Embracing the "And"s of Life

by Rebecca Fraser-Thill

Embracing the "And"s of Life

Recently my 6-year-old son was struggling to fall asleep as I sat beside him, holding his hand. Finally he said, “mom, I’m nervous.”

It’s break week from school here in Maine, and he’d taken a leap and signed up to attend a 2-day animal camp at the local humane shelter. He’s an introverted, wonderfully sensitive homebody who normally says no to new opportunities, especially ones that his sister can’t do alongside him (she’s too old for this camp).

But he’d already done one day of camp, and he had had no pre-camp jitters.

He rode home from the first day quietly, seeming to be holding it together in some way. Once he got some food in his system, though, he spilled out story after story of time with cats, dogs, and bunnies; taught us how to make cat toys out of pipe cleaners; and proudly shared a keychain he had made.

Then the bedtime admission: “I’m nervous.”

“But you seem to have had a fun day,” I said. “You did a lot of new things and learned a lot.”

He sniffled, the tears starting to flow. “Yes. And it was hard to be away from you and not be with my kindergarten friends. I was sad.”

He cried a bit, and I simply rubbed his back. Then he said, “And I am really excited to go back tomorrow. And I am nervous and I’m scared to go back. And I wish there were more than two days of camp. And I wish camp was over already.”

My son embraces the “and”s of life better than I ever did in my first forty years. In psychology we call the embrace of the “and” dialectical thinking. I’ve been intentionally working on developing that in myself for the past five years, forcing an “AND” where I’d usually put a giant “BUT.” It’s become mostly second nature by now. Mostly. AND those first few years of practice (I revised a “but” there!) were very challenging. It’s a habit I had to unlearn, and it’s been well worth it.

Thanks to that practice, last night instead of continuing to try to reconcile my child’s feelings the way I had while parenting my first child (sorry hon!), I simply said, “Well, that all sounds normal to feel.”

I let my son cry some more before I asked, “Is there any way I can help you?”

He rubbed his wet eyes. “No.” He took a deep breath. “I better get some sleep so I have energy for camp tomorrow.”

And he fell asleep quickly and bounded off to camp in his animal shirt today.

Here’s to embracing the many dialectics of life. As difficult as that may be.

On Endings

By Rebecca Fraser-Thill

Endings feel unnatural even though, they're the most normal thing in the world.

My son's kindergarten teacher is moving on from teaching at the end of this academic year. She's "only" been teaching for six years, she's young, she's a brilliant educator, and she's in a well-resourced, highly supportive school. Most people would ask "why" or may lament this decision. But when I saw her for a parent-teacher conference this week, the day after the news was shared with the school community, I told her what I wish someone had said to me - and reiterated - throughout my life:
The impact you've had doesn't disappear when you're finished with that work.

The impact you've had doesn't disappear when you're finished with that work.

She looked like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders when I said it. "I think I needed to hear that."

And no wonder because people usually instead say things like, "You're leaving? Why? What happened?" Then they dig for the flaw in the workplace or in the profession...or in us.

And, let's face it, we do the same to ourselves.

Endings feel unnatural even though, in fact, they're the most normal thing in the world.

Our culture is obsessed with continuity. We seem to think that things are only good if they last and last and last. So when things end, we search for a justification, for a rationalization, for the "bad."

Whether that be in relationships or jobs or careers or where we live or fill-in-the-blank.

Perhaps the experience simply had its season, and now it's over.

Perhaps we wrung all of the greatness out of the situation, and it's simply time to move on.

Perhaps things did go a bit wonky at the end - or maybe severely, horribly wonky - but parts of the experience or much of the experience or even ALL of the experience but the final tiny part was meaningful and valuable and enriching.

The situation - the job or career or relationship - was complete. We made an impact and had a full experience for a time. And that time has ended.

As I told my son's teacher, we're a house of former educators - my husband a public school teacher for a decade, me a higher ed faculty member for nearly two decades - and before we quit, we each struggled to let go of what we thought of as a lifelong profession. She said she thought her gravestone would have "kindergarten teacher" on it. My husband titled his college capstone project "Born To Teach." We all wish we knew our lifelong path.

But life isn't like that. We think one thing, and then it changes.

Seasons end. Which doesn't mean the season was bad.

The impact you've had doesn't disappear when you're finished with that work. You're simply finished doing that work.

When Work Takes Over Life, It's Toxic. There's No Way Around That.

By Rebecca Fraser-Thill

The workaholic is a normal result of toxic work cultures

So many of my coaching clients over the years have been in the sorts of toxic cultures Adam Grant describes below, most often in the tri-state area (greater NYC) area where I grew up and this approach to living is highly normalized. I broke free and moved to Maine 18 years ago, but it has taken many years (decades?) to “detox” from the idea that hustle = worth, that productivity = value, that exhaustion = status.

Unfortunately far too many clients don’t break free because they are *TOO BUSY* to continue the coaching process they began in a moment of desperate clarity (when do intake forms typically come in from clients in toxic work cultures? Between midnight and 3am their time…).

There is a better way to live and work. Worth is within us. Health - of all types - is a necessity. Full living is the only way to live. Not later. Not in retirement. Now.

Curiosity Is The Fuel We Need in 2022

By Rebecca Fraser-Thill

Curiosity Is The Fuel We Need in pandemic days

Pandemic news feels crushing to me at any time of year, but particularly so just before the new year. How can we have hope about what's to come when we don't know exactly what that will be? My strategy is to stay connected to curiosity, even if in small ways. If I'm still a bit curious - about something, in some way - then even if my kids end up back in remote learning and constraints crush in around me, I'm still living "well."

In my latest article, published on LinkedIn, I consider why curiosity matters so much in defeating despair and how design thinking plays into this process.

Coaching Isn't Cheerleading

By Rebecca Fraser-Thill

I couldn’t agree more with Adam Grant.

To build on this, coaching entails helping people articulate the gap(s) between where they are and where they want to be, and then supporting them in strategizing about and *doing* the hard work to move through that gap. Too often, we seek out coaching when we’re actually hoping for cheerleading - and then feel frustrated by the inevitable change work being asked of us.

When both people in a coaching relationship truly understand what coaching entails, the dyadic process is downright transformational. I don’t believe there’s a stronger power for change than high-quality coaching. - that’s why I feel so fortunate and glad that I’ve made it my full-time job!

Are you planting your carrot seeds early enough?

By Rebecca Fraser-Thill

Are you planting your carrot seeds early enough?

When it comes to professional relationships, are you like Curious George planting carrots?

My son was recently watching "The Perfect Carrot" episode of Curious George, in which George puts carrot seeds in the ground, goes to bed, and excitedly wakes up the next day to find his perfect carrots. There's nothing there, of course, but tilled earth. George is highly disappointed. The Man in the Yellow Hat shows him the instructions on the seed packet, which say it will take 66 days of tending to get the carrots to grow. 66 days?!

Many people who reach out to me for coaching begin like Curious George. They want to change jobs or careers, and soon. They know - or believe me when I say - that networking is the most effective way to get to a high-quality, excellent-fit role. So they send out a bunch of emails, hold a few informational interviews…and then act like I lied. Nothing is happening. Where are the carrots?!

“Effective” and “fast” are two different things.

Networking should be about building relationships.

Networking should be about building relationships. Not one-off interactions, but genuine, lasting, professional relationships. We seem to accept that, like gardening, friendships take time and energy to grow. But somehow we think that professional relationships will yield an instant return. Why is that? No wonder networking can feel "slimy" and transactional - or worse!

Instead we can seize on the lesson from Curious George. We can put the carrot seeds in the ground LONG before we're planning to use them in a salad. When we're perfectly content at work is the *exact* time to be building and deepening professional relationships. Once those relationships are an urgent need - because you can't stand your job, get laid off, or suddenly acquire a toxic boss - it's way (way) too late.

Carrot seeds take time to grow, Curious George. Plant 'em early.

Could you get career coaching for free? Absolutely!

Is it possible to get “Career Coaching” for free?

At first it didn't seem fair. Most of my career coaching clients were paying out of pocket while, increasingly, others weren't paying a dime.

*I* was getting paid the same amount, but as the pandemic wore on, I noticed payments shifting toward a new source: clients' employers.

What was going on? How were some savvy clients making this happen? Why were they in the know about this possibility while other people (including me!) were not? Why was I noticing nonprofits - including tiny ones - paying for coaching most often? And did my other clients even know employer-based funding of coaching might be an option, regardless of the size of their organization?

Coaching has been found to aid career engagement, productivity, and overall well-being, among other outcomes, but it can be so expensive that it's out of reach for many. Coaches certainly deserve to be paid for their time and expertise, but I'd love it if clients weren't the ones footing the bill!

How to shift billing of coaching toward employers is the topic of my new series for Forbes and a stimulating podcast interview with my friend and colleague, Lisa Miller of The Career Clarity Show.

Have you thought to use professional development funds for coaching?

A Quotation To Keep Top Of Mind

Purpose During A Pandemic

Strategies that we can follow during uncertain days like in case of a pandemic

Are you reeling as we feel our way through this pandemic? I feel you, if so.

There’s no better time to get in touch with a sense of purpose than RIGHT NOW. It’s been the touchstone that has grounded me while I’ve adapted to having two kids under ten home 24/7, being away from my family of origin who live in the original U.S. epicenter of NY/NJ, and figuring out how the heck to teach a small liberal arts college curriculum remotely. It’s been a lot, and some days are better than others - for all of us, I’m sure!

But purpose has kept me going.

So I created the following four-part series for Forbes Careers about “Purpose During A Pandemic:”

• Part 1: Want to stay healthy? Purpose is an ideal starting point

• Part 2: Purpose and productivity aren’t the same: Embracing a new metric during a pandemic

• Part 3: Five steps to turn work disruptions into opportunities

• Part 4: How to find direction among uncertainty and change

Which resonates most with you? What strategies will keep you going during the uncertain months ahead?

We are indeed in this swishing washing machine of life together. Let’s aim to move through it one grounded moment at a time.

Want To Make Career Change Happen? Use The 4N Approach

Want To Make a Career Change Happen? Use The 4N Approach

The bulk of my career coaching clients are seriously contemplating or undergoing career change. They want to enter a new job function and/or industry, but the process to getting there feels like a big mystery.

I get that.

Soon after I started working with college students in 2003, I found that career change was a reality for most of them within a few years of graduating, but helping these alumni navigate that change felt fraught and foreign. I’d help them get their resumes in tip-top shape, and use their strong liberal arts skills to write beautiful cover letters and then…crickets. They’d get absolutely no response to many, many, (many!) applications.

It was frustrating for both of us, and is a big reason I started learning coaching methods and, years later, underwent certification in the Pivot method to career change with author Jenny Blake.

Jenny’s approach is phenomenal, and I use her four stages (plant, scan, pilot, launch) in every single coaching session I hold.

While working with clients using the Pivot method, I found that clients and I kept revisiting the same four overarching short-term goals within Jenny’s structure - and the more I encouraged focus on these four short-term goals in particular, the more quickly and effectively they made it to their big career change goal.

These four short-term goals are the focus of my latest piece for Forbes Careers, The Four Ns Of Career Change: How To Make Them Work For You., where I lay out all my secrets to an effective and efficient career change strategy.

Have you had success getting these “4 Ns” to work for you? I’d love to hear your stories. Hit me up at rfrasert@gmail.com any time.

Wishing You A MEANINGFUL New Year!

Chasing the meaning affords us a deeper and more sustainable sense of life satisfaction than happiness ever could.

Happiness is all well and good. Problem is, happiness is elusive. In fact, according to research the more we chase happiness, the less likely we are to attain it. As Viktor Frankl indicates in his must-read Man’s Search for Meaning, happiness cannot be pursued but rather must ensue.

Notably, though, we can pursue meaning, and it affords us a deeper and more sustainable sense of life satisfaction than happiness ever could.

Writer Emily Esfahani Smith lays out the how of seeking meaning in her excellent book The Power of Meaning, which I’ve made required reading in a number of my psychology classes at Bates College (and students email to thank me for this requirement, months and years after class is over!). Smith combed through positive psychology research and identified four “pillars of meaning”:

• Belonging: feeling connected to people who accept you for who you really are

• Purpose: engaging in activities that are meaningful to you and that have impact beyond yourself

• Transcendence: experiencing moments of connection to something larger than any of us

• Storytelling: creating a narrative for your life that makes sense and helps you recognize your moments of redemption and growth

If you don’t have time to read Smith’s book right now, she offers a great primer in her TED talk.

We can go after the pillars of meaning and make them a reality for ourselves - in our work, in our relationships, in our community. Given this, I don’t want you to have a Happy New Year. Instead, I wish you a meaningful 2020 - and beyond!

Thinking Of Quitting Your Job? How To Do It Regret-Free

Have you ever regretted leaving a job?

Work is a source of financial stability, social connection, purpose, and stimulation. No wonder most of us balk when it comes to quitting - even when we’re in a pretty awful situation.

It turns out that our hesitation is reasonable. 1 in 4 people do regret leaving their jobs, according to a survey by Accountemps.

But we’re also likely to regret NOT quitting: research shows that we tend to have longer-lasting sadness about inaction than actions we take.

Talk about a rock and a hard place!

That’s why I wrote a new article for Forbes that offers up six steps to quitting without regrets. It features a ton of tips from career coach Lisa Lewis, who has not only coached others through the process of leaving jobs and situations, but also personally made a major change that she reversed - without regret.

Have you ever regretted leaving a job? If so, how did you manage the feelings?

5 Ways To Optimize Your Internship Experience

Internships are a key element of pursuing meaningful work - but they’re only as powerful as we make them. My first piece for Forbes Careers reveals five research-based ways to take your internship to the next level, leading to meaning, purpose and success in your future work:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccafraserthill/2019/06/27/5-ways-to-optimize-your-internship-experience/#345e6c147305

The Best Advice on When to Quit Our Jobs

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

March in Maine is horrible.

It's muddy, it's cold, it's still snowing at the most inconvenient moments. And, worse yet, Mother Nature teases us with a balmy, sunny day sprinkled in here and there.

All of us who live here can predict that March will be miserable, every year - yet's it's still hard to endure.

"March is when I am overtaken by the urge to throw out all my possessions, put the house on the market, shave my head, and start over," local columnist, Heather D. Martin, recently wrote in The Northern Forecaster.

Most of you don't live in Maine. But I bet you can relate to Martin's feelings, especially when it comes to work if my inbox is any indicator!

One of the most common questions I get from career coaching clients is WHEN to say, "take this job and shove it!" (albeit more nicely, please, for the sake of coaching being successful!)

The timing does make a big difference between a satisfying job change and ending up back in the same situation, just with a new business card - or worse.

When Should We Quit?

Mainers learn that you do not move out of state - or make any big changes, whether filing for divorce or cutting our hair - during March. As much as we might want to! "Back when I was a social worker," Martin writes, "the rule laid down by my boss was 'no one quits in March.' If you still wanted to leave come April, fine. Otherwise, 'it's just March talking,' she'd say. Wise woman."

Wise indeed. She was offering the best advice on when to quit. Not when you're in the valley - and want to quit the most - but, ideally, when you're at the relative peak.

Based on her and her colleagues' research, Angela Duckworth, Professor of Psychology at UPenn, concurred on the WorkLife podcast ("The Perils of Following Your Career Passion" episode):

"I always recommend quitting things on good days. You know, if you come in and it's a nice Thursday morning and everything's gone reasonably well and you still want to quit, well there's maybe something going on...You should not quit things when you're in [an] acute period of pain and disappointment and self-doubt." - Angela Duckworth

I couldn't agree more. The worst email I ever receive from a coaching client is the, "I couldn't take it any more and I quit! Can we talk ASAP?" email. My heart aches when I get that. Aches.

Why Quitting On a Bad Day Is a Bad Idea

There are so many reasons why we should avoid quitting on a bad day - even if we really want to:

• It's easier to get a new job when we're still in a job. This might feel like a frustrating fact but, in my experience - personally, while hiring, and while working with coaching clients - it is indeed a fact.

• We typically haven't gotten a chance to fully enact job crafting, which can at the least make our current job bearable while exploring and searching. It may even make the organization a good fit; many of my recent clients have strategically switched job functions within their existing organizations, retaining their sense of community, financial vesting, and seniority while becoming more fulfilled at work.

• The client likely has not yet built a financial runway, which career coach Jenny Blake describes in her book Pivot: The Only Move That Matters is Your Next One as the financial means to jump from one role to another, perhaps taking a pay cut in the interest of trading money for satisfaction (which 9 out of 10 people would be willing to do, research shows).

• We'll possibly/probably have burned a bridge - or two, or three - from our impulsive choice. At the very least, we didn't get a chance to clear up whatever was underlying the "bad day" feeling (such as, negative feedback during a performance evaluation, being called out for a mistake we made, or feeling undervalued by our coworkers and superiors over a specific event or interaction). At the worst, we gave an emotional speech a la Jerry Maguire and will be hard pressed to get a good reference.

• "You don't want to quit the moment you don't like a job because passion can grow over time," says Organizational Psychologist Adam Grant on the same WorkLife podcast episode. Passion is not something we discover, both Grant and Duckworth attest based on research. It is something we develop, a statement with which I agree heartily. Duckworth points out that the first year in any job in particular is difficult and, often, unfulfilling. Quitting on a bad day undermines our ability to develop our skills, begin to feel competent and, thus, start to develop passion for our work since passion is derived from being good at what we do.

• Perhaps the biggest reason of all: because of the inevitable pangs of regret. My "impulsive quitting" clients spend valuable coaching session after coaching session circling back to kicking themselves: they question why they quit right then, and what would have been possible if they'd held off. And no wonder since regrets are inevitable when we act impulsively; in those moments, the emotional center of our brains, the amygdala, take the reins, cutting off the rational, planning part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex. But once the emotions cool - often as soon as we walk back into our office after quitting - the prefrontal cortex kicks back in and says, "What DID you do?" This in turns gets our amygdala all riled up again - except with the emotion directed at ourselves this time - undercutting our ability to stay focused and take the next steps we need to enact a job search.

Steps Before Quitting

That said, we often do need to quit. Some workplaces are downright toxic and need to be escaped. More often the organization, industry, and/or role are not a fit because we:

• picked a career without prototyping options first, often right out of college

• AND/OR because we've developed and our work-relevant values are different than they once were

• AND/OR we've plateaued and are ready for our next challenge

In those cases, we definitely quit...on a good day.

We quit when we have set up a financial runway; job crafted the heck out of our current role, reflected on our strengths, personality, interests, and work-relevant values; prototyped new options through informational interviewing, job shadowing, volunteering and/or side hustling; have networked extensively; and, ideally, have the next role in hand.

We quit when we can walk in and it's just like any other totally normal day and we still want to leave...we still know we need to leave.

In the meantime, we create a plan, find support sources to whom we can vent on the bad days and who can repeatedly remind us our plan, and we take strategic and concrete actions every day to work toward quitting on a good day.

One of my clients was so certain and had done so much prep work that she gave notice the day after a big office party to celebrate a major milestone. Everyone was on a high - including her - and she calmly walked in her supervisor's office and said, "It's time for me to go."

Final Thoughts

So now that it's April, I'm free to leave Maine. I'm free to cut my hair. I'm free to make any dramatic change I see fit. Regret free.

But, you know what? This place is pretty darn gorgeous without snow on the ground. And everyone is smiling a bit more without winter coats weighing them down. And, all in all, I'm right where I want to be.

Despite March. Or maybe even - although I'd never admit this during the doldrums - because of March and all the gratitude it engenders.

What IS Meaningful Work? Do We Even Know?

“I want meaningful work,” a career coaching client says during our first call together.

“OK, great, we can definitely help you move toward that goal," I say. "And can I ask what you mean by ‘meaningful work’? What is it you're looking for?”

There's a long pause.

“Honestly, I don’t know how to put it into words,” the client says. “But I know it’s something different than I get from work now!”

Point taken. And commonly expressed!

Most of us want “meaningful work,” regardless of our age, but are we clear about what we’re seeking? Until about ten years ago, I couldn’t have articulated “meaningful work” myself - even though I longed for it. And talked about it a lot.

This lack of clarity is a real problem. How can we construct meaningful work for ourselves if we have no idea what we’re aiming toward?

Thankfully, we can all get more directed in our search for meaningful work by learning from psychologists' efforts.

What Meaningful Work is NOT

• Meaningful work is not the same as job satisfaction, commitment to work, or work engagement, according to a study by psychologist Blake Allan and colleagues that combined data from 44 previous research articles. Their powerful research not only found that these experiences are different from one another, but that meaningful work predicts job satisfaction, work engagement, and commitment. In other words, we need meaning at work if we want to be deeply involved and enthused by what we do.

• “Meaningful work” is also, interestingly, not synonymous with “meaning.” Meaning is how we make sense of an experience, which we might do in a positive, negative or neutral way, Allan and colleagues write. For instance, if you don’t get a job offer that you really want, you might make positive meaning out of the disappointment by thinking, “I bet this is making room for an even better opportunity to come along;” or make negative meaning out of it by thinking, “this is one more piece of evidence that I’m  perceived as too old by this industry;” or neutral meaning might instead arise: “that meant nothing; there will be other interviews.” On the contrary, meaningful work is, by definition, positive. Nobody has "negative meaningful work.” Thankfully!

So What IS Meaningful Work?

• Meaningful work is individually-determined. I asked my career coaching client to share her take on “meaningful work” for precisely this reason:  what feels meaningful to you might not to me, and vice versa. The judgment depends on the work-relevant values we each hold: our sense of what’s most important to us. Typically these values relate to our (big, hairy, unclear) existential goals: Why am I here, and what’s worth doing while I am here? We might not always be able to put that into words off the bat (!), but noticing when and where we gain energy can point us in the right direction. For instance, inspiring and educating the next generation of helpers is apparently a top work-related value of mine because that's what charges me up, consistently. That goal might feel completely pointless to you - which is totally fine...as long as you don't go out and become an educator!

• Meaningful work is based on an overall judgment of our work, not on our moment-by-moment experience. We all have aspects of our work that feel meaningless. For instance, I’m writing this article to put off making a multiple choice exam for my 200-level students at Bates College. Certainly if I dig deeply enough, I can find meaning in even the understimulating task of exam creation - exams encourage students to study material deeply and provide them and me feedback on their comprehension, thus guiding future instruction and learning approaches - yet, overall, it doesn’t feel meaningful as I write each individual test question. If we do meaningless tasks all day long (meaningless, again, compared to our personal work-relevant values), then our overall appraisal of our work is that we do not do “meaningful work.”  Somewhere between either extreme - all meaningless tasks or (the impossible ideal of) all meaningful tasks - is a tipping point that leads us to judge our work as, overall, “meaningful” or not. Based on my work with coaching clients and Bates alumni, this tipping point varies greatly from individual to individual - and can be changed.

• There are many ways to get to meaningful work. The great news that emerges from research is that we can get to “meaningful work” through many different pathways. That said, two processes in particular lead most of us to judge our work as meaningful: when we growing personal and/or contribute to other people while working. Indeed, ADP Research Institute’s survey of over 2000 participants in 13 countries found that almost 90% of younger workers look for precisely these two aspects in work. That said, since values are individualized, the processes to experience meaningful work likely are, too, and do seem to vary a bit by generation.

• We don't have to leave our existing job in order to “find meaningful work.” Based on all of these points, there are many ways we can make our current job feel more meaningful, either while searching for our "next" or instead of making the often financially and psychologically fraught big leap. Among many other small changes we can make, we can shift our focus from the meaningless tasks at work to the meaningful tasks; increase the proportion of time and energy we put into the meaningful tasks, if possible; and/or identify the values we are fulfilling through our work and elevate their importance in our life. It may feel easier to do all of this in the “blank slate” of a new organization, industry and/or role, and at times it truly is. I’m a big believer, though, in flexing our muscles of doing these "job crafting" exercises wherever we happen to currently be. The novelty of any new role will eventually wear off, and those muscles will come in handy!

Final Thoughts

Overall, meaningful work is possible for any and all of us; job crafting researchers have shown this to be true in careers of all statuses and financial reward, from hospital custodians to hairdressers to design engineers and more. If we stay clear on what meaningful work is - and is not - then we can not only seek it, but actually find what we’re looking for.

Do We Need Meaningful Work?

Of the many repeated questions I receive - from reporters; students, parents, alumni, and staff at Bates College; and from my career coaching clients - the most common is whether we need meaning in our work.

Certainly the majority of us want meaningful work.

90% of respondents to a survey by BetterUp reported desiring meaning at work. In fact, they wanted meaningful work so badly that they said would trade a portion of their salary to get it. "On average, our pool of American workers said they’d be willing to forego 23% of their entire future lifetime earnings in order to have a job that was always meaningful," Shawn Anchor and colleagues wrote in Harvard Business Review. Almost a quarter of their earnings! And that's in a representative sample of over 2,000 people from a range of industries, ages, and roles.

But just because we want something, doesn't necessarily mean we need it, of course. It's a point I make many times a day to my 8-year-old about the "slow rise" squishies for which she yearns, and a difference we all experience whenever we stare down the bakery counter at our favorite lunch haunt.

Are we all little more than grade school kids, moaning for an experience that's "nice to have" but equates to little more than decadent, short-lived pleasure?

Shana Lebowitz, a reporter at Business Insider, recently explored this question in depth, and I was honored to get to weigh in:

"'We've set the bar way too high for what constitutes meaningful work.' Fraser-Thill shared...Meaningful work is fundamentally about feeling like it's about more than just you. Providing for your family financially counts. Bringing a smile to your coworkers' faces every day counts, too. Fraser-Thill is all but certain that, if we expanded our definition of meaningful work, we'd have a much more satisfied workforce."

I am certain that we're all capable of experiencing meaningful work, regardless of our job function, industry, educational background, or level of privilege. Job crafting research indicates as much, finding that individuals in fields as far ranging from hospital custodian to design engineers can change their thoughts, tasks and/or relationships with co-workers and clients/customers in order to move from meaningless to meaningful work.

And still, the question remains: do we need meaningful work?

We need meaning in our lives. I know that for sure.

Psychologist Michael Steger gathers the overwhelming evidence for the need for meaning in a chapter in Wellbeing, Recovery, and Mental Health (2017), summing up it this way:

"People living a meaningful life are very likely to be happier, more positive and more psychologically mature, anticipate brighter futures, take care of their health better, feel better physically and enjoy all of these qualities for a longer period of time before death."

Indeed meaning in life, and the sense of purpose it typically involves, is linked not only to psychological health, but to physical health and longevity as well, at every point in the lifespan. Gallup's worldwide wellbeing research also indicates that this relationship is predictive, moving FROM meaning and purpose TO physical, social, community, and financial well-being, not vice versa. And the impact is notable:

"People with high Career Well-Being are more than twice as likely to be thriving in their lives overall."

Intriguingly, Gallup's research focused on meaning and purpose at work in particular. Rath and Harter noted, though, that "career" well-being is about how you spend your day, regardless of the income generated. "If you don't have the opportunity to regularly do something you enjoy -- even if it's more of a passion or interest than something you get paid to do -- the odds of your having high well-being in other areas diminish rapidly," they write.

So here we finally reach the crux of the answer: we need meaning in our lives in order to be healthy and to, quite simply, keep on living. The way we spend our days creates - or fails to create - that meaning we so very much need. Since most of us also require an income to stay afloat, it follows that spending our paid work hours constructing meaning is a need, not a mere desire.

As Annie Dillard so aptly put it, "How we spend our days of course is how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing."

Given that most of our waking hours are consumed by paid work (over 90,000 of them in a lifetime, to be exact), what we do with our career matters for our ability to experience meaning in our lives.

This doesn't mean we need to pick the "perfect job" or the "perfect organization." Spoiler alert: neither exists. It does mean we need to know from what sources meaning arises, and then actively shape our work lives to maximize those experiences. We all have that flexibility, even if it begins simply, like with a more enthusiastic and genuine "hi!" as we pass our co-worker into the place where we'll spend our day.

And thus, importantly, where we'll spend a good chunk of our life.