Tim Gallwey's brilliant The Inner Game of Work concludes with a chapter titled "The Inherent Ambition," in which he discusses the nature of our desire to work and conducts a dialogue between his inner voice (italicized below) and his conscious self on his own attitudes toward work:
I am not a slave to anything. I do not work under pressure. I am someone who has something to reveal and who wants to reveal it. I am free and only work freely.
Brave and confident words from this voice that seems so faint and gentle. It appears so much smaller than the voices demanding that I must get my work done. It is distinctly different from the voice of obligation and duty that counsels me to meet my responsibilities to others. That voice comes through loud and clear. The one I am listening to now has another tone and another message...
I work for myself. I love what I do. I consider work one of the most wonderful opportunities of being alive. Work is my play. But it is play with a purpose. The purpose is mine...
What is also surprising to me about this voice is that it is speaking in the present tense. It is not saying, "I want to be free." It is saying, "I am already free." I continue to listen to what it has to say to me...
On the eve of your last day on earth, you will finally have no pressure. But it will be too late, because you will also have no time. No time at all to know what freedom is... You have a choice about who you are working for, the outer demands or for me--the me that is you, the me that is already free. There is one other choice--to ignore that you have a choice. But then you will be the force of that other river of demands--or rebellion against them, which is just a tributary of that same muddy water. [1]
I'm reminded of U.S. soccer star Landon Donovan's recent decision to leave the German Bundesliga, perhaps the top professional league in the world, and return to the much less competitive American ranks:
I'd probably become a better soccer player just from the day-in, day-out grind of it there... [But] I wouldn't be a better person. I wouldn't be a happy person. I'd be pretty miserable. [2]
Choosing to work for ourselves doesn't simply mean putting our personal happiness before all other factors--it's far more complicated than that. There's a paradox here that we each have to confront and resolve in our own way: We must listen to our inner voice and work freely for ourselves without simply giving in to indulgent whims. And we must be of service and create value for others without simply responding to external demands and obligations.
Footnotes
[1] The Inner Game of Work: Focus, Learning, Pleasure, and Mobility in the Workplace, Chapter 10, pages 223-226 (W. Timothy Gallwey, 2001)
[2] Who Is Landon Donovan Working For?
Updated November 2019.
