I’m in a writing group and the instructor gave us this assignment:

Quickly jot down the 10 values you live by. Choose one and think about the time in your life when this value became important. Write a paragraph or more about that.

My list of 10 values came quickly to the page. Honesty and integrity showed up first, followed by loyalty, freedom, and hard work. It took a few more minutes to finish the list with curiosity, openness, humility, service and gratitude.

What values do you live by? Where did they come from? Have they changed over time? With 2019 drawing to a close and 2020, with all of the political strife, fast approaching, I recommend this exercise. As you write about an important value, you might find yourself thinking about it in a new or refined way. You might gain insight into how to live your values more fully. That’s what happened to me as I wrote my short essay below.

Working Smart vs. Working Hard

I came out of my mother’s womb understanding the value of hard work.  A few years ago I did a re-birthing exercise while taking a workshop on energy healing.  I found myself crouched on the floor, imagining my way through the birth canal, when I got stuck.  I pushed and strained, but couldn’t move forward and certainly couldn’t go backward.  The workshop instructor had to play the role of doctor, grabbing my head with imaginary forceps and moving my shoulders to propel me the rest of the way.  I felt it was a true memory because my mom had told me the story of my dad fainting in the delivery room while the doctor used forceps to pull me out.  It wasn’t easy making my way into this world.  I think I understood that from the very beginning. 

I was also very young when “doing my best” became paired with hard work as part of my core value system.  Maybe it was because when I worked hard and did my best, the adults in my life were happy with me.  I remember being three or four years old when my dad did flash cards with me.  I can still see him beaming at me when I could spell big words like “refrigerator”.

When I started elementary school, teachers were also happy with me because they could see that I paid attention, worked hard, and most of the time, did my best.  I studied and got A’s in my classes.  I only received one B in all of my student years – a B+ in computer science when I was a sophomore in high school.  I achieved straight A’s through my undergraduate degree in biology and my M.S. degrees in Genetics and Systems Engineering.  My formula for success worked pretty well… 

…until I entered the working world as a systems engineer and encountered a new set of rules.  I no longer had instructors who gave out clear assignments and awarded grades every quarter or semester. Instead, I often had fuzzy assignments, or no assignments at all, along with supervisors, mentors and co-workers, who all had differing agendas and expectations for how things should be done.  It was a confusing time.  Eventually, I found that by working hard, I could earn my place as a valued team member.  In looking back, however, I realize this was the time, in my late 20s, that I began to first question the value of “working hard.”  I started to wonder why I needed to focus so much effort - and for whom.

Fast forward twenty years or so… I’m no longer working as an engineer.  Instead, I am doing energy healing, a profession that most people think is a bit crazy.  I received a call from the company Living Social.  They are an online marketplace and work like Group On.  Small businesses offer a substantial discount to attract new customers through their marketing.  It was the start of summer, a typically slow time, so I did a promotion with them. I sold 101 Reiki Massage sessions that customers had to redeem within 3 months. 

I worked my tail off that summer.  I didn’t make much money because my services were discounted by 50% and then Living Social took another 50% off that.  But, it was one of the most valuable three months I’ve ever spent.  Up until that time, I’d found that my hard work ethic garnered mostly positive feedback from other people.  That was how I measured success. 

With that influx of new customers, I worked hard.  I did my best.  And, about a fourth of them really didn’t like their sessions.  Being a perfectionist, I kept replaying those sessions in my head.  I wondered what I could have done differently.  I thought about additional training I should take, and questioned whether I was really any good at this esoteric art of energy healing. 

But, a fourth of the customers loved their sessions with me.  We clicked.  The remaining half fell somewhere in between.  As the summer wore on, something dawned on me.  I knew that I was good at my craft.  I was good at showing up and working hard.  I’d done that all of my life.  But, I’d always counted on the praise of other people to buoy my sense of self, and I could no longer rely on that.  I had to look inside to gauge how well I was living up to my own values. 

It also became very clear to me that a successful outcome didn’t depend solely on my efforts.  I had understood that concept intellectually before that summer, but I didn’t know it in my bones.  In hindsight, I could smack myself on the head, ala Homer Simpson. Of course my positive outcomes weren’t all about me!  That was especially true when working therapeutically with someone. I could only facilitate healing as I worked in partnership with my clients.  Reflecting back on my work as an engineer, I could better appreciate that true success came through the collaborative efforts of a team of people. And, I wouldn’t have even made it into this world without the intense cooperation of my mother – and the timely assistance of her obstetrician. 

My straight-A, perfectionist self breathed a sigh of relief.  If the positive outcomes weren’t all on me, then neither were the negative ones.  That realization was incredibly liberating. It allowed me to see that sometimes, more effort on my part got in the way. After that summer, I got better at letting go of the outcome. I found myself freer to experiment, to trust, to grow in my work.  These days, I am learning to invite more collaboration and work smarter, not harder.