Meaningful work
I recently had one of my personal training clients share a heartwarming post on LinkedIn about their experience training with me. The standard response of thank you and perhaps a heart emoji would have been sufficient, but this struck a chord. We all desire to do meaningful work. If that’s you, please know how fortunate you are.
For me, this longing to do something meaningful began when I enlisted in the USAF. Serving my country seemed to my 18-year-old brain to check that box. While it had its moments, my personal experience fell short of my expectations.
Nine years later, my service ended. I started a new career in something that, while not holding the meaning I was looking for, did promise the opportunity for international travel! Separately, I enrolled as a new student at The Ohio State University, majoring in Sociology. While I never entered the field, the course of study proved invaluable across the various roles I’d hold over the coming decades.
During this first post-service role, I met and fell in love with my wife, and soon after, a new role found us: bison ranchers. Before we tied the knot, we became business partners in a small, grass-fed bison ranching operation. My wife lived on family farmland, and we jumped in with both feet. We rapidly became ambassadors for our national mammal and the health benefits of bison meat. We were helping to conserve a treasured national icon while promoting healthy eating to everyone we encountered. Crank the meaning meter to 11.
A few different roles followed until I discovered what I felt would be the next and complementary career to bison: solar energy. I honestly felt a bit like a superhero, raising grass-fed bison and helping to spread climate-saving solar energy. (Cue grandiose Hans Zimmer soundtrack.)
Nearly three years back, I launched my own company, doing some of the same meaningful (to me) work that I’d been practicing for over 8 years in clean energy. Unfortunately, a series of events and circumstances put a near full stop to the work I found such meaning in. But then, a light.
Fitness had been a part of my life since my days in the USAF, when staying in shape was a requirement and the gym became a place where I found a great community. Decades later, while exercising at home with my wife as we prepared for a ski trip out west, something clicked. I could be a personal trainer.
It wasn’t exactly a new idea. I’d occasionally dreamed of doing this when I was preparing to leave the military, but I lacked the business acumen—and thus the confidence—to try. Apparently, that dream had been on simmer for the past 30 years.
Meaning and fulfillment in a job sounds like a pipe dream and completely unrealistic to the average person. “Work is work,” or “work isn’t supposed to be fun,” are bandied about with a gospel-like fervor in our rise-and-grind culture. But that’s what the middle of the working class tell themselves, and then others, to mollify their own station in life. I’m guilty of this more often than I’d like to admit.
The wide-eyed optimism that bubbles over in the young is also found in those of us who have had 30+ years in the game of life. The grind wears you down, layoffs leave you embittered, and you seek out meaning in other areas of your life. Volunteering and hobbies can hold things together, but they’re not a substitute for the largest chunk of time spent on the job.
My client’s kind and uplifting words of recommendation hold more than their fair share of why I do this work. It’s something that we can all relate to, as we’re all encased in the same human form. If my work as a personal trainer can help a person get through their day with less fatigue so that their time outside of work is more fulfilling and enjoyable, well, it doesn’t get much more meaningful to me than that.
Where are you looking to find—or create—meaning that better physical fitness can help?