It’s time to find your growl. Maybe your purr, too…

Reading Pamela Slim’s groundbreaking new book “Escape from Cubicle Nation” (Portfolio/Penguin, 2009) is a potentially liberating experience. It reminds me just a bit of John Eldredge’s “Wild at Heart” (Thomas Nelson, 2001), in the way that book helped me understand all the emasculating influences around me.

Pamela Slim’s book–subtitled “From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur”–shows us how unnaturally domesticated and tamed working inside the box has made us. It makes us forget how to growl–and purr. She writes:

Keeping an active tiger chained up inside you takes a lot of energy. It saps your life force to continually pretend to be motivated, to feign enthusiasm for your life or job, to grind through another day at the office when you can feel that it is strangling your spirit.

… I have spent lots of time in cublicles. Even as a consultant, I would often get assigned a cubicle to work in for a long-term project. And as much as I knew that I was not an employee and had a vibrant life outside of work, I would sometimes slip into a bit of a coma.

This is such a common feeling that I sometimes wonder if cube furniture comes with a strange chemical pheromones that actually draws your life force out of you.

Her antidote? Pamela recommends a variety of strategies to “thaw out your soul … find out what makes you purr …  reawaken your curiosity, your muse and your creativity.” For some of us thawing out might have to be preceded by a period of hibernation in order to “detox from corporate life.”

If you’re still grinding it out in the cube farm while dreaming of launching your own business, she advises building at least six months worth of living expenses in advance as a cushion for the transition.

If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands who have been involuntarily launched–terminated or “streeted”–during the Great Recession, you may have to be even more enterprising. You probably won’t have anything like that six-months cushion. And, you’re liable to be a heck of a lot more emotionally bruised.

Let yourself heal a bit. Understand your plight is not your fault. Resist the dark side–anger, fear, blame, discouragement. Start to discover what makes you purr. Find your growl. Become what you really were at heart before your unfortunate domestication.

And then celebrate your Escape from Cubicle Nation. It could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you.

If you have an unquestioning attachment to an organization that defines your identity, is that your religion–or your job?

David Noer (”Healing the Wounds,” Jossey-Bass, 1993) suggests that people lacking a good grounding in a personal “core purpose” are at greatest risk of developing the condition he calls “organizational codependency.” We might define this condition as that unquestioning attachment to an organization that defines our identity, where our boss becomes a kind of surrogate parent in terms of our needs for attention, encouragement and approval.

In this case, the business organization becomes almost a kind of religious institution. Obviously, this is idolatrous and unhealthy. To quote Noer:

Under the old paradigm, a great deal of people’s sense of  relevance and purpose was provded by the organization, which behaved somewhat like a religious institution. A small consumer finance organization that had been acquired by a larger financial services institution is a good example. There was a hierarchical all-male “priesthood” that culminated in a charismatic founding father who was deified by the employees and who responded by dispensing gifts (a year-end bonus and promotions) to the loyal. This organization had its catechism in the form of a belief system that customer service was supreme and a demand that personal needs be subordinated to an overarching organizational loyalty, with the ultimate reward of continued employment and the honor of being part of the team.

This organization had other characteristics of a formal religion: a regular Saturday morning meeting (service), with stories of sales and quota achievements followed by applause, handshakes, and affirming smiles (testimonies), and a pep talk by the founding father (sermon). There were rewards (gift certificates for dinners for two dispensed to some who had done an extra good job) and symbols (a watch commemorating fifteen years’ membership in the congregation). The organization did not have a company song, but it did have a number of mottoes and slogans, tacked to office walls. … The organization was highly productive and efficient. Second, the organization was essentially a spiritual place. Employees derived a sense of purpose, worth, and value from it. Unfortunately, because the organization was newly acquired, it then experienced a layoff and was the unwilling recipient of a number of policies and procedures that stripped away its uniqueness.

That, of course, is the moral of the story. It is not healthy to place one’s spiritual currency in business organizations’ vaults. The organization cannot guarantee that currency’s safety. … We must have the courage to engage in detachment, to stop defining ourselves in relation to our business organizations, and to resist the simplicity of putting a taproot into organizational soil. … Above all, we need to connect with something bigger than ourselves, with a personal core purpose.

In other words, what god are you worshipping? If it’s something made of wood and stone–or bricks and mortar–you’ve got your spiritual currency in a place where moth and rust corrupt and thieves break in and steal.

Even if we haven’t said it in so many words, most of us instinctively know that our struggles with jobs, careers and making a living are reflective of the biggest question of all–i.e., life mission. What was I born to do?

Some say there’s no answer–that it’s an illegitimate question that assumes there’s purpose behind our lives. They believe life is all chance and happenstance full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I have to disagree. This struggle for productive employment (not necessarily from a job) is where I have seen God’s hand in my life the most.

That’s also the view of the most successful writer in this field of all time, Richard Bolles, the author of the classic “What Color Is Your Parachute?” As there’s no way to improve on the big picture Bolles paints for life purpose, I have incorporated his points directly into my presentations.

I really don’t think it can be stated any better than that. We can all go to our final reward with a satisfied mind if we have succeeded in those three areas. Yet, each one of these three begs more questions. As I’ve pondered this, I’ve come to the conclusion that until we have answered these questions for ourselves, we will continue to wander in confusion:

1. Finding God: Who is he? Who am I in relation to him? Does he have a purpose for my life?
2. Exercising your gift in your life mission: What is my mission? What is my gift? How do I exercise it?
3. Making the world a better place: Do I really care? What are the needs? How can I help?

You can spend a lifetime–years, at least–figuring out those answers. Considering what’s at sake, I say best get started!

A few years ago Jeff Taylor took probably the biggest gamble of his professional life: He shelled out $4 million for one 30-second ad—at the1999 Super Bowl. It was a truly memorable  commercial called “When I Grow Up . . .”

You’ve probably seen it. Young children speak directly to the camera, saying:

“When I grow up, I want to file all day.”

“I want to claw my way up to middle management.”

“Be replaced on a whim.”

“I want to have a brown nose.”

“I want to be a yes-man. . . .”

“. . . . yes-woman.”

“Yes, sir. Coming, sir.”

“Anything for a raise, sir.”

“When I grow up . . . .”

“I want to be under-appreciated.”

“Be paid less for doing the same job.”

“I want to be forced into early retirement.”

Then across the screen appear the words “What did you want to be?” It was a golden moment in advertising—as well as in the quest for meaning and purpose in the lives of millions.

Who could help being moved at the sound of such cynical statements from the mouths of babes? And then how many of us took it to the next step and recognized our own stifled and broken dreams? One thing for sure: The message touched a nerve in many and made an indelible impression for Taylor’s up-and-coming Monster.com online job search service.

As Taylor recalls, “Amid all those ads for cars and beer, it was an outrageously optimistic statement with an ironic twist about how our childhood dreams get compromised. The ad worked because it captured the voice and personality of Monster.We aired that commercial 4,000 times in 1999, and it put us on the map.”

The optimism Taylor alludes to is the possibility that as long as we’re still breathing, dreams can come true. Frustrations in life may be inevitable, but they don’t have to be permanent. Not doing what we were really born to do is a one-person-at-a-time tragedy. King David understood his priorities: “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4).

So, how about it? What did you want to be when you grow up? Do you know?

Do you feel rejected? Abandoned? Alone? Even worthless?

That’s normal. Unemployment can do that. It can even ruin your life if you’re not careful.

But there is One who understands, who has walked that road. He was rejected by his own people. He was betrayed by one of his inner circle and sold to his enemies for the price of a slave. In his darkest hour he was abandoned by even his closest friends. And then he was executed as a common criminal, His naked body on public display between two thieves. Nothing fair about any of that.

Don’t ever think that God has abandoned you just because life has gotten tough. Jesus can tell you about tough. In ministry I have been beaten up multiple times, to the point of my questioning God. That’s called leaning on your own understanding. But can we really understand that “it was the Lord’s will to crush him [the Messiah] and cause him to suffer” (Isa. 53:10)? Only in hindsight–after the whole plan of redemption has been revealed.

So, what’s the value of my unemployment? It could be so we can comfort others who are undergoing similar misfortunes with the comfort we have received from God (2 Cor. 1:4). It could be to strengthen us. I believe that’s why God allowed me to be beaten up in ministry–to overcome my risk-aversion and to experience what a warrior has to endure.

Scientists discovered that chicks that were “helped” in hatching through their shells failed to thrive nearly as well as chicks that pecked their own way out. It seemed they needed that struggle to strengthen them for life. Maybe so do we.

Finally, it may be an outright desert experience, where you’re just stuck in no-man’s land for a good long time. I’ve wondered why God sometimes leaves believers on the shelf–or stuck in the desert–for such long periods. But think about what happens in the desert: Thirst. Hunger. Crying to God. Perhaps some of us need to become hungrier and thirstier for righteousness and spiritual things before we can appreciate the green pastures and the good shepherd.

The point, however, is not the understanding of things that may only be revealed in due time, anyway. The point is the trusting-with-all-of-our-heart. Job mostly got this right: “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15). Job wasn’t leaning on his own understanding. All that mattered to Job was that it made sense to God.

The point is not the gifts, but the Giver. Seek Him, every day. He’s walking that road, too.