First published in the UK in 2013 by
Leaping Hare Press
210 High Street, Lewes
East Sussex BN7 2NS, UK
www.leapingharepress.co.uk
Text copyright © Maria Arpa 2013
Design and layout copyright © Ivy Press Limited 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without written
permission from the copyright holder.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
Print ISBN: 978-1-908005-76-2
ePub ISBN: 978-1-78240-033-2
Mobi ISBN: 978-1-78240-034-9
This book was conceived, designed and produced by
Leaping Hare Press
Creative Director PETER BRIDGEWATER
Publisher SUSAN KELLY
Commissioning Editor MONICA PERDONI
Editorial Director TOM KITCH
Art Director JAMES LAWRENCE
Designer GINNY ZEAL
Illustrator CLIFFORD HARPER
Colour Origination by Ivy Press Reprographics
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE
Wake Up & Smell the Coffee
CHAPTER TWO
Freedom & Sustainability
CHAPTER THREE
The Honest Audit
CHAPTER FOUR
The Conflicts
CHAPTER FIVE
Turning Work into Productive Play
CHAPTER SIX
Harvesting Your Efforts
Index
Acknowledgements
Most of us believe we have no choice but to work and many people have little choice about what work they do. Education, wealth and environment can dictate the options available – yet we have all heard of people who are ‘self-made’, who rejected the limitations and broke through the barriers. But finding fulfilment at work doesn’t always require a drastic change; sometimes addressing conflicts and relationships in the workplace can make all the difference. This book is filled with exercises, meditations and a personal two-week plan so you can learn to be mindful about work.
In an ideal world, your work would be a source of fulfilment, providing you with meaning and purpose. Too often, though, this isn’t the case. When the world around you isn’t performing how you would like, your choices are either a change of attitude or a change of direction. Mindfulness will help you choose.
MY SON, SAM, IS HOME FROM UNIVERSITY and hoping to find work for the summer. It’s tough. Unemployment is high right now. In his words, ‘I’m determined to find a job or I’ll end up spending the whole summer on the PlayStation.’ His first priority is to earn some cash; but that’s not all of it. He wants to do something meaningful, which is not always possible because it depends on what work is available. This creates a dilemma for many young people at the start of their working lives – whether to take any job to earn money, even if the work is joyless or meaningless, or to hold out for meaning and purpose, even if it means being broke. This choice, which most of us have faced, can set a blueprint for how our working life will turn out. Many take whatever work they can get and while they are grateful for having employment, the workplace is a source of a great deal of unhappiness.
While pondering this, I came across the latest Happiness at Work Index findings that stated that one out of four people in the UK is unhappy at work. Even if this is an exaggeration, something must be wrong with our workplaces if even 10 per cent of the workforce is unhappy. For that much unhappiness to exist, we must be telling ourselves that we are powerless to change things. I know I thought that once upon a time. Many reasons were given for dissatisfaction – including poor management, low pay and lack of opportunity – but 48 per cent of respondents said their job held no significant meaning for them. Clearly there is a problem that needs confronting.
If you are one of the many people who are dissatisfied with their lot at work and feel powerless to change it, this book is for you. If you can understand what it is that drives your unhappiness at work, you can address it and plan for change. If you see yourself as powerless, then you are powerless – but that doesn’t mean you have to remain powerless. Spending many hours a day with a group of people you didn’t choose to share this much of your life with, in a job you are not satisfied with, will create a pressure cooker of tension. Left unresolved, it will fester under the surface, creating stress and taking its toll on your emotional and physical well-being.
However, by using the mindfulness techniques explained in the book, you can reduce stress, develop contentment, influence your working environment and make better choices. My aim is to share what I have learned through my passionate desire to turn work into productive play.
For the purposes of this book, I define mindfulness as a conscious awareness of the present moment and recognition of what is really happening. This requires us to observe rather than judge events – which is easier said than done, because we are usually unaware of the lens through which we are examining the world.
THAT LENS OFTEN DISTORTS REALITY in order to substantiate the beliefs we hold. Mindfulness is a ‘waking up’ process. It asks us to live consciously, to have regard for our sensations, feelings, thoughts and actions. A significant part of mindfulness is meditation. This allows you to become aware of yourself in the present. We learn meditation by focusing on our breathing; try spending thirty seconds right now focusing on your breathing and just slow it down a little. Mindfulness brings empowerment and self-responsibility and this leads to better self-care, decision making and participation in life. At work, it requires us to constantly review our individual and collective contribution and the results of those contributions.
Because congruity between what I say and what I do matters to me, I found myself looking back on choices I have made. I have thrived in some settings and walked out of others. In all cases I have reflected upon and learned from the experiences.
One of my more miserable recollections was a boss who, on a daily basis and without any provocation, would shout angrily across the office to the whole staff: ‘Remember, if you don’t like it here, there are plenty of people waiting in the wings to take your place.’ He believed that the fear of losing one’s job was motivational.
What is extraordinary is that he had a dream team in place who would work all night to meet a deadline. Individually, they could each find work anywhere and probably for more money, but I had deliberately recruited a team who liked each other and could work cooperatively. This made work enjoyable for them and everyone agreed that having fun at work was more important than earning more money. What I didn’t anticipate was an owner who failed to recognise that his team would be prepared to make more money for him in return for a fun atmosphere; instead he found their camaraderie a threat.
The work was of a very high standard, all the clients were happy and profits were good. But the owner’s capacity to trust was so limited, he used to count the stamps to see if any had been stolen. He was completely unable to enjoy the good times. Sometimes people can’t. Over time, the atmosphere deteriorated. After all the work I had put in to create a motivated team, I just felt powerless, frustrated and resentful.
One day I walked out. I decided to change it all and start my own business, vowing to enjoy work above all else. So at the age of twenty-eight I began a challenging journey.
The business I set up was an advertising agency. It made money and employed people and we definitely appreciated the good times. I defined myself through my work. I saw myself as a ‘businesswoman’, and as I started to hang out with other successful businesswomen, we saw ourselves as women ‘breaking through the glass ceiling’. I became more and more formidable, in line with the role I was attributing to myself. I was also bringing up my two children and coping with a floundering marriage, but I was a businesswoman first. I enjoyed being a mother but somehow I couldn’t allow myself the time to truly enjoy being a parent.
Then something snapped. I found myself calling the nanny to arrange a breakfast meeting with the children, then aged four and five, and I realized something was drastically wrong. That moment of realization may have been my first experience of mindfulness, though I wouldn’t have recognized it at the time. It was a moment of awareness where I was able to observe my life from a distance and question it without judgement or blame. I asked myself, ‘Is this really what I want for myself?’ The question was too big, because on some level I knew that answering it would change everything. I was scared. I remember saying at the time, ‘Every time I contemplate answering that question, it feels like I’m about to jump out of a plane with no parachute.’ I was the wrong side of thirty-five and hovered on that question for a couple of years.
One day I confronted the question: ‘What do I really want for myself?’ The answer was clear: I wanted to feel more joy in my work. It was also clear that although I was meeting my needs for success and fulfilment, I wasn’t feeling much joy – because the truth was that being a ‘formidable businesswoman’ with a reputation was no fun. My ego loved it but my soul was screaming out for me to stop. I realized that change was upon me. Life in its present form was no longer tolerable.
It was a struggle to give up a materially wealthy lifestyle to try something new. In those moments of mindfulness, I reminded myself that I was paying too high a price for what the world judged as success but I was increasingly experiencing as a spiritual desert. I had developed a high level of robustness to get me through the rigours of work, but it left me insensitive to the important stuff such as spending time playing with my children and enjoying nature. I decided that, however the change manifested, my work would be a part of who I am rather than an external role, and that people would come first. I became compelled to find out whether I could sustain myself and my family on that basis. What a risk. What a journey. There was no going back.
Q Did it work? |
A Mostly. |
Q Has it been easy? |
A No. |
Q Do I have more joy in my life? |
A Absolutely yes. |
I took a risk. I knew I didn’t want to work on anything directly to do with consumerism. What I did want was more control over my time, more authentic communication with people, development of my intuitive and creative skills and a sense of contribution. I decided to become a counsellor and reiki master. Following more research and career progression, I also became a mediator and expert in conflict resolution. I have two channels for this work – my own private practice and a charity, which I founded to ensure that my work can reach people who don’t have the financial means to access it.
Now I’m in my fifties, and while I will probably never stop contributing in some way, I am also considering a time when I might not devote so many hours to work. I’m thinking about how much time I have to complete the contribution I really want to make, which is sharing what I know about conflict and how to resolve it. Conflict is everywhere – it is a part of life, and most of it is inside us. I hope I can make the journey easier for others than it was for me. Welcome to this book!
While working through this book, remember that any workplace with more than one person in it is a community. A community is a group of people helping each other. Helping each other can be very rewarding and fulfilling; it can also be full of conflict and competition. In order to reduce the tension, all communities need some way of coming together and bonding. While I don’t subscribe to any organized religion, I know that most faith groups have some form of group contemplation built into their practices, which is a very useful way of bringing people together and creating community. This is something most profit-driven workplaces lack, but we don’t have to wait for others to create community for us; there is nothing stopping us from creating those conditions with our colleagues and peers.
This book will show you how to evaluate your own situation and how to improve your relationships with your colleagues. It contains a series of exercises, which you can work through in your own time; everything is designed to fit into your ‘day-to-day’. Read through the book, then return and plan how you will make use of the exercises. If you are new to mindfulness and meditation but committed to making the time to work through this book, I estimate you will need about twelve weeks to complete it while carrying on with your day-to-day. The chapters are set out as pieces of a jigsaw. Each chapter introduces a different theme for you to reflect on and the whole programme comes together in Chapter Five, where you begin to examine your options by understanding your motivations. Finally, in Chapter Six, you can make informed decisions and see them through. My hope is that, by the end of the book, you’ll be well on your way to finding more joy in your working life.
Welcome to the beginning of the journey. In this chapter we will try to understand how so many of us came to be unhappy at work. My starting point is what we were shown at school, where teachers modelled how to act in a workplace. We unconsciously accepted this as ‘the way it is’ and our unique and individual experience of this has generated our behaviours and responses. By remembering and acknowledging those experiences, you will understand their effect on the choices you have made about work and can begin to take steps to remedy this.
In my role as a counsellor and mediator, a client may tell me that they want to address the problem of their unhappiness at work. One of the first questions I ask is this: ‘Are you here because you want to find peace with yourself so you can continue on your current path or because you want to find the strength to make a change?’
ASK YOURSELF: do you want to stay put and find joy in the status quo or move on and find a different source of joy? While the direction you choose will partially depend on your circumstances, resources and support network, it will also depend on your attitude and beliefs in relation to what you are capable of and what you are worth. Your current circumstances and resources are the consequences of the choices you made in the past based on your beliefs and attitudes to the situations you were facing. What we want to do in this book is consciously gather information and evidence about your past choices and the environment you were exposed to so that you can make the best possible decisions in the future.
A friend was complaining to me about her work. She ended by saying, ‘It’s not as if I’m asking for much.’ I thought about this, and my reply was, ‘Yes, you’re not asking for much, and that is exactly what the Universe has provided – not much.’
Many people are settling for less happiness than they want for themselves and are discontented. This is a social norm. We were conditioned to be discontented because the pursuit of economic growth means we always want more – even if we get into debt to achieve it. Debt-driven growth hurts us psychologically and socially rather than enriches us.
This discontent can be challenged in two ways. Either we can find a way to see the abundance in what we already have or we can create a different path to abundance.
I’m going to explore some of the ways in which we have set ourselves up for misery and suffering and how this plays out in the workplace. Our blind acceptance of the status quo, as learned from our early experiences of teachers and other leaders, is a primary source of unhappiness. You may find some of my writing will arouse feelings in you, but it won’t cause them, it simply triggers them, and understanding them can make you aware of how you interpret the world.
As you read the book, try not to agree or disagree with my propositions. Instead, just allow them. By allowing, you will experience emergence.
‘And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.’
ANAÏS NIN (1903–77)
AUTHOR & DIARIST
Emergence contradicts conventional Western processes for change as a top-down, strategic plan mandated by a hierarchy. Emergence is the outcome of allowing rather than controlling.