Latest / Burning Brightly / 122. Why You Feel the Need to Work (Even When You Don't Have To)

Transcript

122. Why You Feel the Need to Work (Even When You Don't Have To) · Burning Brightly

• 0:00
  And you might be wonder-wondering, "If I don't need the money, why do I want this so badly?"
• 0:04
  Or, "Shouldn't I just be satisfied with what I have?"
• 0:07
  And I want you to look at this for a second, because it's important to realize that gratitude and ambition are not opposites.
• 0:14
  They can actually exist at the same time.
• 0:17
  Did you know you can be grateful for what you have and also want things at the same time?
• 0:21
  I think God wants us to be grateful for what we've been given and to acknowledge His hand in our lives, but also to desire more, because that's where growth comes from.
• 0:31
  If you're a Latter-day Saint or another woman of faith feeling called to build a business, welcome.
• 0:35
  I'm Bonnie Wiscombe, and each week we'll combine faith and practical business strategy to help you answer that calling with confidence.
• 0:42
  This is Burning Brightly.
• 0:47
  I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about slowing down, resting, letting go of some of my obsession with productivity.
• 0:54
  That's what last week's video and podcast were about.
• 0:56
  But this has actually raised another question for me, and that is this: Why do I still have a deep desire to work even if I don't, quote unquote, "have to"?
• 1:05
  Our modern life has removed a lot of things that used to require hard manual physical labor.
• 1:11
  We don't have to grow our own food anymore.
• 1:13
  We don't have to make our own clothes or spend hours preserving food, washing dishes or clothes by hand.
• 1:20
  Yet so many of us, especially women who have reached a relatively comfortable phase of life, have this really, really intrinsic need to do something meaningful.
• 1:30
  I don't think there's anything wrong with us.
• 1:32
  I think it's a part of being divinely human, and that's what we're gonna dive into today.
• 1:37
  So I want you to imagine something.
• 1:39
  Paint a picture in your head.
• 1:40
  It's two hundred years ago, early 1800s, and you are living on the Western front of civilization in the United States.
• 1:47
  You wake up every morning, and you don't have to wonder, "What's today hold for me?"
• 1:51
  There was always something that needed doing.
• 1:54
  You had to plant the field and harvest and prepare the food, then preserve it, then care for the animals that you then had to slaughter.
• 2:02
  You, you had to build a house and raise children and protect them from the wilderness and the wild animals that were out there.
• 2:09
  There was al-always something that needed fixing or building or caring for in order to just survive.
• 2:15
  Their work was so directly connected to their survival that I believe they naturally felt a sense of fulfillment.
• 2:21
  Contrasted with our modern life, it's quite a bit different.
• 2:24
  We have so many incredible conveniences, which I am so grateful for.
• 2:28
  But when survival requires less of us, it doesn't mean our same human need to contribute goes away.
• 2:34
  We still want to make something of value and to create and solve problems and develop skills and overcome challenges.
• 2:41
  We wanna feel useful, and we want to see the fruits of our efforts.
• 2:45
  That doesn't go away just because we have microwaves and robot vacuums.
• 2:49
  Comfort does not automatically create fulfillment, okay?
• 2:53
  So just 'cause my basic needs are being met doesn't mean I feel fulfilled.
• 2:57
  Very often, I think we humans need something that asks something big of us.
• 3:02
  We want to be required to work, whether we admit it or not.
• 3:06
  And I think this is why the wealthy and celebrities are often so unhappy, and they will find themselves chasing more wealth or better cars or bigger houses, or they end up abusing substances because they were chasing that next
• 3:18
  high, literally and metaphorically.
• 3:21
  The fact of the matter is human beings have always needed both rest and work.
• 3:26
  We need to be able to relax, and we also need to be challenged.
• 3:29
  We need to be able to receive and also give.
• 3:32
  We need to be able to consume things and also create them.
• 3:36
  We need to find time for stillness and for action, and we need to be as well as do.
• 3:42
  But when one of those sides dominates the other, we get out of balance, right?
• 3:47
  So because I've been thinking a lot lately that I don't need to fill every minute of my day with productivity, it also makes me realize, well, but sitting on the couch doing nothing is not the solution either.
• 3:57
  Hours and hours of mindless entertainment isn't the solution.
• 4:00
  Contributing meaningfully and also resting, I think, is where the balance is.
• 4:05
  And I think there's a big difference between resting and having nothing meaningful to do.
• 4:09
  I see this in my teenagers and young adults.
• 4:11
  Maybe after they've had a long period of a break, summer break or spring break or a vacation or something, I can see in them this restlessness to do something useful again.
• 4:20
  And they won't admit they wanna go back to school or back to work or whatever, but this is just a human need to create, to contribute, to work and be and have a meaningful existence.
• 4:30
  We don't actually want to just retire and do nothing.
• 4:33
  it ends up killing a little something inside of us Now this can be especially complicated for women because a lot of you watching probably have children at home, maybe you have a financially stable household already, maybe you have
• 4:44
  a spouse that supports you, maybe your home is comfortable and beautiful, and you have plenty of responsibilities, but you might not have a financial need to start a business.
• 4:53
  And you might be wonder-wondering, "If I don't need the money, why do I want this so badly?"
• 4:59
  Or, "Shouldn't I just be satisfied with what I have?"
• 5:02
  And I want you to look at this for a second, because it's important to realize that gratitude and ambition are not opposites.
• 5:09
  They can actually exist at the same time.
• 5:12
  Did you know that?
• 5:12
  Did you know you can be grateful and super thankful for what you have and also want things at the same time?
• 5:18
  A couple of years ago, I wanted to create a new vision board.
• 5:20
  I love doing this, I do it the old-fashioned way on a poster board.
• 5:23
  I cut out pictures of magazines, and I create this vision of my life that I want to build.
• 5:28
  But when I was doing this, it felt a little bit ungrateful for some reason.
• 5:32
  It felt like I was constantly asking God for more and not acknowledging what I had already been given.
• 5:36
  So that time I decided to split my vision board in half, and on the left side, I called it my blessings board, and on the right side, I called it my vision board.
• 5:44
  So on the left side, I cut out pictures and wrote down words of things that I had already been blessed with.
• 5:50
  That included a comfortable home, healthy kids.
• 5:53
  At the time, I was hiring a babysitter to come over once a week and help me out so I could run errands and do things like that, so she went on the board.
• 5:59
  Anything that I had prayed for and had received went on that side of the board.
• 6:03
  And then I felt so much better about, on the other side, writing down and describing my wants and the future life that I wanted to build.
• 6:10
  So those two go hand in hand.
• 6:12
  I think God wants us to be grateful for what we've been given and to acknowledge His hand in our lives, but also to desire more, because that's where growth comes from.
• 6:20
  We can be so grateful for our family and the fact that we don't have to work, if that's your situation, and still wanna create and contribute.
• 6:27
  You can love being a mom and still desire another form of work.
• 6:31
  That's been true for me for decades.
• 6:33
  You can be content with your life and still choose to grow.
• 6:37
  You can have everything you need and still want more, and that's okay.
• 6:41
  I don't think there's anything innately wrong with wanting.
• 6:43
  I actually think it's a divine desire, and that it's important to allow space for it.
• 6:48
  Side note, if you've been feeling for a while like God is maybe calling you to a business or you're not sure how this call fits in with an existing business, I have a free training for you guys.
• 6:56
  It's a quick 20-minute video.
• 6:57
  That will answer the question, is God calling me to a business?
• 7:00
  You can access that via the link below.
• 7:02
  All right, so here's where we get into business.
• 7:04
  I believe that business gives us modern women a way to exercise these talents and skills that we have.
• 7:11
  Entrepreneurship, business building can be so fulfilling because it requires you to do so many incredible things.
• 7:17
  First, you have to identify a problem, right?
• 7:19
  You have to decide, all right, what do people need?
• 7:21
  And you have to come up with a solution.
• 7:23
  Where are my talents and skills going to play into this solution?
• 7:27
  How can I fix it?
• 7:28
  You have to learn new skills to get you up to speed with what people need, right?
• 7:33
  You have to learn to communicate this problem and solution in a way that makes sense to people.
• 7:37
  You create products or content, and then you have to sell it.
• 7:41
  You learn to persevere and handle rejection because that comes all the time with building businesses.
• 7:46
  You learn to manage money, be a leader, maybe lead a team, or just lead the people that you are influencing through your business.
• 7:54
  You make really difficult decisions sometimes and solve problems that you never anticipated coming.
• 7:58
  And a business just gives you additional purpose.
• 8:00
  It gives you problems that are worth solving.
• 8:04
  And sometimes people think, "Oh, well, I don't really want a business."
• 8:07
  And the fact of the matter is you don't have to.
• 8:09
  But what if you could just open your mind to the idea that what you're craving is the opportunity to become someone who can build a business, who's capable of this, okay?
• 8:18
  For me personally, I never anticipated that I would become a business coach.
• 8:22
  There was nothing about, quote-unquote, business that really appealed to me before I started one of my own.
• 8:27
  And then I built several of them and realized I actually really like this.
• 8:30
  I like discovering a way to solve problems.
• 8:33
  I like discovering a way to help people with their problems.
• 8:36
  And then I became someone that could help other people do the same.
• 8:39
  So that's often how the path goes.
• 8:41
  God has a certain type of person He wants us to grow into.
• 8:44
  And for our ancestors, they grew into that person through having babies out on the plains and churning butter and wrangling sheep.
• 8:50
  But for you and I, it might look like a business.
• 8:53
  For me, it looks like coaching other women to start a business.
• 8:55
  For you, it might look like inspiring people to improve their health, or creating and designing the perfect baby product, or writing the book that's been in the back of your mind for forever.
• 9:03
  Your business is simply a vehicle for growth, both for your own growth and the growth of the people you serve Now, most of us know that God doesn't necessarily want us to be comfortable all the time.
• 9:14
  He wants us to stretch and grow and develop our capacities and talents in a way That might not strictly be necessary for survival, Yes, sometimes we ask God for blessings that will make our lives easier, but often He
• 9:26
  calls us to do things that will make our lives a little bit harder for good reason, Think about all the times when you have been called to serve or to lead or create something or sacrifice in some way,
• 9:37
  and along that path, you've learned something new, you've been stretched, you've grown, you've had to exercise faith and develop your talents, and you've become more capable in some way.
• 9:47
  These are the things God is calling us to do, and sometimes we ask Him to take away trials from us when we know that that's actually what's gonna help us grow.
• 9:55
  We can see this in our kids' lives all the time, right?
• 9:57
  We see them struggle with something, maybe a lack of a friend, maybe there's a bully at school, or they're struggling with a sport that's really difficult or even a health problem.
• 10:06
  And we know that in the long run, this is going to benefit them, even though it's painful to watch.
• 10:10
  And God feels the same way about us.
• 10:12
  He's gonna sometimes invite us into something that feels very difficult and overwhelming, and what He's trying to do is to develop us into something that He can see us becoming and we might not be able to yet.
• 10:23
  I see this all the time when I have accepted callings at church.
• 10:26
  So I'm asked to serve in some way.
• 10:28
  Right now I help out with the young women at church, so the girls ages 12 to 18.
• 10:33
  I'm in charge of them.
• 10:34
  I'm the one that has to help create programs and activities and lessons that are going to bring them closer to God, hopefully, and help them develop in, in many ways.
• 10:43
  And it's hard, and it makes me stretch and grow and develop in a way that I never anticipated, and I think He asks the same thing of us in our businesses as well In my own business journey, it
• 10:52
  started out primar-primarily as just a hobby and something fun to do on the side while I was changing diapers and wrangling toddlers.
• 10:59
  But eventually, it grew into something much more.
• 11:02
  Eventually, I realized, I think God is calling me to do this thing for my own development, but also to help others as a form of service.
• 11:09
  It has stretched me, tested me, challenged me, and more importantly, blessed me.
• 11:14
  It has brought so many good things into my life, and hopefully, I like to think, into the lives of the people that I have coached and served as well.
• 11:21
  And here's the kicker.
• 11:23
  I think a lot of these skills and capacities that I have now would not have been developed in the same way through another avenue.
• 11:30
  I think it had to be business, which is a pretty fascinating thing to think about.
• 11:33
  If I had just chosen the status quo and chosen to stay comfortable and not said yes to the business, what kind of a person would I be now?
• 11:40
  Who knows?
• 11:41
  So if you're asking yourself the question, Well, do I need to work?"
• 11:45
  That might not be the right question.
• 11:47
  The right question might be, "Is God calling me into a specific kind of work?
• 11:51
  And is there a reason maybe outside of money to say yes to it?"
• 11:55
  Of course, there's nothing wrong with earning money from your business, and I want it to be profitable, and that's definitely a great reason, but it might not be enough of a reason for you.
• 12:03
  A lot of the women I coach say they're not super motivated by money.
• 12:06
  Would more money be nice?
• 12:08
  Sure, but they're more motivated by service and by saying yes to the call that God is giving them So if you ask yourself, "What kind of work is God calling me into?"
• 12:16
  There could be a variety of answers Often the answer is motherhood.
• 12:20
  Sometimes it's also a career, part-time, full-time, working at home, maybe outside of the home.
• 12:24
  Often it's volunteering.
• 12:26
  Maybe it's something really creative like art or writing.
• 12:29
  Maybe it's furthering your own education or helping the education of others.
• 12:33
  Maybe it's your own business, or maybe it's something that doesn't even exist yet.
• 12:37
  I was just realizing the other day that when I was toiling through college and trying to get a degree and trying to figure out a career that I could have that it would also make space for a family
• 12:46
  that I wanted to have, I really struggled to find something that fit, That was something I loved and that Would make money and also make space for my family.
• 12:53
  And what is so interesting is that what I do now that I love so much and feel so fulfilled from did not even exist back in the early 2000s.
• 13:02
  So no matter how hard I worked, I wouldn't have known what God was leading me to because it didn't even exist.
• 13:08
  And maybe what God is calling you to doesn't exist yet either, but he wants you to take the first step on a path to these amazing opportunities that he has in store for you.
• 13:16
  What if he's preparing you for something you can't even see yet?
• 13:20
  It requires some faith to take a step forward, but it's a pretty beautiful path So if you've been feeling this persistent desire to create something, build something, or contribute in some way, I want you to be very careful
• 13:30
  about that desire.
• 13:31
  Don't squash it, okay?
• 13:33
  Just let it kind of ruminate a little bit.
• 13:35
  Be curious about it.
• 13:36
  Ask yourself questions.
• 13:37
  Take it to God in prayer.
• 13:39
  But you also don't need to immediately go, "Oh my gosh, I have to turn it into a six-figure bus-business."
• 13:43
  That's not required either.
• 13:44
  There's no pressure here, and there's no rush.
• 13:46
  We get to just develop at the pace that's comfortable for us, and I believe God will lead us along the way.
• 13:52
  You can ask Him why He's given it to you, but likely you're not gonna figure it out until you've been going down that path for a little while.
• 13:58
  That's just how it works typically.
• 13:59
  So I have five questions for you to ask yourself as you go along this journey.
• 14:03
  In addition to watching this training I have available for you guys, make sure you get that in the link below.
• 14:08
  Question number one: What kind of work makes me feel most alive?
• 14:12
  Is there something that you've done before that makes you just feel like you're on top of the world?
• 14:16
  Number two: What problems do I genuinely enjoy solving?
• 14:20
  Number three: What capacities do I feel God inviting me to develop?
• 14:24
  Talents, skills.
• 14:26
  Number four: What desire to create or contribute have I maybe been dismissing because it doesn't seem strictly necessary or like it's a little bit frivolous?
• 14:35
  Number five: If money weren't the primary consideration, what would I love to build?
• 14:40
  When considering a business, sometimes we think, "Well, I don't think I could make any money on that."
• 14:43
  I don't want you to dismiss any ideas that you don't think you could make money with, because what's interesting is with the internet, there's almost nothing you can't monetize.
• 14:52
  So push that concern aside and instead just explore a little bit.
• 14:55
  What is something you would love to build, love to solve, love to help people with?
• 15:01
  And then remember this, just 'cause you have a desire doesn't make it selfish.
• 15:05
  It might not be a distraction from what God is calling you to at all.
• 15:08
  It might be the actual invitation from Him.
• 15:11
  this journey of exploration with God as your partner is really, really exciting.
• 15:15
  So I hope you have fun with it Again, don't miss my free training is God calling me to build the business?
• 15:21
  The link is below.
• 15:22
  I hope you enjoy it, and I wish you the best of luck on your journey to building a business with God as your partner.
• 15:26
  Bye.
• 15:31
  If today's episode encouraged you, my book, Burning Brightly, is the next step to answering God's call to build a business through faith and confidence.
• 15:38
  Grab your copy and the free companion workbook through the link in the show notes.
• 15:42
  The world needs more women willing to burn a little brighter.