about how you get work with MEANing – I believe that when your work is aligned with your genius and who you really are, it’s easy to feel like it’s got real meaning for you.
As a reminder, I believe there are four main parts to having meaningful work:
- Mission – you and the people you work with all want the same thing
- Environment – you enjoy being in the space and with the people at your work
- Activity – you get to play the role you are best at in the team
- Nature – you get to use your genius and to bring your whole self to your work
This post is about that final element – using what nature has gifted you. That splits down into two aspects: your talents, and the way that you are being when using them.
Functional Excellence
Obviously a big part of your genius is the skills that you have picked up over the years, and honed so that you can now perform better than many in your specialism. And you also add to that the specific experience that you’ve gained – whether that’s of a particular industry, or type of business.
All of that combines to give you a unique functional competence to do what you do for a living.
What makes you different
Everything you have learned, whether or not it’s directly related to your current functional work, contributes to how you can best contribute in your work. My experience as a bookie’s clerk, as a retail manager, and as a farm labourer all contribute in subtle ways to how I serve my clients, just as much as my experience as a corporate manager, on my MBA, and finally as a coach.
And you too will have a similarly rich source of learning that makes you subtly better at what you do.
Being the authentic you
But the real source of your genius isn’t what you’ve learned. It’s how you apply those skills and knowledge. That’s what makes you different from all the other people out there, who supposedly do the same thing as you. Because of who you are, there is literally nobody on the entire planet who can serve your perfect customers the way you can.
You really are one in seven billion!
Using your talents to make work meaningful
So how do you put all of that together to make your work more meaningful?
The important thing is to make sure your very specific talents and way of delivering them are valued by the people you work with. Part of that is having the other three elements in alignment (mission, environment, and activity). But it’s also discovering the ways that doing things your way, the way that comes naturally to you, can create a better result for your clients, customers or colleagues.
Whenever you find yourself having to behave differently to how you would naturally approach a situation, that’s a big clue that your Nature is out of alignment.
Nature, the Universe, Spirit, God … whatever your name for it is … gifted you with a particular genius and a particular way of being, that will allow you to create real meaning through your work.
Make full use of it, and you can love what you do for a living, and make a great living doing what you love 😊
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Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash
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