Fulfillment in Work

Hey you? Do you live to work or work to live? Good question, isn't it? If you live to work, your life revolves around your career - you derive your sense of self-worth and fulfillment from what you do.

If you work to live, then your work is subordinate to your personal life - it is a way to subsidize or fund that life that you are living. You derive most of your fulfillment from your life outside of work.

Frankly, I would surmise that most of us are fulfilled by both our work and our personal lives in different ways. Yet pondering this question helps us to analyze whether we are living a life that is balanced between our work and our personal lives.

Different people have very differing views on work. Henry Ford said:

There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.

Martin Luther King said:

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence

George Halas said:

Nothing is work unless you'd rather be doing something else.

What do you think about your work? Fulfilling or drudgery?