When we lack clarity of purpose, we miss out on everything
Q: I came across your column and appreciate the advice you’re doling out. But, I don’t think it applies to me. I’m just a boring, straight, middle management white guy. Sure, I like my work, I’ve got some fun hobbies, a dog, a girlfriend, and generally, I’m satisfied with life. But at the same time, and perhaps it’s related to the larger reckoning I can see happening in the world, I feel like I’m missing something…
Q: I am a change agent. I work hard to get the organizations I work with to step up and fix the things that hurt people and limit their performance. This stuff is SO big, yet at the same time SO simple to fix; i.e. a shift in collective beliefs. I want to work on it, and yet I also get overwhelmed. I get what I would call a ‘what’s the point’ momentary flare-up. It is rare, but it pops up. (I appreciate it is a privilege to be able to even say that! And indeed, this snaps me back on course.) But still, what IS the point, Nilofer? That is my question for you.
Q: I lost a major job right before COVID. Then something I joined was not a great fit, and so now I’m completely out. Since the summer, I’ve been job searching and not getting anything (the industry I work in is in dire straits, too). I am feeling really lost, professionally, emotionally, maybe even spiritually. Another project I’m involved with gets half an effort because it’s not clear it can grow enough to be my main source of income. So now I’m closing in on a year of my prime earning years essentially unemployed, which is scary as hell.
Dear Missing Something, What’s the Point, and Half-Effort,
For every profile or cover story of work success — the executive who knows their purpose, lives in integrity, and turns that side hustle into a big deal — there are a gazillion of us folks struggling.
Like you three.
And what I want you to know is that this is okay. The way we get to where we want to go is to start from where we are.
And each of you is asking something very important, a conversation far too few people even know how to have with themselves. Which is why, by the way, it’s so hard. We teach the art of knowing facts instead of discerning one’s own purpose. Missing Something, you yearn to be connected to something bigger than the immediate. What’s The Point, you are asking how does one know if you’re having a meaningful impact. And, Half-Effort, you might very well be lost right at this moment, but this is also a defining moment for you… to get what it is you really want, meaningful work.
These are yearnings worth having. Questions worth asking. Paths worth seeking.
RAISED IN MUD
I don’t know if you know this story already, but I was named by my grandfather. He once explained to me why he named me such. Nilofer (actually, Niloufar in Farsi) means Lotus, or water lily. He told me that he chose the name because Lilies grow in the mud and blossom as they reach the light. He described how the blossoms stay closed until they find themselves in the fullness of the sun and they open up, grandly. That he knew that I would be raised in “mud.” So, he chose this name to remind me to reach towards the light and then open up to it.
What a gift in a name, right?
I share the backstory for a reason. It’s why I coined and defined Onlyness exactly the way I did.
You’ll remember onlyness is centering the source of ideas. It’s a function of one’s history and experience, as well as one’s visions and hopes. Onlyness is not limited to your history, “the mud,” nor the immediate experience, the water. Onlyness includes that which reaches towards something, what you envision or hope is possible. (Even if no one else sees it. At least, not yet).
You seek the warmth of that sun.
LISTEN TO MEANING; MEANING IS CALLING
The way you get that warmth? You grow towards it by claiming what matters to you, standing in that singular spot only one stands; and standing for something.
And, to be fair, most of us don’t know how to do that. We talk some serious game about “purpose” and “meaning” and “making a difference,” but most of us don’t know shit.
Take you, “boring, straight, white guy”. This is a description I wouldn’t wish on anyone. That is to describe yourself by your place in social status, the way you were born into this world. Which I understand is a certain kind of identity, but one that required zero choice on your part. And “middle management” is to describe your organizational place, a hierarchical description. You worked at that, yes, but it’s so easily taken away by someone else and so it is, at best, a temporary description of you.
So do these descriptors you use actually characterize the whole of you?
Of course not. For the love of God, not nearly the whole of you.
I don’t even need to know you to tell you that; We are each far more than this. More than the place we were born. More than the place where we work. More than hobbies or interests or, even loves. You are, in truth, ALL of these things, and still more. You are also what you hope and imagine is possible. Because what you value lets you connect, and then add your value.
Combined, these elements (and all the nuances and multitudes and dilemmas they contain) shape who you are. Combined, they fill you. They fill the length of you. And the breadth of you. And the width of you. All of you. It is like oxygen filling a person, you go from being the roles you’ve filled from the outside-in, to being filled up by what it is that matters to you. And so you become more of yourself. And belong.
When your life @work is filled by deep meaning, it’s because you have defined that meaning.
Without meaning, you end up playing small when what you actually want is to make an impact.
How to change this?
By choices. By community. By commitment.
“WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE?”
Missing Something, stop acting as if somehow meaning is going to fly by to land on your head. As I wrote in Chapter 2 of The Power of Onlyness, meaning is not a missing puzzle piece to be found. Meaning is created by you, when you say this is what matters to me and this is how I show up to it. As Batman said, it’s your choices that define you. At one point in my life, all my worldly possessions were on the driveway — someone got mad during the divorce! — and as I was getting all worked up by what was going on, a dear friend asked, who do you want to be? He said my actions reflected my values. I had to choose between the person who was going to get entangled to “be right,” or the person who gracefully moved on to build the next big thing. You need to decide who you are. This is not something to FIND but to LIVE each day, by your choices.
What’s the Point, you actually know of what you seek, but you wonder if whatever effort you have made will make enough of a difference. So you question yourself. It’s easy to let what you can’t see (yet) lead you to question if you’re making a difference. I imagine this feeling as a cloudy day to the bud seeking the light. But let’s remember that even if we can’t see it, the sun is still there. Have faith in what you imagine is possible. But also know, big ideas are not created alone.
Name your highest ambition for the work, and then ask people who share that ambition to join you, and shape it. Long before an idea becomes real, it belongs to a small few who shape and grow it. I’m reminded of a dear friend who’s been doing a daily show since lockdown started. Recently it morphed into “how to citizen.” And for most of this time, a relatively small handful of people have shown up to it. Just last week, after something like 30 weeks of toil, it got featured in the New York Times. Which is to say, long before it became “big,” he showed up to it in his fullness. Do that. Be faithful to what’s possible and in community with those who want the same.
And Half-Effort, you write of jobs and fit, instead of writing of meaning and partnership. I can bet something without knowing any of the particulars: If you show up to one thing with half an effort, you show up to nearly everything with an equal half an effort. It’s likely why the jobs go poof. Not because you’re not talented, but because you’re half-hearted, withholding. Maybe you loved working on that new gig, but from what you wrote, you just liked having a gig that paid you. You are at a point, half-effort, where you need to commit to something. What that is, is up to you. But know this: Money follows meaning. Ask yourself what is it you most care about and then commit to it full heartedly. Only then, will you find ways to make all the money you need (and deserve)!
YOUR FIRST STEP, YOUR NEXT STEP
So, here’s the beautiful thing about each of you writing the questions you did. You asked the crucial question that can add meaning to your life and to your work.
This is good. This is what’s called a first step. Now you have more steps to take. To shed the stories that keep you flat (boring white middle manager), which is to say without meaning. To shift the actions that keep you in a proverbial (half-effort) box so you show up to your own life. To keep doing meaningful work, despite the immediate lack of evidence that it’ll ever matter. This is how you create both a meaningful life and do meaningful work. These are not two things. These are one and the same.
Being fully alive at work? It requires you to do the work of being fully you.
So stand. Stand in that place only you can. And, stand for something.
Meaning expands us from being a 2-D stick figure to a fullness of being. Just as the light of what you seek guides you, shapes you, as you grow towards it. So that one day, you blossom into the world. And it matters. Because as you become fully alive, you show other people how to do so, too.
