Your work is what you do, be it paid or unpaid. Volunteer work is work too, because you are giving of your time, talents and skills to create value and add value to others.
What is the purpose of your work?
Is it just to earn a living and to get by?
What is the purpose of your business or project or whatever it is you spend your time doing?
I was speaking with a friend recently and she said something that I feel we need to ask ourselves from time to time.
My friend and two other persons founded the Opportunity Shop in our church. The opp shop fulfills a great community need in our mortgage-belt suburb. It provides a low-cost place to purchase clothing, household appliances, personal accessories and all those random things we need to have a reasonably comfortable life. These items are donated by people who no longer need them, and are then cleaned, made presentable and resold at a very low cost to the community.
My friend tells me that the opp shop's income has steadily risen in the last few years, and a lot of it is due to people feeling the pinch and trying to find ways to save money. She tells me that recently, the opp shop received some feedback suggesting that they should up their prices so they can make a bigger profit.
But my friend feels that this is the wrong way to go. The purpose of the opp shop is not to make lots of money. Its primary purpose is to meet a community need. If it prices its items beyond the reach of ordinary folk who need them, it would make more money but fail in its mission of serving the poor and needy. So my friend - bless her - is standing her ground on this issue.
We too can gain a lot of clarity and energy in our lives if we go back to basics and ask ourselves some questions:
What is our life purpose?
What is our career purpose?
Why did we choose this job or this organization or this industry?
Are our spiritual, emotional, physical and intellectual needs being met by what we spend most of our time and energy doing?
Are we living in harmony with our purpose?
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