A Life More Meaningful

Imagine living a life that has no purpose? A life so busy and buzzy you can’t even hear yourself thinking. A life of conformity to what everyone else thinks is the right thing for you to do.

Let that thought sink in for a moment. This is how most of us live our life for as long as we can remember. It’s not that we are at any point aware that we are the lab rat on the wheel, we just get on with things every day, the same as everyone else.

Some of us look at their life and are thankful for what they have and think what else might I ask for? what else do I want from life?

It’s not a matter of wanting, it’s about being able to live and enjoy the moment. Carve out the noise. The idea of having a purpose in life can feel distant to a lot of us as we think that this is only reserved for those doing the bigger good in life.

It might take years until that moment comes when you suddenly realize your purpose in life and it all becomes apparent to when you finally open your eyes and mind to it.

Life is an endless loop of daily routine, Monday to Friday (or Sunday to Thursday for those in the Middle East); endless cups of coffee, meaningless meetings that could be sorted out with an email, cookie cutter books that you wonder why even bother reading, and a continuous inner voice continuously asking what are you doing and why are you wasting your time.

The mind is always on; continuously cluttered with emails, meetings’ invites, budget revisions, restructuring proposals, office politics, mom’s or dad’s guilt etc. and, when the mind is cluttered, the days blur and it becomes difficult to pay attention to the present moment or overall purpose and meaning of all of this hyper activity. It all just blends in. I created my own acronym for this state of vagueness, the M.A.Z.E. – Maximum Activity, Zero Effectiveness.

This type of lifestyle has become the norm; people even pride themselves for being super busy, constantly working after hours and on weekends. I love this statement from Zen mind “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s, there are few”. A beginner’s mind is free of clutter, clear, and ready to accept as well as question what comes before it. Whereas the expert mind is already full of opinions and many ways why things can or can’t work.

Keeping an open mind in business is a challenge; the above got me thinking about employee induction and our temptation to share with new employees how we operate, our values, and culture thus leaving them no room to find a way that’s maybe better, and it deprives us of an opportunity to learn a more effective way of working. We lose the opportunity to leverage on them “seeing things for the first time” with an open uncluttered mind.

After going through a difficult year at work whereby the race for double digit growth in an economic downturn got me continuously refitting, restructuring, and conducting exit interviews not only with employees who worked in roles for more than 10 and 15 years, but also senior executives who suddenly had to head back home after years of expat assignments. It’s always difficult when the decision is forced on you, and you never saw it coming.

That was a defining moment for me and started asking myself, so what’s the ‘purpose’ of all of this and what am I really doing.

As I started to see with more awareness what’s happening around me and pay more attention to my days, the voice in my head that was continuously asking me “is this life” started getting quieter and my mind became much clearer.

I started thinking differently, “how can I take this experience and use it in a more purposeful manner?”

I began questioning everything around me. Questioning can be so deep, powerful, and disruptive. It helps you leave aside your mindsets, tried and tested methods, and business as usual. Questioning helps you think disruptive and takes your mind to places that other people might think are not possible.

Adopting an open mind at work can be life changing; and questioning everything around you gives you an edge as it enables you to distance yourself from what is happening and look at it from the outside with a clear mind. Of course, it’s difficult to resist the temptation of reverting back to preconceptions or to try things the same way others did. But you’ll feel proud when you resist this temptation to conform and start seeing things differently.

Try it, it could be liberating

ABOUT EMMA

Emma is a Johannesburg-based future work innovator, speaker, entrepreneur and the proud founder and MD of One Circle www.onecirclehr.com an online platform providing businesses access to on-demand specialized HR talent scheduled to launch in 2019.

Her vision is to be an active member in combating few of the major societal issues in society in general and in South Africa in particular, being unemployment, gender and age bias, and the retention of experienced workers in the economy post-retirement. Today, she helps companies grow smart through providing them with access to a globally available pool of seasoned HR consultants working on-demand; and gives HR Consultants access to projects without having to pitch, hard-sell, or develop a business.

ABOUT ONE CIRCLE

One Circle connects businesses with HR consultants on-demand. Completely virtual, giving access to quality HR consultants, from around the world and across the employee life cycle, All in one place.

A South African start-up coming to life by global citizens with Human Resources expertise – an HR workspace for high growth companies.