[This series of posts on “the problem of work” supports a new program called the Existential Wellness Coach Certificate Program that launches February, 2024. Part of the program are 12 FREE webinars that you can attend in March, April and May of 2024. To learn more about the program, please visit here. For an early bird special price on the program, please visit here. To learn more about the webinars and to register, please visit here.]

In this series, let’s look at the subject of work: how we make our money, how we construct our lives around a work identity, how we occupy our time, how we deal with the existential challenges of our work no longer interesting us, no longer feeding us, and even no longer existing, as when whole professions vanish overnight because of technological advances.

Helpers like psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and self-help pundits rarely concern themselves with something as mundane as the work that we do. But work is a huge affair in the lives of actual human beings. It takes up our time, it wears us out, it inhabits our mind, it has all sorts of existential ramifications, and it significantly defines who we are.

What, for example, if the work that you do has no connection to your life purpose choices except that it meets the basic life purpose need of sheer survival? Aren’t you going to resent that work a lot and continually dream about doing something else?

Or, to take a different sort of example, say that you are doing work that holds meaning for you, but the actual doing of it is an unpleasant experience. You desperately want to write a novel but the writing of it is torture. How difficult will that prove?

Or, as a third example, say that you are a stay-at-home parent raising children and running a household. Even though you work every moment of the day, will it feel like you have “real work”? And will the world credit you with doing “real work”?

Existential wellness coaches need to think about these matters and address them with their clients.

A recent poll put the number of workers who hate their jobs at 85%. Other polls have put the number at “only” 70%. Are all of these workers malcontents? Or is work the problem? It certainly looks like we have another epidemic, to go along with our depression epidemic, our addiction epidemic, our anxiety epidemic, our insomnia epidemic, and our loneliness epidemic. But what is the actual problem?

Work is indeed a problem. It is hard to tolerate even the work that we ourselves dream up. A wise existential wellness coach knows that it has always been like this. They know that work is no innocuous, incidental, or smiley-faced thing. It is something else—an often brutal thing.

Work is something that steals away one-third or one-half of our life. It may pay the rent but it is also a thief. For some people, the lucky few, this is not the case. For most people, it is. For most people, work is a burden, an albatross, and even a killer.

Why should the work that most people do not actually suit their human needs? Let’s try to picture ideal work, work that fits us so well and pleases us so well that we don’t even think of it as work. What would work of that sort look like and feel like?

Ideal work would provoke the psychological experience of meaning. It would feel interesting. It would match our moral calculus. It would match our personality and identity. It would pay well enough. And it would not exhaust us or overwhelm us.

It would also come with certain bonuses and benefits, like, for instance, a sense of community. These extras might actually matter a lot. Maybe we need our work to provide us with a sense of prestige. Maybe we need it to make us feel powerful. We may need a lot from it!

Maybe we crave a rock-and-roll lifestyle and need our work to provide it. Maybe we crave respectability and need that from our work. Maybe we need our work to allow us to be our most creative self. We may need our work to do all of that and more. Is that remotely possible?

Can any work match this ideal? A teacher may love her work—but not be paid decently. A lawyer may love what she does—except for the ethics of it. A social worker may find her work valuable—but burn out doing it. A poet may never earn a cent.

Let’s say that we did miraculously find ideal work. Then we would need the world not to change, the work not to change, and we ourselves not to change. How likely is that? How likely is it that a Starbucks wouldn’t open up right across from our sweet café? If we’d picked a lovely location for our little café, wouldn’t someone else consider it an ideal location, too>

The whole nature, currency, and psychological cachet of a profession can change overnight. Consider the difference between delivering the mail when the mail consisted of letters from sweethearts, grandchildren and faraway friends, rather than what it now consists of, tons and tons of unwanted supermarket ads and almost nothing else. Can such change really be tolerated?

What are the odds of competitors never appearing? What are the odds of your work interesting you forever? What are the odds of cultural cataclysms not changing everything? What are the odds of you not being transferred or remaindered?

So, for work to feel tolerable, we need it to meet a great many criteria, too many really. At the same time, we need nothing to change, no new boss to arrive, no new technology to appear, no creeping boredom to overtake us. Where did we get the idea this could be possible?

And work takes up so much time! Maybe we could survive terrible work that lasted just an hour a day. But eight full hours! Or nine! Or ten! Add in those lost hours before and after work, commuting or brooding about the job. Should half a life be spent this way?

Given that work is exactly like this, how ought an existential wellness coach deal with all this as she works with her clients? Are there ways to make work “better”? Is there some way to move work from the albatross side of the ledger to the status of acceptable or even satisfying? Or is there nothing for an existential wellness coach to do but commiserate with her clients?

Unless we are independently wealthy or otherwise supported and provided for, we need to make money in order to survive. Coaches, clients—everyone—must therefore take work seriously, first of all at the level of survival. That is bedrock reality, and existential wellness coaches pride themselves on being real.

Likewise, human beings need to feel occupied. In a core existential sense, we can’t not work. Yes, we can take vacations. Yes, we can spend stretches of time at sea, in transition, or otherwise not quite occupied. But for the most part, we need occupation.

Occupation and livelihood are bedrock needs. Then, we have our many wants: that the work interests us, that the work feels moral to us, that the work provides us with certain perks, like a sense of community, a chance to be creative, and so on. We may not have answers; but these are the questions.

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This Post is republished on Medium.

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