How many hours will you work in a lifetime?

A quick Google search will reveal that we can expect to spend 90,360 hours on the job, working.  That is 1/3 of our lives!  How do you spend each of those hours?  Are you engaged in what you do?  Another Google search, and you will find that 70% of U.S. employees are not engaged by their jobs.  The scary fact is that 7 in 10 people are exhausting 1/3 of their lives slogging into a job feeling stuck on a treadmill of emptiness.  Sounds nonsensical, right?

While there are numerous aspects to fulfilling work that engages our hearts and minds, I pose that it boils down to one essential factor – purpose.  The desire for purposeful work is a fundamental human need.  It is a need just like love and belonging.  When we lack a sense of purpose in our jobs we disengage; we join the masses stuck on that treadmill of emptiness.

First step:

My advice is that you start infusing your work with purpose immediately!  Identify with your company’s mission.  If you can’t or don’t then it is time to seek out a truer calling (employer/job).  A role that has you working towards a big picture.  One that brings fulfillment to you and the many others your job will impact.

Second step:

If you DO identify with your organization’s overreaching mission…Take two minutes each afternoon to think of one purposeful moment you had that day. If you do this for a month you will find that you are doing more things everyday that bring you purpose and that you also come to appreciate them more and more.

Know that the possibilities of creating purpose in your work/job are vast and growing.  Start with the big picture (mission) then work backwards tying meaning to every task.

Make that 1/3 of your life worthwhile…make it count…start today what you should have started yesterday…ACT!

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

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