Jobs, Death and Living Life

I recently lost my brother-in-law James.  He was brutally murdered.  You may be asking yourself how this morbid topic could possibly pertain to having a better, more enjoyable job? As a career coach and expert on job satisfaction, I provide clients with numerous tips and insights on creating better work environments; both in their current positions, and once they update their resume and move on.

In the year before James passed, he had lost interest in his work as a playwright and director. The glory days of being Off-Broadway and touring the country with a hit play were in the past. Don’t get me wrong, he made a decent living taking his plays to college campuses, but in this past year he just wasn’t experiencing job satisfaction.  For someone who lived on his laptop writing compelling monologues, he spent six months without so much as cracking his beloved MacBook Pro open.

A Wake-Up Call

This man designed his own career.  In the early days as an out-of-work actor, he created his own gigs by writing content.  He hired and assembled the casts, rehearsed and directed them, sold shows, designed posters and sets, negotiated contracts, made travel arrangements, and worked in a profession he thoroughly loved.  His career was actually recently highlighted by an entertainment reporter Michael Grossberg stating “central Ohio’s theater community benefited from his talent, his vision and his social concerns for many years.”

Not everyone is a professional actor, but do you find yourself acting in your current job, pretending that everything is okay when it really isn’t?  Survey research indicates that 50% of working people do not like their jobs. CNBC reporter Christina Cheddar Berk recently wrote that as a result of the recession, many are rethinking their careers, and reorganizing their lives.  Also, people are less likely to get a sense of identity from their jobs.  I think this is a wonderful wake-up call because if the recession taught us anything, we saw that we can survive in difficult times. It has also hopefully taught us that there is much more to life than being a consumer. 

Getting back to James. Here is someone who did pay attention to other areas of their life beyond work. If we consider work-life balance, he spent his last days on the ‘life’ part of that equation. And thank goodness for him that he had the foresight to do so, because now he will never be able have lunch with his friends again, go for a drive again, and work again, or do anything again for that matter. So my question to you is — what do you really want? What is important to you? What do you value and need? You are much more than a job title. It doesn’t matter if you need to sweep floors right now to earn a living. A job does not, nor should we ever let it define us. Go for the life you really want to live. Be open, be thankful, and live your life to the fullest.