We are in the middle of moving houses, and the process of taking everything off the shelf and out of the drawer after over a decade of living in our home is a little disorienting.

It reminds me of the way C. S. Lewis in his book, The Four Loves, describes storge, the familial love. Lewis gives an analogy that helps explain the nature of storge by describing that taking storge love out in public would be like getting your household furniture out for a move. Inside your house, it felt familiar, but outside, it looks “tawdry.” 

The things in our home that I never thought to question because they were tucked into their familiar spot suddenly begged the question when they were taken off the shelf, “do I really need to hold onto this?” Being taken out of their familiar surroundings gave me that chance to examine their value, independent of the familiarity they had in our home.

We show up to work not as compartmentalized beings, but as whole people with all the complexities that being human entails. That means we bring not only our skills, abilities, and personalities to work, but we also bring our beliefs, our attitudes, the things that energize us and drain us of energy, the things that motivate and drive us, and the hidden inner workings of our hearts and brains that we can’t see, but that shape the way we work. 

Like the furniture in our homes, there is much inside of us that is familiar–patterns, habits, automatic thoughts, neural pathways–and we don’t often, if ever, think to question their value. But what if we took them off the shelf every now and then to examine if they are serving us?

Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

What is directing your life that is unconscious? And if you could bring it out into the light and decide whether or not it is serving you, would you let it stay, or would you send it away?

To take this a step further, can you trace how the inner workings of your life impact your work? Is anything getting in the way of the impact you want to have in the world? Alternatively, how are you showing up to work that causes you to thrive and have increased impact? 

By becoming conscious of both what gets in our way and what causes us to flourish, we then get to choose what we hold onto and what we let go of. 

This is a created life. Most people don’t create their lives, but let the unconscious direct their lives and call it fate. 

How will you create your life today?