Taking advantage of the New Year’s season, I want to share with you a little bit about my current view of work and life.
The meaning of work and life is something I’ve meditated on for a few years now. During this time, I’ve gone through different paths. My view has changed a lot over these years and I expect it will keep changing in the future. So, don’t take my words for granted, for they change a lot :)
One question I find worth revisiting from time to time is: what’s the meaning of work for me? If you read the Mindfulness of Burnout—Part 1, you’ll realize this a topic I revisit a lot. It’s like a kōan for me. It’s something that helps me to come back to my center.
For the aficionados, a kōan is basically a question, story, quote, or anything that can help you break from thoughts and provoke insights in you. It can be almost anything. It doesn’t have an answer. It’s something to meditate on. It can be even a paradox! If you want to know more about kōans, check this.
I meditated a lot on the 2021-2023 season on the question of the meaning of work. This season was an important one for me. It significantly changed my view about life and work. As a result, I revisited many parts of my life. But, more recently, I’ve been meditating on two new questions: what’s the life I want to live? and what work do I want to do while I’m alive? Which is precisely what I want to share with you in this blog post.
So, without further ado, let’s dive in!
Random Thoughts
When I talk about life, I also talk about work. They are intertwined and interdependent. It is difficult for me to talk about one without talking about the other.
I’ve been working in the tech industry for 8 years. I’m very grateful for having the opportunity to work in this industry. It’s been quite a journey for me! I’ve learned a lot and I usually find myself inspired by many things! One of them, the idealism that you can find in our industry. It’s the kind of idealism that is fueled by good intentions and the desire to make a positive impact on the world—or at least that’s what I’ve decided to see.
I’ve been so inspired by the idealism of making a positive impact on the world, that over the years I’ve optimized for the impact I can have through my work. I can say I’ve gone through three different phases during my career. Right now, I’m at the dawn of a new phase. A more self- and spiritually-centered phase.
Three Phases of My Professional Career
During my first phase, my view was about the business you can build. The impact you have in the world is directly related to the business you are building. During this phase, I quickly learned that while the business that you are building is important, you should be careful about it. You can end up sacrificing your people and culture in the name of the business. This phase quickly showed that over-focusing on the business can come to the detriment of your people.
The insights I got during my first phase quickly propelled me to the second career phase. This second phase was more about people and building more “human-centered” environments.
During my second phase, I learned a lot! It’s perhaps one of the phases I feel most proud of in my career and that I enjoyed the most. During this phase I left aside my technical background and dived deeply into the people side. This helped me to learn that it’s not only about the business that you are building or the things that you are doing, but also about how you do it. It’s about how you treat your people and it’s also about creating more human-centered environments for your people.
While this phase was particularly insightful for me, I faced several challenges. One of the major lessons I learned from these challenges is that the best way to create human-centered spaces is to start with yourself.
The reality is that work cultures are built up from individual behaviors. Of course, there are group behaviors, but they tend to be a continuation of the individual ones. This highlights the importance on working on oneself first.
People don’t imitate what they are told, they imitate what they see. If you cannot embody your messsage through your actions, it’s really difficult to make a real impact onto other people. Let’s take a look at two examples:
First example: You tell your people: take care of yourself. Don’t work long hours. But, still, you work long hours and take on too many things.
Second example: You tell your people: be kind to other people. But, still, you are harsh with others when you disagree.
We tend to pass on to others what has been passed on to us. I’ve been in situations where I have felt a lot of pressure from my bosses, that, as a result, I’ve also passed that pressure to my teams. Guess what? That’s exactly what they are going to do with others. This is how the cycle propagates. We tend to pass on to others what has been passed on to us. It takes hard work to break the cycle.
What I have personally learned is that one can make a real impact by breaking the cycle. Which of course, it’s not easy. We should be aware that we are not perfect and we are going to fail in trying to break the cycle. One should be careful not to be too hard on oneself. It’s not only about breaking the cycle, it’s also about how you treat yourself.
I think the insights of this phase are deeply ingrained in something that one of my dearest colleagues told me back then: “the spiritual development of organizations is limited by spiritual development of its leaders”. Which points directly to the fact that the primary work you have to do it’s in yourself. This has stuck with me.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Mahatma Gandhi
The learning and insights from the second phase propelled me to the third phase. This is quite a complex phase for me to explain, given I’m just starting. But what I can tell you is that it's a more nuanced phase.
As I mentioned before, at the beginning of my career, I thought that the impact you can have in the world is about the business you can create. Then, I transitioned from focusing on what you build to how you do it. Since my focus has been always on people and organizations, the “how” became for me “building more human-centered spaces.”
If you look deeply, you’ll realize that much of the impact I’ve been looking so far has been put on the outside. It has been more about what I can build/achieve. Now, finding myself at the dawn of this new phase, I’ve transitioned from what I can build/achieve to who find out I am and who I can be and from that point, let the impact come along.
Let me share with you a story that I think illustrates perfectly what I’m talking about:
Back in the beginnings of my career, I worked at a fintech company. Given the nature of our work, there’s a back and forth process you need to go through everytime you are working on a project: asking for permissions.
For those who are not familiar with the tech industry this how it goes: you need to build a solution for the project you are working on. To build a solution you need to use some tools. You cannot use those tools without asking for permissions. This is done to prevent that you do things that are not supposed to do. So, they give you the bare minimum of permissions to do your job. This is called the Principle of least privilege.
So, what usually happens is that you start to build the solution with the bare minimum and then, if you realize you need more permissions, you ask for them. This may seem something not too big, but it can be frustrating. It can delay your work even for months! I’ve been in projects where I’ve just spent 1 month asking for permissions.
Now, back to the story… I remember when I was in this fintech company I was working on several projects. So, I had to ask for a lot of permissions. I would start working, and then, 10-15 minutes later, I would get blocked and need to ask for permissions. This would drive me crazy! Additionally, if I was getting errors or things were failing, I would get really grumpy…But here’s the catch.
The person I had to ask for permissions was someone who had been working in this company for, I think, around 20 years! This person was the more peaceful guy I’ve ever met…I could be stressed, frustrated, anxious, or anything! But I would get closer to this person and I would feel very peaceful.
I remember his movements were so peaceful that just by watching him, I would get relaxed. I remember he had a huge monitor. Every time I asked for something he would say something like “let’s see what’s going on.” He would then grab the mouse and click, drag and drop things in is huge monitor. I remember he would take like 2-3 seconds to get from one side of the monitor to the other. It may sound irritating, but it wasn’t. It was deeply relaxing. I think every time I would ask for permissions I would relieved just by interacting with this person.
I don’t know if this was intentionall or not, but at least, I could feel he was at peace. So at peace, that just by his mouse movements who could make other feel at peace!
From this story, I can tell you something: this guy never told me anything, he neither advised me about life nor directly taught me, but he indirectly taught me a lot! That’s real impact for me.
Now…coming back to my third phase, I would say this phase is a more self- and spiritually-centered phase. It’s about answering questions like Who am I? Who do I want to be? What’s the life I want to live? What work do I want to do while I’m alive? If you ask me now what’s the impact I want to have in the world? I would say that: I want to get to know myself better and find out who I am and from that point, let the impact come along.
I think there’s something interesting on knowing who I am when looking beyond the titles, beyond the career path I’ve chosen, beyond my cultural background, and the label of a human being. I want to know who I am when I remove all the layers that I’ve built over the years. I want to break free from the labels. In doing so, I believe I can be the change I would like to see in the world.
I’ve seen firsthand that it’s easier to make an impact on the world when you come from a more authentic, fresher place. In a world overwhelmed by wars and divisions, in a world overwhelmed by anxiety and depression, in a world overwhelmed by confusion and lack of direction, it makes a huge difference to come from a place of peace. It makes a huge difference to be at peace.
Final Thoughts
A couple of years ago I was watching Thich Nhat Hanh’s answer to the question: How do you know you are really living the life that can contribute the most to humanity?
I was touched and shocked by his answer.
“Just imagine a pine tree standing outside…The pine tree is asking: “What can be in order to help the world?”
The answer can come easily: Be a healthy, beautiful pine tree. If a pine tree is vigorous, beautiful, healthy…then every one of us will profit from it. If a pine tree is less than a pine tree, not healthy enough, not beautiful enough, then we will suffer, all of us…
So, the answer is that the most helpful thing for you to do is to be a happy human being…”
I find his answer so refreshing and enlightening… So, now, before I say good bye, let me ask you three questions:
Who are you?
Who do you want to be?
What’s the life you want to live?
May you be able to find the answers at the bottom of you heart and let them guide you!
Wish you a wonderful 2024!
See you in the next one!