What Meaningful Work Really Is and Why It Matters

In today's episode, we are exploring what meaningful work really is, why it matters, and what happens when we don't have it. My hope is that this episode challenges you to think differently about your work and your time and your talents and how you show up each day, not just as a job or a role, but as part of your calling, as stewardship of your time and energy and resources, and even as the very ministry that God calls us to. Because everything we do, the way we live our lives, it all matters, it all carries meaning and significance.

There's this myth or this lie that we believe that our purpose and calling and ministry are separate from work. Spiritual gifts and ministry and purpose and calling are for serving at church, and our nine to five is everything else, just work, just how we pay the bills. But what I found is that they're absolutely connected and they're all intertwined. Even in the very beginning of the Bible, in the creation story, God creates Adam and Eve and gives them work, gives them mission. God creates us to work. Being idle is not good. Being lazy is not good. We were created to contribute, we were created to work. But just as in most things, we stray away from God's original design for that.

Work can become an idol. It can become something that we dread, something that is not life-giving but instead drains us of energy, drains us of motivation, drains us of life. And in my own story, meaningful work was something I did not experience for a very long time. I experienced the opposite.

I grew up not knowing what I wanted to do, and I ended up working quite a few jobs along the way, mainly in the banking world. I never really enjoyed any of them. There were different reasons for different positions. Sometimes the manager was not a good leader, there was questionable behavior going on, and I did not look forward to going to work there. And then I've had other companies where the company itself was amazing, truly took care of their employees, good benefits, good pay, good hours, all the things you could want. And still I had that feeling of there's got to be more to life. There's something missing inside, something wrestling inside of me that wants to kind of break free.

I wasn't motivated. I was an average employee. I did what I needed to do, I was respectful, I got my job done, but I wasn't going above and beyond, I wasn't excited and looking for extra work. I clocked out as fast as I possibly could because I was in such a hurry to get home to my life and my family. And then that made me wonder, why do I feel this way? I don't want to feel this way when I'm at work Monday through Friday for 40 hours a week. I'm just kind of dying inside. I have no vision or passion for what I'm doing.

At that time I had this false belief that it was because it was a job. That being an entrepreneur was better, more purposeful, more meaningful, a calling, versus being stuck in a job where I'm working for somebody else and helping build somebody else's dream. But it took a few years to figure out that it wasn't about whether I was a W-2 or a W-9. It had nothing to do with the classification of my work. Because later on I ended up going to work for an organization where I truly loved my job and I truly enjoyed working for somebody else and being on a team. I got to experience meaningful work as an employee, and I've gotten to experience meaningful work as an entrepreneur. So it's not about one being better than the other.

There is a great book written by Rick Warren called The Purpose-Driven Life. Very popular book. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. It's a 40-day devotional where every day there's a different lesson, very much about how we learn to live the life that God intended for us based on our unique shape. And he uses this acronym SHAPE so that you can better see how God designed you to live out your purpose and make a difference while you're here on earth.

So SHAPE stands for: S is spiritual gifts, the special abilities God gives you to serve others. H is for heart, the passions, interests, and desires that drive you. A is for abilities, the natural talents and skills that you have. P is for personality, your unique personality and the way you relate to the world and others, what you value and care about. And E is for experiences, the actual experiences you lived through, the lessons you've learned, the growth you've had through relationships, education, work experiences, and definitely your own pain and struggles. So we've all had these unique experiences that have shaped us. Even if we had similar passions, abilities, and personality, the experiences we've lived would create drastically different outcomes.

The idea of meaningful work is aligning our work with our gifting, aligning our work with the things that we are passionate about, with our interests and with our desires. And this was something that it took me a long time to figure out. It comes in stages. There is this idea of understanding yourself as an individual, understanding your own personality, understanding the things that interest you and that you're passionate about.

For the longest time, I didn't understand my own personality. I remember I was 28 years old the first time I ever took a personality test, and that test drastically changed the way that I saw myself. So I was a mom, I had two kids, married, running a business, and I was really stuck at that point, really not sure of what I was good at, who I was. I was serving at church in two different areas that I had not enjoyed serving in. I had spent five years serving in the children's nursery, and then three years serving on an administrative team where we collected information from services and entered it into the system.

The church hosted a leadership summit, and as part of that, they had all their team leaders take the DiSC test. So I took this test, and here I had this one understanding of who I was, which was this admin person, details, processes, back-end stuff, which had been the last 10 years of my life. And I take this test, and it says that I'm a people person, big-picture thinker, more strategic, more flexible, more creative, needs more freedom. And I was like, oh my gosh, this makes sense. This sounds like me, but I didn't know that this sounded like me. And then I realized why I had been serving in these areas and never really enjoying it. I honestly just thought I was a bad person, a selfish person who didn't care about serving. Instead, I realized: oh, I'm just trying to do things that don't align with my natural gifting and my natural strengths.

That planted this seed in me. If I've been wrong about this, what else have I been wrong about? Maybe I need to take a step back and really try to understand myself as a person better. That took a few years. It definitely didn't happen overnight. But I took a few more personality tests after that. Then I just started to observe. I started to write down and note, okay, when I work in these areas, when I do these tasks, this is how I feel. I really enjoy this and this comes easily. Or man, every time I think I have to sit down and do this, I procrastinate it and I put it off and I dread it, and it takes a really long time and I just have to force myself through it.

I started to take inventory of what I did throughout the day, what I did on certain projects, what I did with certain people, and whether that energized me or drained me. Little by little, I started to understand how when I was working and doing certain things, I felt alive, I felt productive, I felt energized, I felt like I was doing something, and the time would go by fast and I would enjoy it. It didn't feel like work. And then there were these other things I would do and I would dread it, and it would take a long time, and it would be painful, and I would try to avoid it.

Then I started to be more intentional about my time. How can I do more of these activities that bring me energy? How can I delegate or get rid of or automate these other things that aren't giving me energy? And because I ran the business with my husband at the same time, I was looking at him as well. If I'm good at these things, what are the things that you're good at? What do you enjoy doing? That was the first time we really started to clarify our roles within the business based on our unique strengths. God had put two different but complementary people together. I had skills that he didn't, and he had skills that I didn't, and they worked very well together.

When I started to see the fruit of that in my own life, me working in my strengths, Josh working in his strengths, and how that benefited the business, benefited projects, benefited clients, I was like, wow, there's something to this. This is making a difference. Our business is growing and doing well because we're operating in our strengths based off of who we really are. And that set this passion, this pursuit of: okay, if it works for us, how many other people are out there doing this? Are they aligning their work with their gifting?

So this definition of meaningful work is being able to work in a position that aligns with your gifting. If you're great with people, super talkative, you should be in a role that works with people, that builds relationships, where the business benefits from that. Maybe that's sales, customer service, account management. Or if you're someone who's very detail-oriented, super organized, loves process, you should be in a role that aligns with that gifting. And when you're doing work you're uniquely created to do, then you start to thrive. You feel this energy, this momentum. And because of that, you're able to contribute in an impactful way.

When you have someone who's truly great at sales because they have this relentless pursuit, this fearlessness, this willingness to be persistent and think creatively and follow up and engage with people, they're going to feel alive when they're doing that. It's going to feed their soul. In response to that, they're going to not only hit their numbers but probably far exceed them. Versus if you have someone in a sales role where it's kind of like pulling teeth, you're coaching them on how to ask better questions, how to follow up, how to look for opportunities, and it's always a lot of back and forth, a lot of resistance, that's not helping them feel like they're contributing in a meaningful way.

Work is part of the purpose that God has for us. It's the opportunity to steward well our time, our resources, and our giftings, to build better relationships and connections. It's a life intentionally well lived. Because you're spending the majority of your week doing work, and whether it's 40 hours or 50 hours or 70 hours, you want to feel purpose and success and motivation in that time. Because the opposite of that really ends up describing a lot of workplaces today.

If you're in a role that you don't find meaning in, or if you're in a workplace that you don't find meaning in, it looks like apathy and a lack of motivation. It's this dread, the Sunday night dread. You're like, oh gosh, it's Monday, I have to go to work. That right there is a sign. It's a symptom. It says something is off in your work week. Either there's misalignment with people and values or there's misalignment in your role. You're not going to be motivated to get up and go to work and be excited. You're going to have this apathy, this what do I have to do to get by, to do the bare minimum. You're not going to be fully engaged.

When you're also not in a role that you find meaningful, there's going to be confusion, a lack of clarity, and you're going to feel lost and stuck. Getting up and thinking about work is just discouraging. It's just heavy, it's just a burden because there are 50 different directions you could go in and you don't know which direction you need to go in. You feel completely paralyzed. And when that continues on day after day, month after month, for years, that sucks away this feeling that you have a calling, that you have purpose, that you have something to contribute. And that really starts to eat away at your soul.

I have been in those seasons where I had no energy, no drive, no direction, and I literally didn't know what to do with myself. And I feel for that mindset, that position, because it can be so debilitating. And then because of that, the level of frustration with work, with people, with just our situation in life, because we feel so powerless, that starts to take over. Mistakes rise, more people are upset with you, your performance tanks because you're stuck.

That's what ends up defining the status quo of the workplace today. And that is where I'm like, I don't want people to live their life like that. Being in that situation is terrible and it affects every aspect of our life. So it comes back to this responsibility, this surrender, of looking at ourselves as individuals and saying, let's pause, let's challenge everything we thought we knew. Maybe you've been in a role that is completely not aligned with who you are. That can often be the case, because we have a tendency to stay with what we know. And if what we know isn't the path aligned with our giftings, then there's always this thing that's missing, and our soul knows it.

Just like me being in the wrong role for 10 years of my life. Ten years being in the wrong role because I didn't know anything different. I stuck to what I knew, I stuck to what I was competent at. It was scary and hard and risky to do something different. But once I experienced this meaningful work, once I experienced this fire, this passion, this traction from working in a role that aligned with what I'm good at and what I'm passionate about, I was like, oh my gosh, this is what's been missing. This is what I've been needing all this time.

Meaningful work evolves as we grow and develop because there are different phases and different seasons. There was a time in my life where I was just discovering some of these things, and the more I honed in on them, my path pivoted a little bit, and I continued to hone more and more in. So just because we start in one spot doesn't mean that we stay there. Give yourself grace in knowing that it's going to change and there will be different seasons of having to reassess where you're at and what is meaningful to you in the season that you're in.

As leaders, as employers, I think we also have a responsibility to help our employees better understand themselves and to help make sure that we're putting them into seats and roles that align with their gifting. We're doing our due diligence, taking time to get to know people as individuals, really looking at them and observing: what are you good at? Do I see this energy and this spark come alive in you when you do this work? Do you care about these things? It's a process of intentional questions and paying attention to the individual.

A good place to start is just with a personality test. And that can have a kind of a foo foo connotation, like, don't put me in a box, what's a personality test going to tell me? You'd be surprised. For me, learning mine was a huge aha moment. I also went through the exercise of doing personality tests on every single employee at the organization I was part of, so for 80 different people we did the DiSC test. We sat down and went through the results with each of them. There was so much resistance at first: what do we have to take this for? Every single one I'd ask, have you ever taken a personality test before? Most of them said no. So I said, okay, let's just go through the personality profile, and you just tell me what resonates. Tell me what you feel is true and what's not true. This isn't to put you in a box. This is just to help me better understand you.

It was amazing, the light bulbs that came on, the conversations that were had. It was a truly rewarding experience. And not just for me, but I hope and believe those conversations planted seeds in their own lives just the same way taking my first personality test planted seeds in mine. I don't think it can ever be a bad thing to try and understand ourselves better.

A couple personality tests I would recommend: DiSC is a great one, I use that in the workplace a lot. Enneagram, I love the Enneagram. I think the DiSC and Enneagram combination is very powerful. StrengthsFinder and Myers-Briggs would round out my top four. I think they're incredibly useful and a great place to start. You can take them online. Or if you don't even want to take the test, just read through the personality profiles. In DiSC there are only four, so just read through them and ask which one sounds like you. Then ask your spouse. They will tell you which one you are, and you can tell them which one they are. It's a fun exercise to do with your spouse and your kids too.

That is where I would start: with a personality test, with yourself. Then look at your work and take inventory. Am I in the right role? Or even look at your people and ask, are they in the right role? Do I think they're doing work that is meaningful to them? If the answer is no, there's definitely a follow-up conversation to have. As always, you can learn more at clearauthenticbrands.com. That's all for today. I will see you next time.