Reply to Anyone think the stress of working isn't worth it?

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[quote=Anonymous]This whole country is nuts about work! They want every kid to start working ASAP because it somehow makes a person more responsible.  Hard working person = saint.  (Actually, you don't become more responsible by working, you work harder because you are a responsible person.  Someone irresponsible would never have a job so having a job teaches you nothing, intention and drive figures into 99% of anything meaningful!) This country is all about working as much as possible and not taking vacations as if a holiday is a sign of weakness.

YES - to your question - "working" as commonly defined is way too stressful and completely idiotic and no, it's not worth working to be that stressed.  I had a manager once, who somehow made fun of me because I felt the position I was in didn't make sense for me - it just wasn't giving me enough satisfaction.  She felt that I was high maintenance for considering a job could actually offer anyone a degree of satisfaction/happiness because having a job should be enough to be grateful for.

BUT if you like the people you work with, that goes a long way to less stress.  In any job. If you actually like what you do - the results of your labor or feel there's any sort of meaning to what your do or if you just are good at what you do - your abilities align with your daily responsibilities - that will also go a long way to taking down stress.

Everyone and every job comes with stress, for sure.  But your approach on setting yourself up for the best possible outcome can absolutely take down more stress than you can know.

I have zero - less than zero interest in making money for other people by killing myself at work.  I will however work as much as I have to if not more to get something right on a project because I care about the project's success.  But no, I have zero loyalty to the concept that work somehow makes me a "better" person and that being focused on growing my career is the end all and be all to happiness.  This is significantly different from the attitude that my life's work is meaningful to me and that it's more than just a career.  I go on LinkedIn and see all these people writing about how much they love contributing to their company's success and it's a joke.  These are the people that I guarantee are stressed about their jobs on a daily basis.

I agree with what so many hugely successful people and business people say - work is never balanced - there is no true work/life balance in life.  But the difference between their approach and mine is that I'm not looking at the traditional definition of work as a career - not my title or how much money I make.  Rather, how much respect or admiration I receive from a project's success is defined by my business or work.  My take is that my work is what I do without knowing it's work.  It's who I am, what I do because it's everything I believe in - and on that I would not look at it as work/life because the work becomes my life.  From that perspective, the life/work balance is irrelevant.  Short of that which it is for like 95% of all of us, yeah, there better be some bigtime life/work balance!!!!  If you approach work from this perspective, you won't feel that "stress of working."

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