Lanre Fatokun Something Good!
If you had a choice, would you keep going to work?
I think that for most people, the answer would be no. Yet, most of our waking time in a week is spent at work. If you spend 8 hours at work daily, and you spend 8 hours around the bed, you have only 8 hours left to spend in transit, cooking, eating, reading, blogging, Facebooking, Instagramming, with friends, and with family. This is why most people find meaning and self-esteem on the job.
For others, they tend to lose their meaning and self-esteem on the job if the environment is toxic. If one is exposed to such an environment for too long, the damage will not be small. Others feel they don’t really need their jobs for any feeling … until the job is taken away.
Do you have private investments that originated from your place of work? Maybe you live in the same neighbourhood as your colleagues! You may even find that you share job openings in the office. Sometimes, your colleagues in your new workplace were your colleagues in your old workplace. You are so intertwined now!
So how do we find meaning outside work?
- Determine the next goal of your life. What are you living for? I say “the next goal” because it could change and change again.
- Pursue that goal. In living for a goal, you create meaning for yourself outside work.
- Maintain your friendships from long ago: schoolmates, former colleagues, friends from religious settings, etc
- Make new friends! Your outlook tends to be limited to your circle of friends anyway. Why not expand your circle of friends and hence your outlook!
- Create avenues to improve society: Volunteer to teach in a community school, then invite others to do the same; start an advocacy group to improve your neighbourhood; etc
To find meaning you must certainly look beyond yourself.
Wishing you a Merry Christmas and prosperous 2023.
Please share; what do you do to find meaning outside work?
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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
