Choosing Our Work

Some years ago I chose to be a yoga teacher/entrepreneur. I was already an entrepreneur, something I had learned from my dad, something I was 'swimming in' as I grew up. I love 'creating from nothing', and I am grateful that through Yoga Yoga I have had the opportunity to apply my skills to something that has brought me, and many others so much joy and satisfaction. I often am challenged (mostly internally) to explain the nature of my choices - a particular level of income, working with a particular group of people, and in a particular level of 'local', human-to-human sort of work.

This article, from the NYTimes, The Case for Working With Your Hands, by Matthew B. Crawford is a jewel to read with these questions in mind. Matt's writing is skilled and easy to follow, and he does an exceptional job making the case for choosing our work by considering the affect of that work on our overall life experience rather than simply the economic expectation of that choice.

In addition to the article in the times, you might also read this one by Michael Agger in Slate. He apparently has also had a preview copy of Matt's book to review.

Matt's book, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, comes out shortly, and these articles provide some insight into the book and his thinking. This discussion in our culture about the nature of work tends to get trivialized too easily, and Matt clearly does not fall into that trap. He apparenly provides new thinking, in a broad way about the issues we all face in finding both sustainable economic return and gratification from our work.

He quotes the Princeton economist Alan Blinder about how the labor market of the next decades won't necessarily be divided between the highly educated and the less-educated:

"The critical divide in the future may instead be between those types of work that are easily deliverable through a wire (or via wireless connections) with little or no diminution in quality and those that are not."

As yoga teachers, we know that the personal human connection is vital, yet we struggle to make the economics work. What is not obvious as we do this is the wholistic, personal choices we must make ...deep spiritual choices about the nature of work, the relationship we will choose to have with money, our sense of safety in our society as we age (will we be able to care for ourselves, have medical care, etc?), what value can we place on personal gratification in our work, in the context of our beliefs and the information available to us?

This next quote eloquently expresses a critical point about this dynamic in a 'meta' way....I am grateful for his skill in illuminating this so clearly.

"We in the West have arranged our institutions to prevent the concentration of political power. … But we have failed utterly to prevent the concentration of economic power, or take account of how such concentration damages the conditions under which full human flourishing becomes possible (it is never guaranteed)."

I have chosen to teach yoga and be a yoga entrepreneur to do work I enjoy that provides a service to our world. I have chosen to grapple day after day with the issues that are critical to this choice....issues like enterprise scale, fairness in compensation, organization structure, sustainability. I am grateful to Matthew Crawford for apparently engaging with his life and his work in a way that clearly will help illuminate these issues for me and my life. I look forward to reading his book shortly.

Rich

Transparency, Trust & Satisfaction as we Work Together

Each day, as the amazing group of folks working to manage, build, and sustain Yoga Yoga work through issue after issue, I keep coming back to the flow of money, the flow of energy, and how connected they all are. We struggle with doing what is right, with trying to figure out - in action in the world - what works for our organization (that means the staff, teachers, students, vendors, our community....all of us!)

I am constantly reminded how complex this all can be...how each of us relates to money, to work, to survival....and I work hard to stay grounded in my compassion as I engage all of this.....

One of the most useful things I can do is read John Bloom's writing. This month's newsletter from RSF is right here.

This month, John writes about Transparency & Trust.....he so eloquently scratches the surface of what has recently been revealed to our organization as at the heart of our relationships. Consider this...

In a way, there are three forms of trust that accompany financial transactions: trust in matter, or the observable; trust in others, their truth or integrity; and trust in spirit, or common intention. While transparency may on some levels feel like a right, as it is primarily treated in our current political debate on economics, it is also a vehicle for reaching trust in the three realms of matter, relationships, and common destiny. Thus the practice of transparency in finance, with full respect for the rights of privacy and safety, is an essential tool for transforming our economic future.

Trust is so vital to our safe, satisfying business transactions. Transparency is vital, and it requires work ...it is a practice!