Today is your life. Sometimes with all our plans for the future and our baggage from the past, we forget that today is our life too.

As we return to work today, our lives intersect with that work. Our lives include that work, become a part of that work and/or that work becomes a part of our lives.

The question becomes, can we discern when we have suspended our lives in order to go to work? Do we consider everything we do part of our lives except our work?

When we get off of work we can go back to living.

The problem here is that we spend too much time at work to survive holding such a frame of reference for very long. Putting our lives on hold eight to ten plus hours a day in order to make someone else rich gets old real quickly. More than merely getting old, such a practice eats away at our dignity, confidence and ability to value ourselves appropriately.

The key is finding ways to make a meaningful contribution at work. Even in the most distasteful, boring, or demeaning work you can choose to make some aspect of your efforts a meaningful contribution.

The contribution can be an increase in quality, attention to details, going the extra mile for a customer, consistent follow-through, clear communication, heading off problems before they arise, or an extra level of coordination on a project.

The point being that you are choosing to make your work a meaningful part of your life, and you are doing something to make it happen.

Today is your life. Now go out and live it! Even at work… Especially at work!

On  your side,

- Karl Edwards

Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 29th, 2010 at 8:46 am and is filed under Loving Monday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.