Expanding Your Personal Autonomy
Instead of "Employee Engagement" driven by HR, get excited about "Life Engagement" driven by you.
There are three things I know more than ever after leaving corporate and “traveling the world and the seven seas.”1 (Or at least spending a decent portion of last year in Europe and sailing on a couple seas on a boat journey back to the United States.)
Well, there are, like, 903 things I know more than ever, but for the sake of this post, I’ll share just three:
The goal of life is not to get to a point where you do nothing. It’s to find/create something you like and don’t want to retire from. I’m not advocating workaholism, but rather prolonged interest in creative and intellectual pursuits.
You need to create personal and financial autonomy in order to have options for exploration and leaving your job.
Right now is the perfect time to wake up and get serious about intentional money, life, and work. In the words of my favorite Instagram MLM guru, Chad, “Let’s goooo!”
Prison energy
One of the most energizing places I’ve ever been was prison. Yes, prison. I had volunteered to teach a budgeting class to pre-parole inmates at the Utah State Prison so they could stay as free as possible as they re-entered society. My own experiences with debt and unplanned spending had limited my options and I was on a mission to help others be more intentional with their own money and lives. Still am, in fact.
Everything about Day 1 was overwhelming, but one thing above the rest has stayed with me. And that is that there was the most palpable feeling of hope within those cinderblock walls.
There was an electric feeling of freedom, a feeling which was totally unexpected and in stark contrast to the vibe of the corporate office I’d been in just forty minutes earlier. On at least that day, it was cold, quiet, and low-energy. Sleepy. Granted, it wasn’t like this every day. Or maybe it was and I just didn’t have a great contrast until I visited prison.
Corporate energy
We corporate employees had all kinds of practical freedom ”on the outside,” so why didn’t our corporate space have the same feeling of life? I attribute the lively feeling in prison to the fact that each inmate was working toward something personal, positive and definite—his freedom and what he’d be able to do with that freedom.
And many in corporate aren’t. They’ve “arrived” at the cushy job and salary and they start to acquire the trappings of a successful life. Their needs are largely covered by their corporate salary and benefits—stocked kitchens, free lunches, gym memberships, health insurance + matched HSA contributions, 401K matching, counseling benefits, and on and on.
Companies offer all this to attract and retain talent. They do it to keep their workforce healthy so the workforce can build The Company Thing. Nothing wrong with them doing it or you participating in it, at least temporarily. But if you’re aimless and have outsourced your life purpose to whichever company currently employs you, we do have a real problem. Or if your busy life, including a consuming job, runs you so ragged that you don’t have two ounces of energy to consider what you’re even doing with life—your life—we definitely have a problem.
Enter life engagement
There are a myriad of human resource solutions out there. Employee engagement is a major focus and offering in the corporate world. It’s well and good for a company to want to engage their employees and help them thrive, but on this subject I propose a different angle: How about we employees get serious about our own life engagement, stop putting so much pressure on a job to provide all our safety and meaning, and wake up to being the boss of ourselves (even if we work for someone else)? Yes, let’s. There is no person better suited than you to direct your life and growth. No PhD, no team of experts, no coach. You’re uniquely qualified to find and create answers for your life.
It can be easy in jobs to either coast on the company mission or to deprioritize your own plans until they’re a vague memory or far distant aims. “One day,” you say. “One day I’m going to finish that novel I’m writing.” Or, “One day I’m going to start that business.” Or maybe you say, “One day I’m going to read more, get healthy, scale back on my busy schedule.”
But you’re running out of days.
The question is less about whether you leave your job or stay. It’s more about you doing whatever you can—right now—to increase your personal and financial autonomy. So you don’t just do what everyone else is doing. So you don’t spend your life just “getting by” or, alternatively, acquiring titles, wealth, or accolades. So you can invest time where it really matters. So you can leave your job. Not because you’re necessarily going to, but so it can at least be an option. So you can create options for this one precious life of yours.
If this has resonated with you so far, here are some ideas to try on.
Ideas for increasing your personal autonomy:
Set boundaries. Did you know you can be a great employee and still say “No” to requests? Some of the meetings which feel mandatory may not actually be. Push back on anxieties which drive you to check work communication around the clock. Consider saying something to the negative co-workers who drain you. You can be kind, but honest. Leave for lunch.
Use simple language over corporate fluffy jargon. I still twitch sometimes when I hear phrases like, “Can we put a pin in that?” or “Let’s circle back.” Corporate Natalie has built quite the comedy empire over things every employee can relate to, and which make free spirits cringe.
Don’t use your job as an excuse to keep you from personal growth or filling your mind and soul with substantial things. Numbing with endless Netflix binging, “retail-therapy” shopping, or even societally-sanctioned busyness will play a ginormous role in a prolonged feeling of powerlessness. Now’s a great time to get interested in what you are, or might be, interested in.
Stop complaining about things you don’t plan to change anytime soon. Be where you are. That said, if you don’t like where you are and have been getting around to changing it for a while now, you’re going to want to get serious about that pretty quick. Oliver Burkeman wrote the fabulous book, Four Thousand Weeks, in which he highlights that we only get 4,000 weeks in an average lifespan and this past week was one of your 4,000. Did you like how you spent it?
Get very serious and excited about increasing your financial autonomy. So much financial stress comes from trying to outspend a life you don’t like, and more money does not solve that root problem. Well-managed money though, now that can. By money management, I’m talking about the kind of simple practices and questions outlined in Dear Fellow Spender, a book designed to bring you into conversation with your spending and lifestyle choices.
Your turn:
What’s the one thing you can implement immediately to start increasing your autonomy in the workplace?
Related to this, you might enjoy:
Be Your Own Person: One of my first pieces on More to Your Life, about Mr. Humming the cobbler.
Welcome to the Wild: Reflections on two years out of corporate life. The Wild is a big and exciting and overwhelming place, and it’s where there’s a whole lot of living going on.
Make the Most of Payday: Getting ahead of paydays is a great place to start creating financial autonomy
If you’re an employee who knows there’s more to life than the grind, you’re going to want to become a free or paid subscriber to More to Your Life ;-) I know life on the inside, and life on the outside, and I’ve been in and out a couple times. Take-away: I “get” where you are, and where you want to go. And write to help you make more empowered decisions to stay, go, or return.
Did you recognize these lyrics from Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams”?