FLASHBACK! KEW Episode 8: Goals, Accolades, and the Meaning of Life

If you’re a parent you know that parenting is a thankless job.

When I interviewed Pat Schulte, we talked about how the lack of accolades can be a problem for remote workers (BTW, you should go listen to that interview now. Pat is amazing.)

And, more generally, it is these accolades and rewards we end up building our entire lives around.

Let’s take just one reward: money.

Jobs and making money are important, yes. To say different is to openly bleed privilege and advantage.

We all need money to survive. Which is weird if you think about it, but let’s just work from that premise.

But most of us don’t just clock in and clock out, leaving the job and the money in a lower priority position.

No. We BLOW IT UP. We work HARD. We HUSTLE. We are PROUD to put in 80 hour weeks. Grit and WORKING HARD makes us feel and look good.

We have prioritized work and the associated accolades to DEATH.

So, yeah. Money.

But there’s also POWER. POSITION. INFLUENCE.

We see a lot of these things as being the ultimate in accolades. Rewards for doing well (WORKING HARD!). And we seek it out.

To the point where, when we fall short, or LACK accolades and rewards. We feel BAD. We feel like BAD PEOPLE. We feel shame.

Whoa. Wait a minute? Is that a good thing?

In this episode I talk about which accolades are truly meaningful (or can be) and which ones we MIGHT have tied to much of our self worth to. And don’t worry, wherever you fall on the spectrum, you can change if you want.

Original post is here if you want to check out the audio and/or video.

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