Why do you do what you do?
Sometimes, we can forget why we started a job, a hobby, a new goal. Especially when it gets hard. Especially when there's a task that we don't want to do. In those moments, we can be tempted to quit. So how do we fight this?
My team has been reading 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for a little while now (we took a short hiatus mid-November to mid-January due to SLS), and we really love it. It is changing the way we interact with each other and with other departments.
Most recently, we started working on implementing the 6 step planning process. Each Friday morning, we set aside an hour to prioritize the upcoming week and create time and space to work on important goals and priorities. But before we even get there, we must begin with the end in mind. This means taking a huge step back and looking at why we are even in our jobs.
Our team works on three main events: SEEK, New Staff Training, and the Student Leadership Summit. I firmly believe that all three events are vital to FOCUS and the advancement of God's Kingdom. But I'm human, and there are some days when I'm stuck in spreadsheets and logistics and emails and tiny details that I forget why I left campus to work on these events.
A few weeks ago I was upset about something I was supposed to do at work. I just couldn't figure out why. My friend Katie and I talked it out, and suddenly I realized it had to do with my pride. I wasn't thrilled about a task I was assigned and wanted to do a more glamorous task. Which...is a problem because the whole of the event is important. Even the less exciting things that I don't want to do.
The next say, Jesus wanted to talk to me about it in prayer, so He made the first reading apply to my life:
The scene: God has sent the prophet Samuel to find the new king from Jesse's sons. Samuel sees Eliab and immediately think's he is the next king of Israel - he's strong, good looking, charming...all the things a king should be. He had that outward appearance and glamour that I desired with my job.
But God had other plans (typical). He says, "Not as man sees does God see, because he sees the appearance, but The Lord looks into the heart."
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| image via. |
The question I had to ask was where was my heart at with these events? Was I in this job for the status? Or was there more?
I sat down with each event and prayed through why it is important to me.
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| my new desktop background at work |
This is why I do what I do. I'd love to hear...why do you do what you do?
(I tried to comment on this, like, 6 times from my phone yesterday and it didn't work. Whoops.)
ReplyDeleteI feel like as a student it can be really hard to stay mindful of what "The End" is. Homework and grad school applications make it really easy to get distracted and lose sight of it... As I was filling out grad applications all of last semester and preparing for the GRE last summer, I kept finding myself thinking that that was the End I was aiming toward. That caused me to get very anxious and fearful because I only ever hear about the pressure and the negative things that graduate school entails. Earlier last semester I had an absolute panic attack about the future, but then talking to Steph, she asked me “Why are you studying speech pathology? What made you choose this major?” So I started explaining why I love this career path and soon I realized what the enemy had been doing to me—he’d been taking my desire to serve people and twisting it so that I’d become afraid of taking that next step in serving. I’ve heard it explained that our biggest gifts are often wrapped in our biggest fears. I have had to remind myself that grad school is a two year stepping stone on the way to doing what I want to do for the rest of my life. I've had to teach myself to ignore my teachers' grad school horror stories and instead focus on their stories of success from their time actually working in this profession...
The transition from my general ed classes into the classes that are crucial to my future has been pretty swift, so it’s taken a lot of self-control to teach myself that I can’t just space out during class or mindlessly do my assignments… If I think that simply getting an A at the end of the semester is The End I want, then I’m not really getting from the class what I need to get from it. If I think about the class as a preparation for the career that I’m passionate about, then I’ll be able to retain the information and learn ways to apply it.
My goal: to serve people and help them to be able to express themselves. How I'll get there: going outside of my comfort zone to embrace my FEARS of serving and of being helpless when people need help. I also need to learn how to fail because I know I will be doing plenty of that in the future… That’s kind of a lifelong process, but each day I fail a little bit and hopefully can learn a little bit more, rather than beat myself up about it or let it defeat me and make me quit.
Anyway, great post! Got me thinking!
Love you!
Meghan