Happy Labor Day! Everything in society is the result of hard labor. I’m Hannah Telluselle and this is The Source Podcast, your source of inspiration and good things. Today, we’re celebrating our role as workers and what that entails. 

Look around you. Everything from your furniture to your house, from your phone to your car, is the result of someone’s inventions and capacity to rally people together to manufacture them all. You too are part of this wheel. Whenever someone feels like they’re lacking purpose or feel tired of not being recognized enough, I like reminding people that without their part as a cog, the wheel might not even be turning. That they are needed for someone else and if you look at it like that, it’s even a rewarding feeling to know that you served someone else today. It’s even so that without this feeling of having performed labor in service, it’s much harder to take a day off and rest. Balance instills itself naturally through work.

The same is true for our services in society, whether that is as teachers or hairdressers. Your skill is what someone else needs, just like you need others’. To be humble for this, makes it a whole lot easier to keep your nose to the grind.

It’s said we either work to live, or we live to work. Which is true for you? Sometimes, we can just work to ensure that we can pay our rent and more importantly to have some money to do something we love, whether that is to take dance classes or travel somewhere, or to just be online to practice and learn new things. And sometimes, we get to work with what we love and find it so exhilarating we almost don’t want to go home after. Then we’re living to work. 

When we work for ourselves, we often forget the constant chase we must do to get clients or assignments, which too is a job, but nonetheless by being your own boss, you get the absolute freedom of time, as long as you keep your meetings and deadlines. It can also be a way to try something out and to be tried out. Offering to do a freelance assignment gives both you and the company you work for, a chance to feel how you perform and if this is needed more, just like you get to try if this is something you want to do and can, and how much. 

My own academic education is in a concentration called Working life science in Sweden, which is an interdisciplinary mix of sociology, organizational theories, human resource management and business intelligence. It’s simply learning about how we work. And for me, that became my way to become a career coach, with the addition of classes in interview technique for this purpose, called Co-Active coaching.

How we organize people to fulfill our goals is also where some of the friction develops, whenever someone isn’t treated fairly, such as not getting paid the same as a co-worker for the same job or having to work under conditions that drains and puts too much stress on you. However, what some people feel is stressful, others might not. Myself, I can feel more stressed when I’m on a job with nothing to do, than when I have a full plate. This is why we take personality tests, to learn how we best can perform while keeping a good life balance and good health. Another way is to explore your own preferred conditions and see how they can be matched or even manifested. So: What do you need to do a good job?

At which hours a day, do you feel your best and for what?

Do you prefer working alone or together in teams?

Do you need more time to process instructions, or can you browse through them and learn as you go?

Would you like to work as a contractor or as an employee? Full time or part time?

Does it matter if the company is small or big? Have been around for many years or is a start-up?

Is there a specific industry that you like and are more interested in?

Which skills are your best assets and where can these be needed?

These are things you can explore with a career coach. When it comes to not getting these needs fulfilled, especially if they are grounded in a need for accommodations due to a disability, you might benefit from talking directly to the HR-department or with your union. A union is a worker’s group of people in the same profession that aims to care for both ethical guidelines and worth, as well as the environment you work in. Making a deal with a union, ensures more equal pay and takes off the burden to do many individual contracts and assessments. This has both its own advantages and disadvantages of course and differ among industries. If your profession doesn’t have its own union membership, you can seek out a professional association to be part of. 

When it comes to household labor, this is in service to both you and your family, which is why it sometimes can become a hot potato, where one is gone all day and gets paid, and the other never seems to off and never gets paid. However, often we want it to be a certain way at home, so some of the chores and how they are taken care of, are not imposed by the other. My grandfather, the fire-chief, made a deal with his second wife, whom I called my grandmother, to take care of all things at home and then he paid her a sum every month that was for her only to decide what to do with. It became like a little salary of her own. They married after my dad had already gone to study at a university, so of course it might be easier without kids at home to do. Nonetheless, it shows a way to ensure appreciation. And as always, if you feel underappreciated, begin by expressing your own appreciation for someone on your job, first.

The next episode of The Source Podcast airs on September 13^th, for celebrating Positive Thinking Day. Tune in on September the 13^th, to get a life coaching tip about transforming your thoughts. 

To listen to this blogpost as a podcast, find The Source Podcast on Spotify, Apple and YouTube.