We live life on a spectrum.
At one end we are busy little worker ants, head down rushing around with bags of doing energy, always buzzing off to our next diary entry. When I get off the train in London, this is largely what I see everywhere. We often forget who we really are but become our job titles, emulating our bosses and socialising to the corporate culture.
In this mode, people are quick, action focussed and are sensitive to avoiding risk as their instinctive survival mode kicks in with its all-pervading negativity bias. We are therefore driven more by fear of what could be than off the excitement of possibility. We feel alone in this.
In this state, we need fuel. Our friends are coffee, sugar and booze. We'll live at the weekend, holidays and retirement. For now, it's full on to win.
At the opposite end, we are calm, conscious and connected. We see that we aren't alone but are part of something bigger. We are deliberate in our actions and find that we can focus upon one idea at a time, the one that's in front of us now.
In this mode it is easy to be amazing, to shine brightly and spontaneously create. We are being ourselves and not who we think we should be.
We will always flit between the two. It's the human condition.
I believe, however, that the best places to work are the ones that help us spend more time at the conscious end of that spectrum. They help us breathe more, consider possibility and help us to truly be ourselves.
Those great places to work have leaders that are human and honest. They have environments that feed our minds and our souls and their purpose has meaning.
To shine brightly we only need to spend a fraction more of our time awake and amazing things happen. Our work can be a sedative or a stimulant depending how we interact with it. Take the blue pill. Wake up!