Vintage travel poster, bathroom wall at Yi’s in Pacific Grove CA

If you are employed in the US or Japan, it is likely that you spend most of your waking hours at work. It follows that if you hate your job, or the people you are working with, or the clients you serve, your life can feel pretty miserable. Sure, we don’t always love our work, but if you never love it or feel enlivened by it, life can be grim indeed.

If you don’t feel passionately excited about work, then at the very least it must feel meaningful to you. When you dislike the milieu in which you work, AND you are continually wondering, “What is this good for?” you deflate like a tire with a slow leak. And as you become flatter and flatter, it is likely that you will become less energetic, more resentful, and more “put upon” by even simple requests. And then things really get ugly: for you, and for everyone else at work and at home.

I am going to make a bold statement and it is this: if you hate your work, you should quit.

I understand. You have rent or a mortgage to pay, a family to support, mouths to feed.

But here’s the thing. You have one life (or at least, this is your current incarnation.) Do you REALLY want to spend it dragging yourself to a place that suffocates you, making a colossal effort not to burst into tears of boredom or frustration, trying to restrain yourself from snapping at people or situations that are working your last nerve?

The other day I was talking to a client whose team had been asked to raise its collective game. They were asked not to produce more, but to BE more, as humans in the workplace. This client said, “They don’t pay me enough to bring my ‘best self’ here.”

Surely, one’s best self is the ONLY self you should ever bring anywhere. Without him or her, you don’t have a prayer of creating or living a rich, happy, meaningful life. It is entirely possible to bring your best self to a job you love, one that has meaning, purpose, and connection, while meeting your earthly survival needs.

Yes, many of us feel like we live at work. But what if we LIVED at work?