Anti-Work 'Self Work'
I pulled the VI of Wands today – a card generally connected to success. Having just finished Jessica Dore’s Tarot for Change, I felt much more inspired to allow this card to ask me questions about success, rather than seek answers from it on the moment of its arrival.
What is my definition of success? What feels successful to me? How do I want my success to most inspire or assist others?
For me, the answers to most of these questions tend toward the feeling of being in alignment: feeling at peace and purposeful in whatever I do….less about what I’m doing and more about how I’m doing it. I want to serve others from an empowered place, where my capacity to be present and in joy inspires others to connect with theirown presence and their own joy.
The next question my human mind will usually ask is then, ‘Well how do I get there?’.
Having been a ‘Do-er’ most of my life (and my nervous system will attest to this), I’d typically run a self-analysis program and determine where I’m falling short: I need to devote more time to my creative practices; do my yoga daily; meditate more; spend more time outside, etc. This shows up for me in ambitious To Do Lists of self care, which I end up, predictably, Doing – even ‘working hard’ on. If completing all the tasks on my self care lists did not usher me into a state of peace, then I was still not doing enough, maybe even asking ‘What’s wrong with me?’.
I was speaking to someone in an astrology session recently who had a similar relationship to her self-care, which she called ‘working on herself’. Coming from someone else, it was suddenly so clear. I heard how dedicated she was, how sincere she was, and how – perhaps – impatient she was to getting the work ‘done’. There is of course a place for this commitment – self-work is important –
However, it brought up a few points for me.
1. Self work is never done.
I love Clarissa Pinkola Estés quote about the work being ‘to keep doing the work’. I think it can snap us out of the idea of task completion that a typical working life can trick us into – the seemingly unending pattern of having a specific job and completing it. Not only that, but being reliably (hopefully) paid for it in predictable amounts at pre-known times. This isn’t the case with ‘self work’, where healing is spiral in motion and the rewards are sometimes invisible or unrecognized until years later.
Given that self work is never done, how do you define success in relation to it? How do you measure your progress in the most loving way possible, remembering that you act, firstly, for yourself? How do you stay motivated to continue?
2. Self work shouldn’t always feel like ‘work’.
There is so much healing to be found in play. Why mirror the dissatisfaction so many experience in their working life with the precious and sacred opportunities we have as humans to grow closer in and to love?
If capitalism exploits our labor for profit, we should approach our ‘self work’ in as profoundly opposite a mentality as we can: it’s for our freedom; it’s for our pleasure, our joy; our desire to become more intimate and connected to both ourselves and the world; and we don’t necessarily need to ‘get’ any one thing out of it.
In fact, the devotion to caring for ourselves is in some ways antithetical to work, as it combats the alienation many experience in their labor with a profound connection to life. By connecting with our own spirits or re-connecting to our bodies, we co-create with the Universe a greater sense of belonging to the life force that touches and is within everything – with all of its abundance, joy, and grace. This is profoundly different from checking off tasks from a To Do List.
That’s why I love self-care practices that center the deep pleasure of rest, and that’s why one of my favorite remedies for overly disciplined ‘self-workers’ is play: dancing to the silliest, happiest music – even alone in their room (maybe especially). However, I think the best thing you can do on any one day is to sit quietly and ask yourself: What does my body/my spirit most need today? It pushes us out of the prescriptive model into a space of deep listening and care – not a set of action items.
3. What’s our motivation?
If our motivation is to achieve any one thing or arrive at any one place, I think we ought to be careful. I think this is especially true for historical people-pleasers or over-achievers.
In discussing the VI of Wands, Jessica Dore questions conventional success arches, suggesting that what many of us perceive as ‘success’ is related to what or how we felt we lacked in our childhood, thus often stemming from an unconscious wound. Put in the context of working on one’s self, it made me look in the mirror and ask myself WHY I’ve always had such an impulse toward self-improvement. Do I want to heal myself just so that ‘[I] feel good enough, nice enough, smart enough, finally’ (146)?
This is where the VI of Wands was nudging me this morning, and not for the first time. Since I’ve begun getting some life coaching, I’ve found myself re-experiencing some of the emotions of early school life: wanting to please the teacher, to do well, to prove that I was smart and/or understanding the material. Here comes the opportunity to check in and remind myself why we work on ourselves in the first place: to become more intimate with Life – not to satisfy anyone, and certainly not to prove our ‘goodness’ to anyone.
Thus the danger of constantly seeking self-improvement is that, in our enthusiasm, we can forget that we are alreadygood, already there – already perfect, whole and complete – because we are here, alive. Without continually reminding ourselves that we perform self-care as a devotion ritual to ourselves and to Life itself, we might unconsciously be motivated by a desire to finally become ‘good enough’, or simply finish it so we can, at last, relax and enjoy. The rituals cease to be nurturing and are instead subtle reminders of where we think we are inadequate.
The rituals become more like a 9-5 job than the nourishing balm of true self-love practices. They can be quick-fixes, busy work, or exist to maintain false ideas in our head about our worth and who we are here to serve.
That’s why I’ve been doing some thinking about Anti-Work Self Work.
(Prepare for a slight tone shift, and I promise to tie it all together in the end).
Anti-Work Self Work:
I love the growing anti-work sentiment being seen in the world today. I think so many of us can relate to the feeling of exhausted outrage to the absurd horror of our systems, as well as the cruelty of needing to work the vast majority of our lives just to survive. And this is just within some of the more privileged circles: slavery, child labor, and forced emigration uphold the crumbling pillars of this late capitalist disaster, creating whole lives of unfathomable injustice. So many lives lost for it and to it, so much creative potential never allowed to bud… I don’t need to go on, surely. How could one notcritique humanity’s current approach to work?
The Lying Flat movement in China is a particularly powerful example of the anti-work sentiment manifesting in a collective, flat-out refusal. I’m also heartened by the growing union movements throughout the States. I hope, and expect, that this will be a trend in the coming years: people waking up to the injustice tied into the ways our lives have been organized around largely meaningless work (see David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs) and thus the dignity, life force, creativity, and a feeling of fulfillment of billions of beautiful people have been unfairly obstructed.
I remember the growing discussions of police and prison abolition during the peak of the Black Lives Matter protests. I remember activists online speaking of this abolition work also being relevant within ourselves: where’s the cop in our own head? Where do we seek punitive measures against individuals for systemic failures? These are vital questions. All of us internalize aspects of the toxic systems in which we live, and ‘doing the work’ to un-do this is an important devotional task – one that is ultimately tied to our own joy and freedom, too. How can we feel free when there’s a cop in our head? How can we help free others?
In regards to anti-work self work, I think we should ask ourselves similar queries about the boss(es) in our head. They get put there young; many of us feel that alienation from our labor even as children. Education has largely become, as Paolo Freire would put it, ‘a banking system’ where students are largely asked to memorize large swaths of information, replicate the answers for exams, and endure long hours of various, often tedious, tasks before going home to do more work. School has become increasingly busy and expectations increasingly high. ‘Free time’ has become a rarity for many, and schools offering ‘perfect attendance awards’ teach us that taking time off is bad. Our creativity and individuality is generally not fostered for its own sake, if at all. This, to me, is transparently preparation for the work force.
In addition, we are taught to listen to and fear authority, and very often learn early on not to disagree with them or challenge them. Then, most of us do enter the work force, and find ourselves so busy and exhausted trying to balance that time commitment with other practical demands that fighting against the whole system seems untenable. That’s why I love the momentum I’m seeing build in anti-work sentiment. More people – fed up with how things are – fighting not only against the systems of exploitation, or their own literal bosses, but the boss inside their own head: careerists suddenly realizing how much more there is to life, or what something being truly ‘life-giving’ feels like; people unionizing and working together to validate their power; young workers (who can afford to) refusing to engage in a hyper-competitive work force and choosing, instead, their well-being.
Success and the boss in your head
It’s worth thinking about how the bosses in our head can work in opposition to genuine self care and can help fosterfeelings of success that rely upon a singular destination, efficient task completion, or external validation.
Does a voice in your head expect more of you than you can give? Not respect your boundaries? Expect the most out of you with no reward? Does it remind you of the importance of work, and make you feel guilty for rest or for being(seemingly) unproductive?
Having internalized our unhealthy work culture, do you accidentally devote certain tasks to someone else – perhaps an authority, someone you want to approve of you or reward you for your time and effort?
It would be extremely normal if it were the case. Therapists and self-care professionals speak at length about the different voices we have in our head, the primary examples tending toward a parental figure – the sources of the first disciplines we received in childhood. However, statistics show that once you enter the work force, it is likely you will spend more time in your work environment than with your own family/friends (all the more reason to protest, again, this lifestyle). Even unemployed or self-employed, it’s so easy to have an inner voice that treats you the way many work forces/bosses unfairly treat their employees in our current system.
And, it would be just this inner voice to convince you that self-care must be completed in prescribed, predictable, linear ways. It would encourage you to judge yourself if you didn’t see immediate results or if you needed a break. And it definitely wouldn’t remind you that it should be loving, gentle, and sometimes even fun. The boss in your head has an idea of what success is, and it’s likely one that satisfies your ego, fitting with your brand image or allowing you to say you’ve complied with certain protocols.
Your soul, however, reminds you that success is a feeling like love: it’s being aligned with Life and receptive to what it’s teaching you. It’s not a destination but a commitment to your values, even when your inner boss or ego wants to control you by beckoning you back to old patterns.
Anti-Work Self Work centers the importance of listening to your spirit, not the boss in your head. It reminds you to ask what success truly feels like to you, not to or for anyone else. It values taking time to rest, to receive, and to play. By knowing that there’s no singular destination or completion point, anti-work self work encourages you to be present with whatever is, knowing that it’s there as a loving guide – not a disciplinarian. It wants you to do whatever you can to get free and to help free others. And, when you need a break, it celebrates you if you choose to lie flat.
So, if having a political incentive behind your self-care practices is a motivator for you, think of how much vitality and creativity would flourish in the world without our current oppressive structures of work – how much more beautiful and inspiring a freer, more horizontal and cooperative society would be. Then, seek to create this relational ecosystem within yourself: rework your relationship to self work, choose the voice of your spirit rather than the voice of internalized authority figures, and choose to nourish yourself in every step you take in your healing. Refuse to replicate unjust work dynamics within your own self-care as you reject the very same in the outer world.
A poem regarding the Lying Flat movement went viral on WeChat. It reads:
“Lying flat, is to not bow down. Lying flat, is to not kneel. Lying flat, is to stand up horizontally. Lying flat, is a straight spine.”
So, I hope your self-care work can do that for you, too – that you find both restfulness and realization, nourishment and the knowing that only you are your own authority, and only you the definer of your success.
