7. Handout 5: What is Work? (pt 1)

Excerpt from Handout 5 from Healing Work Counseling defining Work in Empowered Work Counseling Model

Your individual definition of what work is will shape your experience with working.

If a worker were to define the act of work as “A thing that everybody hates but has to do.” they wouldn’t be wrong. Surely this worker will grow to hate their work. Work is definitionally a thing for this person to hate.

We will discuss Cognitive Behavioral Therapy basics in a future article. One of the most important lessons from traditional CBT is how do we identify what thoughts to keep and which do we challenge? We can look at our core beliefs about work the same way.

In lieu of a lengthy quote from the Feeling Good Handbook (see page 63), I teach my clients that it is best to look at if the thought or belief is accurate and if it is useful in an emotional sense. To be emotionally useful is to provoke feelings that are functional or at least not detrimental to the task or overall functioning.

Is it useful to believe that work is a thing that everybody hates but has to do? The emotional consequence is likely one of resentment, and futility, one that provokes helplessness and hoplessness. In short, this is a Disempowering Work Belief.

Is it accurate? No, it’s actually quite wrong. We cannot read the minds of every worker on earth, and if we could, surely not every single worker hates their work.

In seeking to define what work is for the empowered work counseling model, I needed to look at the core fundamentals of the exchange, in a nonjudgmental way, and found:

“Work is defined in Empowered Work Counseling as ‘a two way relationship where the worker provides labor and meets some of the employer’s needs in exchange for the employer providing pay and meeting some of the worker’s needs”

"This occurs inside a 1:1 relationship between the worker and employer known as the working relationship”

Work here is best defined by the exchanges that occur between the worker and employer, and the various parties involved in the exchange, including the Owner and Manager.

Handout 5 from Empowered Work Counseling model defining and outlining what is work and who are the various parties involved in the work exchange