Staying Connected to Meaning in Your Work : zen habits

While a majority of people struggle to find meaningful work, those who are fortunate enough to have it, have another challenge: Staying connected with that meaning.

It is easy to lose sight of the meaning and why we care about it, as we get stuck in the endless list of tasks. Even if we stay focused on our work, the never-ending tasks can make us lose track of our main objective.

The first and foremost step is to find a deep reason to do our work, which has to be beyond financial and obligatory reasons. If we don’t have a deep reason to work, it will feel meaningless and stressful for us. A deeper ‘why’ of our work provides us with inspiration and makes even challenging work stress-free.

Find a reason greater than yourself, like changing the world, helping people you care about, reducing pain in others, or to protect your loved ones, and even self-love.

As we get in the ‘doing’ mode we lose track of why something was important and meaningful to us in the first place.

Creating certain rituals that calm the mind and connect us to our basic nature can help, like a short meditation or simple prayer to remind us of our main motivation.