I had vague ideas of maybe becoming an Olympic long-distance runner, maybe becoming a psychologist, or, when I started studying economics in college, maybe working for the Federal Reserve.
A bunch of maybe’s, but no real clarity.
This is how most people grow up. They grow up with a bunch of maybe’s floating around in their heads, combined with suggestions from family members about what they should do.
Then they stumble into something after college, possibly something they didn’t even study for, and it becomes their career.
At first, it’s nice to make some money. It’s nice to be “adulting.” However, the novelty soon wears off as it becomes just another day in the office.
From “another day in the office” it transitions to dreading Monday mornings. From there, it’s a slippery slope toward despising your work and work in general.
Maybe the work environment is toxic. Maybe you’re overworked and underpaid. Maybe you’re overworked and paid well, even.
Maybe your bosses don’t treat you fairly. Maybe your business is running you instead of you running it. Maybe you barely have the energy outside of work to do anything you enjoy anymore.
Maybe the work is dry, boring, and meaningless to you. Maybe you’re just trading your time, energy, and well-being for money – yet another cog in the ever-expanding, unforgiving work machine.
Maybe you just freaking hate it.
What happened to all of those maybe’s from your childhood? The ones that excited you? Your childhood wishes, wants, and dreams?
They seem like distant pipedreams now – the heartfelt desires of a naive youngster – as the seemingly endless cycle of indentured servitude continues.
Damn…is this really what work is meant to be? Is this really what it’s all about?
But wait…they seem happy…
This person is fulfilled. This person has purpose and meaning in their work. This person is excited. This person has time and energy. This person is doing what makes them happy.
It’s not like everyone is having the same old crappy work experience.
We can’t all be doomed to doing 45+ years of work we hate for money we only get to enjoy on the weekends, only to retire as grumpy old farts who never followed their dreams.
A study by Intelligent found that 54% of college graduates do not work in the field they studied for.1
According to Bronnie Ware, a former palliative carer and author of The Top 5 Regrets of The Dying, the number one deathbed regret is:
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” 2
I quote that statistic and Bronnie’s finding a lot because they indicate an alarming fact:
Most people never do what makes them happy.
They follow scripts written by other people or whatever path they happen to stumble into as young adults.
They do not live true to themselves, they end up in work situations that aren’t right for them, and they start despising work itself, thinking that it’s yet another way for life to beat them down.
Because of this, they create deep-seated, negative paradigms about work in general, thinking that doing what they love to do is impossible so they never try.
In doing so, they seal their fate for the next 40+ years.
What’s the truth though?
Is it truly impossible for your work to become a positive part of your life, instead of just a way for you to trade your time, energy, skills, and well-being for money?
And is it possible for you to heal your relationship with work so you can enjoy it and make it a positive part of your life?
I believe it is possible.
Today, I’m going to help you heal your relationship with work so you can begin to reframe it and transform it into one of the most positive, energizing, and fulfilling parts of your life experience.
Whether you were born on a Monday morning at 8 AM sharp or a Friday at 5:01 PM with a margarita in your hand, the healing process begins right now.
Table of Contents
The Dominant Work Paradigm That’s Hurting Your Happiness
In every area of our lives, we have paradigms – collections of perspectives and beliefs about each area. These paradigms impact every aspect of our lives.
How you think, what you believe, and your perspective on each area influences how they unfold.
It’s true in relationships, health, work, or any other area of life.
In relationships, you may have paradigms about what a happy couple looks like, your self-worth, and what it means to be a good or bad partner.
In health, you may have paradigms about what food is good for you, how people stay healthy versus how they get sick, and what you need to do to stay healthy.
In work, you may have paradigms about what you can do, the role work plays in people’s lives, and how easy or hard work is for you.
All of these thoughts, beliefs, and perspectives determine how we engage with each area of our lives and how they ultimately unfold.
We all have paradigms around the meaning of work and why we do it. Some of these paradigms help us and others do not.
If you’ve consistently found yourself doing work that you don’t like, stresses you out, or creates negativity in your life, you may have more paradigms about work that aren’t helping you than those that are.
We must pay attention to these because our dominant paradigms change everything about how we experience our work.
The dominant work paradigm that’s hurting most people’s happiness is this:
“Work is just a way to make money. It’s just a way to make a living.”
A study by Joblist found that the number one reason parents pushed their kids to pursue a certain career path was for “good future income.”3
When money is the primary reason for choosing a career, everything else falls by the wayside.
Health, well-being, happiness, fulfillment, work-life balance, purpose, and passion all become distant or nonexistent considerations.
It’s no wonder so many people end up overworked, stressed out, tired, and anxious. They’re not prioritizing the other aspects of work that help it become a positive and healthy part of their lives.
These money-dominant paradigms form the basis for decades of decision-making:
What to study in school.
The types of jobs to apply for.
The types of businesses to start.
Career progression.
How many hours they work.
How long they stay in their career/business and why.
All of this impacts their health, happiness, and life satisfaction.
It’s not that money shouldn’t be a primary consideration. It’s that if it’s the only primary consideration, you will likely end up in work environments that lend themselves toward trading your time, energy, and well-being for a paycheck or profit.
You will put up with toxic, sexist, or racist bosses. You will take promotions that force you to overwork yourself and neglect your health and well-being. You will take whatever work you can get even if it means sacrificing your health and happiness.
You will choose to work in high-income fields that are devoid of passion or meaning for you. You will choose to start businesses based on what will make you the most money, regardless of how that business may take over your life.
These examples reveal money-dominant work paradigms in action. They’re the result of thinking and believing that work is primarily about making money and little else.
The longer you continue with this paradigm, the worse it gets.
The more harmonious and healthy aspects of work continue getting sacrificed until people end up having a mid-life crisis, forcing them to unravel everything they’ve done for the last 20 years and start fresh because their lives have gotten so out of balance.
If you want your work to become a positive and healthy part of your life, money cannot be the primary driver. If it is, all else will be sacrificed.
The money-dominant paradigm of “work is just a way to make money” needs to shift and become more holistic.
Here’s how to begin:
What Does Work Mean to You?
Have you ever thought about what work means to you? Most people haven’t.
Even when I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life, I knew I wanted to be happy.
As I was growing up, I had seen too many adults despising their work, stressed out, and bitter, and I knew I didn’t want that for myself.
I knew that, for me, work was about more than making money. It was something that could bring joy into my life, and I was going to figure it out no matter what.
Whatever work means to you, that’s what it will be for you. It will determine all of your decisions in this area of life.
Therefore, “What does work mean to me?” is probably the most important question you can ask yourself to start understanding your current relationship with work.
If, right now, work is only a way to make money for you, and you’ve been unhappy until this point, you may now start understanding why.
If work is just something you believe you have to do to survive, and you’ve always taken whatever crappy jobs you can get, you may now start understanding why.
If work is just something you do to provide for your family but brings you no joy or satisfaction, you may now start understanding why.
If you believe you have to sacrifice the rest of your life to succeed professionally, and your life is totally out of balance, you may now start understanding why.
Work is whatever you make it out to be. It’s not objective.
It’s subjective based on your thoughts, perspectives, and beliefs about this area of life.
For the people who believe that work is a way for them to leave their mark and make a positive impact on the world, that’s what it becomes for them.
For the people who believe that work should bring them joy and fulfillment, that’s what it becomes for them.
For the people who believe that work should fit in harmoniously with the rest of their lives, that’s what it becomes for them.
Why is this?
Because the way you think about work changes everything about how you relate to this area of life.
It changes:
What you choose to study in school.
Whether you choose to become an employee or an entrepreneur.
The types of jobs you apply for and in what industries.
The types of businesses you start and why.
Your work/career goals and vision.
Whether you have goals or a vision.
How happy you are in your work.
Your willingness to tolerate work that doesn’t make you happy.
How much you seek other people’s approval for what you do versus seeking your own approval.
Whether you’re more driven by external status or internal fulfillment.
It changes everything.
If you’re not happy, your work is not a positive part of your life right now, and you want it to be, it starts with changing what work means to you.
It starts with getting to the truth of what work is all about for you and how you want it to fit into your life.
What does work mean to you right now? And is the meaning you’re attributing to it helping or hurting you?
Is the meaning you’re attributing to work helping it become a healthy and harmonious part of your life?
If not, start changing your perspective.
See it as something that can be a positive part of your life. See it as something that can (and should) bring you joy and fulfillment. See it as something that is an expression of who you are in the world.
See it as a vehicle for you to make your mark and leave a positive impact. See it as something you do because you love it and are passionate about it. See it as something that allows you to live a fuller life.
See it in whatever way works for you and feels best.
If you continue with the same mindset, you will continue having the same experience.
As you change your perspective and attribute new meaning to work, you will start changing the way your work impacts your life experience.
Changing How You Make Some of The Biggest Decisions of Your Life
Rat race. Cog in the machine. Indentured servitude. Wage slavery.
These terms exist because, for most people, this is what work is for them.
They feel forced to do what they don’t want to do and put up with being treated like crap in exchange for a paycheck.
Then, when push comes to shove and the company makes changes, they get thrown out like last week’s leftovers, sending them back into the market looking for yet another job they despise.
People start businesses that end up running them more than they’re running it. They start businesses based on what’s trending right now on YouTube and social media and what all the “gurus” are saying.
They enter entrepreneurship with big, fat dollar signs in their eyes and start marketing agencies because they’re “The #1 Business to Start This Year to Make $100K Per Month in Your Spare Time With No Effort, No Money, and No Skills!”
These wide-eyed entrepreneurs work 16-hour days because they believe they’ve got to “hustle” like all their favorite entrepreneurs on social media, only to end up in businesses that need them to be working every waking second of their lives or the house of cards they’ve built might fall at their feet any moment.
Part of healing your relationship with work is changing how you make some of the biggest decisions of your life.
Every time you make a career decision, you’re making a decision that will probably impact you for years.
Any decision that can impact you for years into the future is a big decision, yet most people go into their careers or start businesses with little forethought.
When you decide to take yet another crappy job in an industry you don’t give a sh*t about, working for a company that doesn’t give a sh*t about you, you might be in that job for years to come.
When you decide to start a business because you could make a lot of money in it but it’s going to take all of your time, energy, and health to make it successful and keep it successful, you might be in that business for years to come.
That’s years of your life you won’t get back. You’ve probably already spent years in work that ultimately had a negative effect on you.
And you probably left that work at some point and got into another one that had a similar negative effect on your life (I’ve done this).
It’s like getting with the same type of toxic partner over and over again and wondering why you’re not happy in your dating life.
Different person, same story. Different job or business, same story.
Different moment in time, same decision.
To change your future, your present decisions must change. You can’t keep deciding to get into the same types of work and expect different results.
Complaining about your work to your friends, family, and coworkers day after day, year after year won’t make it any better.
Your decisions must be better. That’s what will make it better (and keep it better).
At some point, you must decide that getting into the same type of toxic relationship over and over again is not good for your life and start allowing in partners who are in healthier emotional states.
At some point, you must decide that getting into the same type of toxic, stressful work over and over again is not good for your life and start looking for work that’s better for your mental and emotional well-being.
We choose what to study in school. We choose our career. We choose what jobs to apply for and accept. We choose which businesses to start.
It’s all our choice.
If you’re in a toxic work environment, you’re tired, or you’re stressed out (or you’ve experienced this in the past), you chose it.
And you can choose something else. That’s the light at the end of the tunnel.
You don’t have to keep on choosing this work.
You can choose something else that adds value to your life instead of sucking the life out of you like a financial vampire.
What should you choose? That depends on a lot of factors, but it starts with what we talked about earlier:
Making work decisions based on more than just money, but things like work-life balance, happiness, fulfillment, and purpose, as well.
Letting Go Of Negative Past Work Experiences
To recap what we’ve discussed so far, we know that thinking that work is “just a way to make money” is hurting your happiness.
This paradigm leads people into situations where they’re just trading their time, energy, and well-being for money.
We also know that work is whatever you make it out to be based on how you think about it. If you want to change how your work impacts your life, it starts with changing what work itself means to you.
And we know that the key to changing your future is to change your present decisions in this area of life and start choosing work that adds more value to your life than just a paycheck or profit.
Now it’s time to start letting go of any negative work experiences you may have had so you can move on to bigger and better things.
In many cases, to move on, we must let go.
If we don’t let go of what we experienced in the past, it can weigh us down and prevent us from moving forward.
This is true in relationships, health, work, and personal growth in general.
To move on, we must let go.
In other words, the baggage you may be carrying from past work experiences must be released.
Maybe your company wronged you. Maybe your bosses or coworkers were toxic assholes. Maybe you got unfairly let go or fired.
Maybe you had a business failure that was tough to recover from. Maybe you had a business partner who cheated you. Maybe you overworked yourself and burned out.
Maybe you were underappreciated or overlooked for the value you brought to the table.
Whatever it may be, and no matter who may have wronged you, continuing to carry that baggage with you is only making it harder for you to move on and be happy.
Every time you think about what happened and feel angry or resentful, you’re reactivating that experience in your mind and heart as if it’s still happening in the present moment.
It may have been years ago, but every time you think about it and feel this way, you’re bringing it right back into the here and now.
If it’s in the here and now, it’s affecting your life. It’s affecting your mood and energy.
If it’s bringing you down, it’s bringing your life down, and it’s time to release it so you can rise up.
There are many ways to let go of negative past experiences:
Forgiveness.
Therapy.
Meditation (emotional release).
Spiritual healing.
Or simply working through the experience in your mind whenever it comes up and reframing it into something positive and empowering.
You can explore any avenue that resonates with you, but for now, I recommend two things:
Become aware of any negative perspectives and beliefs you may have created as a result of what you experienced.
Reframe the experience in a way that helps you feel better about it.
First, when we have negative experiences (or any emotionally charged experiences), our natural reaction is to try to understand them.
Our minds want to understand why the experience happened and, if it was negative, determine how/if we can avoid it in the future.
For example, if you had a negative work experience with a toxic, asshole, sexist boss, you may determine that it happened because all bosses are toxic, sexist, assholes.
And you may determine that it’s unavoidable and just “the way things are,” which may end up with you continuing to tolerate toxic, sexist, asshole bosses in your work life.
This is a negative perspective/belief generated from your experience. Even though the experience may be over, continuing with this belief may continue to hurt your work life.
What’s the truth here?
The truth is that not all bosses are toxic assholes. Only some are.
But if your belief is that all bosses are toxic assholes, or all work sucks, or there’s no such thing as doing work you love, or all companies are self-serving and don’t care about their employees, or all businesses require all of your time and energy to keep them afloat…
Whatever the belief is…
This belief will block you from experiencing what you want to experience: the opposite of what you experienced in the past.
If you want to work with amazing bosses, believing that all bosses are toxic assholes will block you from that experience.
You’ve got to reframe it in your mind so you can open yourself up to the experience you want to have.
Instead of creating a generalized negative belief based on your experience, focus on the truth. The truth is that your boss was/is a toxic asshole, but not all bosses are this way. Some are pleasures to work with.
Some companies do care about their employees. Some companies will value you. Some companies do care about equality and treating people fairly.
Not all businesses end up as failures. Many succeed. Not all businesses require all of your time and energy to keep them afloat. Many businesses can be run without much owner input at all.
The truth is that just because you had a bad experience, that doesn’t mean all things related to that experience are bad.
You can have a great experience as well. Compartmentalize what happened before and don’t let it stop you from experiencing what you desire in the present or future.
Not all work experiences are bad. In fact, many work experiences can be deeply fulfilling and invigorating.
Recognize that what you experienced is just one example of what work can be like, and the opposite can happen, as well.
Then, decide what you want to experience in your work life and start making it happen, regardless of what may be happening right now or what you experienced in the past.
How to Heal Your Relationship With Work Once And For All
You can do all the letting go you want, but if you keep getting yourself into toxic environments or work situations you despise, you’re not going to heal completely.
To heal your relationship with work once and for all, you’ve got to start doing work that makes you happy and fulfills you.
You can’t keep getting into work that devolves into trading your time, energy, and happiness for money and expect to feel great about what your work has in store for you.
The situation must change. You must change it.
You must be the one who says, “Enough is enough! I’m done with this!” You must be the one who decides what you will and will not tolerate in your work life.
You’re the one who must have standards for how you expect to be treated and the positive/negative impact your work has on your life.
Your work life will rise or fall based on what you are willing to tolerate within it.
Be willing to tolerate being treated like crap, stressed out, and tired all the time, and you will naturally gravitate to that work.
Be unwilling to tolerate anything less than being respected, appreciated, and energized by your work, and you will naturally gravitate to that work.
You will seek it out and/or it will find you, simply because you have made a clear decision about what you want and what’s best for you.
What do you want your work life to be like? What are you willing/unwilling to tolerate within it?
Answer these questions in depth and use them as a roadmap to your dream work.
Finding this type of work will complete the healing process and propel you into a new level of life.
Michael Karp is a personal development blogger and self-published author. He started his personal development journey in 2011 as a sophomore in college.
Since then, he has self-published several books, started an online business and became a digital nomad, achieved his dream of moving to Thailand and traveling around Southeast Asia, built a following on Instagram sharing life advice, became a life coach, found his life purpose, and healed his body with the power of his mind.
With a deep passion for serving others, Michael continues his hero's journey on a mission to help people around the world to empower themselves, realize their true potential, and achieve their dreams.
