Work to be Proud Of

A Poem for Weary Runners

The pavement thuds up against my feet

Again and again. I feel the air against me.

My legs pump and pump and pump

But that finish line is still just a speck,

A red splash in the distance.

Work to be Proud Of

I’m writing this post from the lobby of an auto shop while waiting on an oil change. It’s a wet, gray day and the mechanics are working by the light of fluorescents, wielding flashlights as needed. The guy at the counter is looking out the window with a grimace but gets chipper when a customer walks in. Along with me and another customer, a big donation box sits in the lobby for a toy giveaway at a children’s hospital. You can smell the rubber of the tires on display.

I haven’t spent much time in garages like this, but it seems like a typical day. The shop is busy but not overwhelmed; they could fit me in without an appointment and I doubt I’ll finish this draft before they’re done. I go here because when I first moved to town, a friend of mine at church told me they do honest work.

That’s been my experience. They level with me when work needs to be done but never pressure me or overcharge. Today, they tell me that one of my battery terminals isn’t latching tightly. They take the time to explain the issue so I understand it, and they’re adding a shim to fix it.?

These guys do work to be proud of.

[This week we continue our series of Work Meditations. Check out our other posts on?faith and work for more resources on living an integrated Christian life. Subscribe to get the next post in the series in your inbox.]

Elusive Contentment

When you go home at the end of your work day, are you proud of the work you’ve accomplished?

For me, proper pride in work well done is one of the best feelings in the world.

But it raises the question: What work deserves that feeling of pride?

There have been plenty of days in my life when I go home from work not proud, but rather discouraged or even ashamed.

I tend to look at what I’ve done and identify its flaws and shortcomings, even if everyone else is pleased with it. I have a hard time giving myself permission to feel proud of what I’ve done.

Here’s a recent example. At the food bank where I work, I’ve been chipping away at designing an analysis tool over the past two months. It’s a large Excel spreadsheet that pulls together data from our volunteer and warehouse teams so we can better plan our volunteer projects. Our COO recently came to my desk to look at it and was clearly enthused. Our CEO stopped me in the hallway to encourage me about it. The executive team included a note thanking me and my collaborators for our efforts in a newsletter that went out to all employees.

Despite these accolades, my first thought about the spreadsheet is still everything that could go wrong with it and all the ways it needs to be improved. Suffice it to say, contentment at work is elusive.

Of course, there’s the other extreme. I’m sure we’ve all known the coworker or manager who’s a little too “content,” oblivious to ways that their behavior or poor performance drags the team down. Somewhere in my soul, I’m deathly afraid of becoming that person.

So is there a happy medium out there when it comes to how we feel about our efforts at work? Can we be self-aware about our shortcomings and still feel proper pride in a job well done?

A Competent Authority

Given my tendency toward self-doubt where my work is concerned, I’ve always been drawn to arenas where performance is judged by some authority figure. It makes me think of the eighth grade science fair. At my school, various science professionals were drawn from the pool of parents and community members to form small panels of judges. Two or three judges would listen to a student’s presentation of their experiment and the results, then confer with each other and award a ribbon of merit. The highest award was a blue ribbon, for Outstanding science projects.

This annual foray into empiricism and social competition drew out students’ creativity. My brother’s project explored whether the angle of a candle affects how fast it burns; he constructed a PVC pipe frame in our garage so that he could install a full 360 degrees of pyromanic joy. Another student examined whether a person’s age affected their performance at Bop-It Extreme. My brother’s classmate Barbie staged a series of gladiatorial matches between carnivorous fish to illustrate the principle of natural selection. I forget which species emerged from the bloody fray, but Barbie was certainly victorious, taking home a bright blue ribbon.

My dad, a software developer with an electrical engineering degree, was a perennial science fair judge. In all his years of judging, I think he awarded an Outstanding blue ribbon to every single student whose work he reviewed. I asked him about this once, and he commented that he was always just so impressed by the students’ work. “Barbie’s experiment was cruel,” he said, “But she did the work so well.”

My father is a detail-oriented guy. He catches things. He is a competent authority to judge eighth grade science projects.

Humble Self-Acceptance

Who is a competent authority to judge our efforts at work?

If we’re in a highly structured environment, we might receive detailed reviews that (for better or for worse) don’t differ so greatly from the eighth grade science fair. A principal comes into a teacher’s classroom with a rubric and makes thorough documentation. A sales manager coaches account executives about the habits that lead to hitting their numbers. An auto mechanic reviews a new hire’s job on the oil change and gives a few tips for next time. Hopefully these authorities are informed, charitable, and focused on helping their team improve.

But many of us might not have bosses who are so close to the ground. I’ve participated in annual reviews where I have to educate my manager about what it, exactly, that I do. In situations like that, you may be the most competent authority to judge your own work.

When I’m judging my own work, the part of me that comes to the fore is my inner critic. The voice that is merciless, focused on what’s lacking, driving toward improvement. But it’s worth considering: Is my inner critic the most competent authority, even to judge my own work?

After all, my inner critic is rather biased. He has a hard time encouraging or affirming my efforts. His feedback can be incredibly helpful, but it’s not gospel.

If I was approaching a teammate and only offered them criticism, without any affirmation or encouragement, that would make me a rather poor teammate to them. So why am I such a poor teammate to myself in exactly that way?

It might seem like giving a megaphone to the inner critic is the humble thing to do. It helps me tune into my perceived flaws, the areas where I still need to grow.

But true humility requires not just an openness to criticism, but also self-acceptance. Humility is all about seeing the truth of things as they are, no more and no less. It takes humility to accept ourselves, with our flaws, because it means we can’t pretend that just a little more effort will make us perfect.

A little more effort won’t make us perfect. But that’s all right; we don’t need to be. We just need to keep growing.

An Inner Encourager

Because I? have an inner critic, I need a counterpoint: An inner encourager.

One of the darker chapters of David’s story comes before he is made king. He left on a military campaign and returned to find that all the women and children of his encampment had been kidnapped. A sufficient defense force had not been left behind to protect them.

If I were in David’s shoes, my inner critic would be severe with me. It’s all my fault that these people are now in danger. Who knows what will happen to them?

David’s men were distraught. They were angry. They weren’t confident in David anymore. The writer of the story tells us that “David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters” (1 Samuel 30:6 KJV).

So how did David respond? He found an inner encourager: “but David encouraged himself in the Lord his God” (1 Samuel 30:6 KJV). He rallied his men and went and rescued their families and brought them home.

If David could encourage himself on that desperate day, I can learn to encourage myself in the challenges I face at work.

I'm Proud of You

As we learn to let our inner critic and our inner encourager have their say, we get closer to a place of self-awareness and self-acceptance.

But ultimately, we need an authority greater than ourselves. We won’t always get one in the form of a caring boss. But as disciples of Jesus, our ultimate authority goes beyond our immediate boss anyway. It’s Jesus himself who is finally competent to judge us, to say the truth about what we’ve done and left undone.

The voice of Jesus is also the truest source of proper pride. When we’re proud of work well done, we’re not heaping affirmation on ourselves. We’re hearing his authoritative voice say, “I’m proud of you.”

Reflect and Practice

What’s an accomplishment that you’re properly proud of?

What does your inner critic sound like?

Do you have an inner encourager?

Have you ever heard Jesus say, “I’m proud of you”?

Consider taking a few minutes in silence to listen for the voice of Jesus. What does he want to say to you about your work? Listen with faith that he can speak to you, and with humble self-acceptance.

Worker photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.

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