Finding Sacred Purpose: How to Love Your Work Without Loving Your Job

When was the last time YOU made something with love?

This past week a close friend challenged me with this question as we reflected on the first half of 2024 and it hit me right between the eyes.

Of course, I’ve been writing about this idea a lot over the past year and have been trying to leave a part of myself in the work, but the prompt still got my attention.

I started to reflect…

On a daily/weekly basis, am I truly making things with love? Can I definitively point to a work product or a creation and say, yeah that’s made with love?

It’s a wake-up call when your philosophy centers around the idea that the ultimate competitive advantage is found in the power of things made with love, and then you’re asked to reflect on your own practice.

That’s especially true if I’m caught up in a romanticized version of Made with Love where it means you’re passionately doing what you love all day every day in blissed-out joy.

The reality is, when I make the philosophy of Made with Love exclusively about passion and joy, it brings up a fair bit of anxiety for me.

Because the truth is, I don’t love it all and I don’t always feel the passion and joy.

Sometimes it feels like a grind.

Sometimes I forget who and why I am even doing this work.

It’s just, well, work.

And I know I’m not alone.

For a lot of folks, this isn’t a sometimes thing; for them, work is simply work. Period. It’s a means to an end. It’s a tool to help them build the life they want to live.

I get that. Work is only one part of our lives. For plenty of folks, their job is not their soul’s manifestation in the world.

And that’s OK. It doesn’t have to be.

The cool thing is, I think the philosophy of Made with Love, the spirit of this concept, is especially helpful for people who feel this way.

My message is that you don’t have to love what you do to do what you do with love.

Any job, any function, any task can be executed with love.

I think about that a lot for myself. I’ll say, “I might not love this work, but I can do this work, whatever that work is, WITH love.”

And one of the best way to do that is to recognize that our work doesn’t have inherent meaning and purpose.

It doesn’t matter if we’re sweeping floors, designing a logo, or building houses.

Our work has meaning because we decide to give it meaning.

Meaning and purpose aren’t found in the work; they must be brought to the work.

I like the idea that our work calls for a sacrifice.

The term “sacrifice” derives from the Latin *sacer*, meaning “sacred,” and *facere*, meaning “to make or to do.” “Sacrifice” means “to make sacred.”

To make sacred. Ugh I love that.

Questions for us to consider this week…

Can we make one aspect of our work sacred?

If we made it sacred, how would it change how we approach it?

Example: This Post. Instead of just hitting publish on some dribble I had scheduled, I wrote this one for you and me. 🫶🏻

***Tell me what you’ll make sacred!