Bill Jensen - What Is Your Lifes Work

An Extraordinary Experience

Finding Yourself

Finding the Lessons to Be Learned, the Questions to Be Asked

Finding the Choices That Really Matter

Finding the Courage to Choose

Finding Joy, Serenity, and Fulfillment

You are holding our collective lifes work: that is, how we continually figure out what matters, and what doesnt.

What Is Your Lifes Work? captures the intimate exchanges between mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and caring teammates and friendsall talking about what matters at work, and in life. Its pages are filled with the personal letters and journal entries of well-known leaders, struggling managers, and heroic people in workaday jobs.

It is a practical guide for work-weary souls trying to get unstuck, as well as those who already do a lot of what matters, and just want to do more. Exposed are the raw truths weve all experienced, the personal frailties and mistakes wed like to hide, and the proudest achievements wed like to celebrate.

How to Use This Book

Find the few that speak to you.

Do not read cover-to-cover. Find three to five letters that speak directly to you. Not every one will. Thats OK. Your job: Find the letters that grab you, inspire you, teach you, and challenge you. (To search letters by themes, see page 223.)

The book is divided into five discoveries youll experience in your lifes work. Which discovery contained two or more of the letters you selected in Step 1? Thats the theme for writing your own letter

Write a letter to a loved one. Take something from this book and pay it forward. Youll get back even more than you give. (Field Guide for Getting Started is on page 209.)

Continue Your Journey

Visit www.ourlifeswork.com

• Personal stories from diarists, unpublished letters, plus
• full versions of those letters edited for space
• Workshops and presentations available for your group
• Additional how-to tools and support for letter-writing
• Community space for sharing stories and experiences
• Bonus: Get YOUR letter into the paperback version!

We are taking submissions for additional letters. We will select the most powerful letter(s) for inclusion in the paperback version of What Is Your Lifes Work? Cool, huh?!

You are about to experience something extraordinary

Imagine having a profound, plain-spoken conversation with your loved ones. You share how you figured out what matters and what doesnt. You speak with absolute conviction: This is what I stood for, believed in, struggled with, and accomplished. This is my lifes work, and what I want to be remembered for.

Never before have you experienced such clarity. Suddenly, everything makes sense. Wow! Where did all this clarity of purpose come from? The answer lies in the magical journey within this book.

Never in my life have I been so clear about what really matters. Everyone who shared their biggest lessons-learned discovered something for themselvesprofound clarity, and reawakened passion for what they do. You can find that, too!

Thats because this book does not shy away from difficult introspection. Every page deals with one powerful question: What would you tell your kids or grandkids or dearest friends about what really matters at work? If they asked:

• How do I know Im making a difference?
• Whats the real reason Im here?
• Is this all there is?
• How much is too much?
• How do I decide: Stay or go?

How would you answer? Would you tell the whole truthincluding all the naive mistakes youve madeto help them figure out what did and didnt matter?

What Is Your Lifes Work? reveals it all: The poor choices weve made and the lessons weve learned from those choices, as well as our proudest moments.

Put simply, this book is about what we learn about ourselves when we teach our loved ones, especially our kids, what matters, and about the powerful need we have to leave something behindwhat we want to be remembered for.

The Surprising Discovery Behind This Book

Ive spent my career listening to people just like you and mecollecting our stories, and studying how we work. During the past two decades, Ive interviewed and surveyed more than 400,000 people in over 1,000 companies around the world. My first questionWhat really matters here?never failed to jumpstart insightful conversations. That is, until a few years ago.

After the economy took a painful nosedive, lots of people backed away from that question. They did not want to admit that what mattered to their companythe bottom line and corporate survival above all elsewas suddenly quite different from what mattered to them. And that they were slogging through every day just to keep their job.

So I tried changing the question. I asked instead, What is the single most important insight about work that you want to pass on to your kids? Or to anyone you truly care about?

BAM! The floodgates opened.

A happy accident: Changing my question to something much closer to home, Why do we do what we wouldnt want our kids to do? Which of our mistakes should they not repeat? unleashed completely new conversations.

After just a few interviews, I asked people to put their thoughts on paper: Write a letter to that loved one. Or keep a journala work diary. One that would help your kids or someone else who is close to you understand whats truly important at work.

The invitation to write something for a loved one spread through word of mouth and email. Soon, what began as a small experiment grew into a global collection of several thousand letters, gathered over a four-year period. You are holding a representative sampling from that collection.

Why were so many so willing to spend time on these letters? Because as they were writing to change their childrens future or to help others, something magical happened. They got back more than they gave.

Thats what makes this approach to discovering what really matters so different from anything youve experienced. You end up getting what you wantdeeper clarity around whats most important to youby giving it to someone else. Your work diary for others ends up being a tool for self-discovery.

Thats how an administrative assistant discovered that she was actually a leaderby writing to her unborn daughter. And how the son of a tuna fisherman and how a former go-go dancer uncovered the power of saying yes to their dreams. And how a lawyer rediscovered rights and wrongs.

In their letters, we see ourselves.

From a student we learn about hard work and passion. From a teacher about distinguishing between your own goals and those imposed upon you. From a prison guard we learn about caring, forgiveness, and limitless possibilities. We learn about shattered trust from the entire family of an executive who was fired over politics. About the power of asking questions and listening to poor performers from a former monk, now an executive. About the cost of over-investing in an employer from a former corporate lifer.

In their struggles, we see our own.

Our Struggle to Figure Out What Really Matters

Most of us experience a disconnect between what were supposed to get done at work and what truly matters.