A question from one of my Pathfinding clients:

Do you deal with a lot of Bullshit in your work? It seems that I do.

I think I’m particularly sensitive to it right now, knowing that my work is not meeting hardly any of my core desired feelings. I am bumping into a BS good old boys network and feeling scapegoated on several recent situations. It has become clear that I am the only decision maker who seeks clarity, and it is a bumpy place to be when I am at the bottom of the organizational chart (there are only three of us).

When work aligns with spirit, is it a smoother ride? Will I attract and align with others like me, wanting to go deeper, live bigger and contribute, and be able to leave the ego based masculine way of thinking in the past? Or does it just become a different kind of bullshit that I have to live with?

I hear you. It can be deeply frustrating to be overruled by people who don’t value the same things that you do. No one likes to feel like they don’t matter, and being at the bottom of the pecking order is not a happy place to be.

I’ve got two pieces of advice for you, and it will look like they’re contradictory but they’re actually not.

Grab on to control.

Human beings hate to feel like they have no control. The brain is a problem-solving machine. When you are powerless, you can’t solve any problems so your brain kind of freaks out.

So, the fact of the matter is you’re at the bottom of the organizational chart, so you don’t have decision-making control at your organization. You probably can’t change that even if you wanted to. But what can you control?

Can you control what you do during your breaks and off-time?

Can you make your workspace feel more like you?

Can you carve off one area of work or one project, make it your own, and do your best at it?

Can you reframe your life as a quest to find your path, and wholeheartedly choose this job as a way to make money to fuel your quest?

What else can you control?

Let go of control.

On a deeper level, control is impossible. We can’t control other people, we can’t control Nature, we can’t control all sorts of things that happen to us.

The brain is a problem-solving machine and wants to control, but your heart is your connection to Source and wants to connect.

What the brain sees as an obstacle to control, the heart sees as an opportunity for connection.

What the brain sees as bullshit, the heart sees with compassion.

If you let your heart be a tube, not a bucket, you’ll see other hearts that are feeling afraid and trying to get their needs met.

This doesn’t mean that you have to put up with the bullshit, but it can give you the ability to handle it with compassion and grace instead of annoyance and frustration.

In other words: Can you reframe your work as an opportunity to practice compassion?

When work aligns with Spirit, is it a smoother ride?

When work aligns with spirit, is it a smoother ride? Will I attract and align with others like me, wanting to go deeper, live bigger and contribute, and be able to leave the ego based masculine way of thinking in the past? Or does it just become a different kind of bullshit that I have to live with?

I would say it’s… differently bumpy. (:

Yes, you will attract and align with others like you. But this means you’ll have to set firm boundaries and sometimes say no to those you care about. That can be difficult and painful.

You’ll no longer have to deal with being unable to do something because of some bullshit organizational reason. But you’ll have full responsibility for all mistakes.

And you’ll discover new flavors of bullshit in the work itself – for example, I left behind office politics, but now I get to deal with WordPress security issues. It still sometimes feels like bullshit, but when I connect with my heart and remember why I care (e.g. I care about my customers’ privacy) then the bullshit feels more like fertilizer for my Great Work.

When work aligns with Spirit, it’s differently bumpy. The bumps are still bumpy, but at least you’re heading where you want to go.

When your heart aligns with Spirit, is it a smoother ride?

When your heart aligns with Spirit, it’s smooth sailing. The bumps are choppy ocean waves, but your heart is enveloped deeply in the sea of Source. You look up at the stormy waves above and you see them, but your heart is held, nourished, loved.

I once had a Pathfinding client who came to me because she hated her job and wanted to create her own business.

After her heart felt held and nourished and loved, after she felt the calm of the deep sea instead of the choppiness of the ocean waves, she chose to make peace with her job. She found other ways to feel fulfilled and in flow – by creating art during the evenings and weekends, and by weaving her art into her life.

It’s not always about your work. But it is always about your heart.