It’s that feeling.

Very familiar now.

Too much to do.

Too little time.

You say yes,

When you ought to say no.

But if you say no

Who will do the thing?

In your secretmost heart, though

You ask,

“If I don’t say yes, then

Who will get the credit,

The thanks,

The approval?”

That question- the one right there?

That’s the very center of your persistent stress.

Constantly seeking external validation

To tell you

That you are good

Helpful

Smart

A good girl

A good boy.

Somebody.

Or some other something kinda like that.

When the antidote to stress

Is knowing

Internally

That you are good.

That you are kind.

That you are smart.

That you can say no.

And saying no does not make you bad.

You must finally know, inside,

That you matter.

Because if you don’t matter to yourself

All the stress reduction classes in the world

Won’t help a bit.

A few months ago, I made a commitment to myself to start doing the Washington Post crossword every morning. I thought it would be good for my brain, and to up the ante, I made a few rules.

You know me: Michele Woodward, Rules Girl [when you know the rules, you also know how to bend them. I am just saying.]. Here are my crossword puzzle rules:

Rule 1:  Use only pen.

Rule 2:  Take only 15 minutes.

Rule 3:  If I’m not done in 15 minutes, drop it.

Five times out of six, I complete the puzzle under the rules. Which is surprisingly fulfilling. Ups my general Happy Quotient, if you want to know the truth.

And, there are one or two things I have learned from this exercise:

A. My intuition about a word is almost always right (except the other day, when the clue was “John Paul II, e.g.”  I wrote “POPE” when the answer turned out to be “POLE”. Ah, well.)

B. Sometimes an Across word is best solved by looking at the Down words that make it up

C. Challenges can be fun

That’s right, fun.  Look at me – I used the f-word.

Maybe you were raised with that wonderful work ethic that says “anything worth doing has to be hard”, which leads quite handily toward “work is hard, fun is frivolous; ergo, no fun for you, bucko”.

So you equate fun with anything but work.

Fun is tubing down the river with a cooler of beer trailing behind you.

Fun is a yo-yo tournament.

Fun is running a marathon (except for that pesky mile 21 where everything gets a little wobbly and you wonder where the fun is. The fun comes at mile 26.375, baby).

Work is a grind. Work is hyper-competitive. Work is eat-what-you-kill, dog-eat-dog, scarcity thinking writ large.

Fun and work, therefore, can never be equal.

But maybe think about it this way: work is just a challenge.

And crossword puzzles are challenges, right?

And some challenges can be fun and rewarding, and even fulfilling.

Especially if you know the rules and work within them. Kinda.

So, if my math is right, work can be fun and fulfilling if you turn the grind into a a kind of game, and you create some rules for yourself – rules you stick to.

[You may have heard of this idea of rules before. We also call these "boundaries".]

Such as:  “I will not work on weekends.”

“I won’t waste a minute in malicious office gossip.”

“If something doesn’t go my way, I will drop it and move on rather than obsess, stew and fret.”

These are just some of mine. Just like using a pen to complete the crossword in less than 15 minutes.

You have a choice, too. You can make your own rules.

Really.

Start by asking yourself, “Is this thing I’m doing fun?” And if the answer is no, then figure out a way to make it fun. Make it a game.

Your game.

And I’m thinking you’re going to win because you made up the rules.

You winner, you.

photo: Michele Woodward via Instagram

I know your life’s purpose. In fact I know the purpose of every human on this planet, because I believe we all share the same one.

Your life’s purpose is to be a force for good in the world. That’s it. That’s all.

And you get meaning from the way you choose to create good.

So, a nurse is doing good by healing patients. She finds meaning by making sure they get the right medications at  right time, making sure they have what they need and are comfortable.

An investment broker who approaches her work with the idea that she’s going to help her clients plan for a successful retirement can find meaning in creating the right portfolio, the right risk mix. She might even find meaning in teaching people how to finally relate better to their money, so they can reach their goals.

A guy working in a bowling alley can feel an enormous sense of purpose in running a clean, well-functioning set of lanes that allow people to exercise, socialize and be part of a community. So even re-setting the pins can be deeply meaningful, if it allows all of that good stuff to continue.

See?

Purpose: To do good.

Meaning: How you choose to do good.

Now, there are three things that can interfere with meaning and purpose. First, is fear. If you have the idea in your head that the only way to stay safe is to be really, really, really rich, and believe that there is no money in “doing good”, you are going to serve the fear and take the highest paying job possible, regardless. You might work in a large investment house where you make multiple on-paper deals which generate on-paper profits that merely get shared among the partners. In this case, you are only working to allay the fear, rather than to do good – catch that? – and life can feel very shallow and unfulfilled.

But a solution exists. You shift to doing good while in a similar job – maybe handle investments for a state’s retirement program, maybe commit some earnings to support a charity, maybe mentor some kid who could use a break. But you have to move out of fear and into doing good to get that deep sense of purpose and meaning which are missing.

The second thing that hampers your move toward purpose is The Killer “Should”. As in, “I should be a doctor/lawyer/Indian chief because that’s what my parents are/want for me/expect.” The problem is that if you are only doing whatever you’re doing to please others, it’s likely that doesn’t feel good – right at your core. Enter nasty habits like passive aggressiveness, self-sabotage and feeling like a fraud.

Again, the only way to turn this situation around is to look at where you can best be a force for good in the world. Where do you need to be to do good? Then do it. Whatever it takes.

And the Great Wall of China standing between you and your purpose might be your ego. Your ego may be sweet talking you that the purpose of life is to be admired, loved, maybe even put on a pedestal. You know you are put on this earth to do something great. Really great. But doing good is really secondary to your true mission – being loved and admired. Which is why the sometime hard work of doing good feels so empty. You don’t necessarily feel the love when you’re reviewing spreadsheets all by yourself, do you?

The key is to simply shift. Put doing good first, and then you may find that your ego gets everything it needs from the result of all you create.

Time after time, I see people suffering from working in a place that doesn’t work for them. They feel burned out, and unsure. It’s like the air’s been knocked out by a sucker punch and they don’t know how to get back on their feet.

The quickest way, the most fulfilling way, the happiest way, is to start asking yourself: “Did I do good today?” And knowing that you’ll be asking that question, tackle things that will allow you to say, “Yes.  Yes, I did.”

And if you work in a place where it’s impossible to do any good at all, whatsoever, get yourself to a new place where you can. Don’t wait.

You can thank me later. When you happily find that you are living your purpose every day with a deep sense of meaning.

Noticed a little bit of conversation these days about politics? Not only in the U.S., where we seem to have a permanent presidential campaign in place, but also in Europe, in Asia, in South America…

Commentators in this country continue to refer to the nation suffering from a “crisis of confidence”. Maybe that’s true.

Maybe we are tired of the law partner who pockets a record bonus but tells the associates and support staff that there’s no money – again this year – for their raise.

Perhaps we’re too used to hearing about the minister with the $100,000 Mercedes parked in front of his mansion.

It could be that we’re fed up with hearing that people are going to “change Washington” and yet nothing ends up getting done.

We see real incongruence between what we expect and what we get, and that’s precisely how our confidence is undermined.

That’s a word I’m loving these days: Congruence.

It’s when things line up. It’s when what you see is what you get.

Congruence is truth.

Congruence is whole.

Congruence makes sense.

And a person who is congruent – they mean what they say, and predictably do what they say they will – is truly a person of integrity. Pundits may see the world suffering from a crisis of confidence, but I’d call it an Integrity Deficit.

Somehow or other, many leaders – some of them self-appointed – seem to have forgotten that people eagerly follow those with integrity. Whether you’re a politician, an office manager or a life coach, being a person who means what she says, and does what she says she’s going to do, is the person who’s really successful.

Now, we all know people whose integrity is, shall we say, “compromised”, and yet they seem to thrive and maybe even get ahead.

That’s an incongruence right there, huh?

But what goes around comes around, and I have never, ever met an incongruent person whose personal narrative ends well. Have you?

That karma thing is plenty powerful.

And it always works.

So, now is as good a time as any to assess your own personal integrity.

• Do you ever say yes when you mean no, and wince about it shortly after the words have left your mouth?
• Do you consistently miss deadlines and break commitments?
• Do you fib about having sent in the payment, when really you haven’t even written the check yet?
• Do you concoct a story about where you just were, rather than admitting what you were really doing?

OK, you’re human.  But do you feel good about this stuff? Or does it add to your stress?  Create overwhelm?

Then get congruent, baby.

Start in a small way.  Start by making only those commitments you know you can meet. And then acknowledge to yourself that you did what you said you’d do. Maybe even give yourself a little reward for that.

And, make an effort to really watch your words.  In The Four Agreements, author Don Miguel Ruiz suggests that one way to insure happiness is to:

“Be impeccable with your word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”

I hear you – truth and love in the workplace? Just for a minute, drop your skepticism and think about it a different way.

I know from experience that shifting toward integrity will profoundly change your work experience. It will profoundly change your marriage, your parenting, your friendships and everything else in your world.

Integrity changes anything it touches for the better.

That is the truth.

You know, I have a dream.  I dream that one day our global crisis of confidence will be replaced with the peace, certainty and progress that integrity engenders.

But that will only happen – our leaders will only become people of integrity – if we, first, become so ourselves.