From the Soul Up

Nobody will write in your eulogy that you worked 10% more than your colleagues or were promoted to manager early or narrowly beat out so-and-so for city council. Nobody will stand up at your funeral and tell stories of your walk-off homerun in JV baseball or your $10k raise in 2015 or the stock options you negotiated at your last job. That all takes skill, discipline, and commitment. All of them are merited and good and signs of success. They matter. They really do. For now.

But, in the end, they don’t.

The patience and sensitivity you displayed on Sunday afternoons when you volunteered at the nursing home will make it into your eulogy. The compassion you had for your neighbor’s ailing sister when she was diagnosed with cancer—that will come up at your funeral. Your capacity to listen to different perspectives, challenging opinions, other political ideologies—yeah, that will be remembered too.

The goal is not to pretend that competition and ambition don’t exist.
The goal is not to ignore your brain, your will, your drive, your ego.

But if we operate as if only those matter, we neglect the deep well that is our true self, the basement of identity below the first floor, the wonderful and rich depth of our soul. We neglect all that truly matters in the end. And eventually we run dry.

The goal is to bring patience, sensitivity, compassion, and a capacity to truly listen to differences to our work. To marry our work with our true self. To embrace our identity as a gift to (not a distraction from) our work.

The goal is to operate from the soul, upward.