Work that Matters: Create a livelihood that reflects your Core Intention
Author: Maia Duerr
Publisher: Parallax Press

Disclosure: I was provided the book by the publisher for an honest review. Maia Duerr and I have been friends for almost a decade and she know I’m incapable of not calling something for what it is. 

There are unending lists of books on how to shift, change, pivot from your currently dissatisfied life to one that is enriching (personally and financially). Some are planners that navigate the complex world of job search and selling your talents. Others tie together finding a new career with finding that hidden inner self who can flourish if just given the career shell in which to do so. Very few offer a deep dive into the center of making any change: who you are and the values that shape you. More precisely, few authors have the chops to weave together Buddhist principles of ethical living through Right Livelihood and the demands of our modern craving world. Acknowledging that the 21^st century is vastly different from the socio-economic times of the historic Buddha, Maia Duerr crafts what she cheekily calls “Right Livelihood 2.0”(I’m short-forming that to RL 2.0), a way to find a value-congruent path among the challenges of today’s financial and economic potholes.

In Work That Matters, Duerr takes on this challenge with surgical precision and an unblinking gaze. She begins with the reality that we are all averse to change, even if change means realizing our dreams. Astutely, Duerr shines the light on our well-cultivated talent to turn away from anything that results in discomfort. After a chapter of getting to know her and one that lay the framework of “Liberation-based Livelihood”, we dig deep to recognize and uproot our craftiness in deluding ourselves that “here” is better than “there”. Psychologically wise, she names the resistance as it is likely to show up – the five hindrances that masquerade as social media jaunts, diligent house cleaning, re-framing the current situation as “good enough”, and so on.

After setting up the three foundations – self-awareness, resilience, and persistence – Duerr introduces each of the six keys to Liberation-based Livelihood. What impressed me is the amount of time I took on Key 1: Becoming intimate with your Core Intention. This chapter captures the current arc of practice in the secular world of mindfulness: a call to clarify our values and (as I discuss in my own research) to examine closely the incongruence we experience when we are not in alignment with those values. Thich Nhat Hanh, a teacher Duerr and I share in our own practice, teaches that our values are the North Star; the intention is to use them to navigate the waters of our lives, not to live on the star itself. Over the years, I find deeper and deeper meaning in that teaching. The most recent is that our values are not intended to carry us above the world as it is, they are not to segregate us in a holier-than-thou bubble. The dance of our actions carry us close and far from the core intention of our lives and this is where the beauty of change resides.

In Duerr’s teachings, we sense into the experience of the mileage we put in approaching and avoiding this center. The chapters contain several reflection exercises, of which the question “What is your relationship with this key?” will be the most challenging yet most rewarding. In essence, this exercise takes the measure of our congruence with our heart’s center.

In Key 3, Break Through Inertia and Take Action, Duerr ups the challenge. I can sum that up as “quit jerking yourself around.” In other words, get out of your head, you’re not fooling anyone with that perfectionist stance, and be human. Thankfully Duerr is a quite a bit kinder and offers key practices in each chapter that are detailed and incisive.

Key 6, Building Allies and Asking for Help, offers a truly challenging practice in an individualistic and self-centered world where allies can quickly become foes and survival instincts drive selfishness. The reflection exercise can evoke disappointment and sadness as much as gratitude and appreciation. I had to remember that the idea we should be surrounded by hordes of dear and beloved friends is likely a construction of our social media-infused world. Although relationships confer positive effects of good health and wellness, social psychology research shows that while we can hole a circle of about 150 friends (Dunbar’s number) we really only have a handful (maybe only 3-5) of intimate relationships. It becomes a bit tricky then know how to load the demands on our intimates when we need help. So, Duerr’s conceptualization of Key 6 is all the more important to read carefully. She defines connections as allies, not friends, drawing on the word as a derivative of alloy, the capacity of the combination to create a different and stronger material. These are connections that generate new and creative outcomes through support, sharing of resources, and creativity.

In the current environment of uncertainty and toxic, divisive relationships, Duerr’s book is a welcomed resource. We may be facing years of economic challenges and job loss is definitely going to take its toll. The gift – and gist – of Work That Matters is crucial in the face of the truth that we can no longer simply find a job ladder that will carry us to our Cloud Nine. Many of us will be confronted with losing our work and careers. The mission statements of most organizations are crafted to resonate with our ideals. The work on the ground, however, has been and remains vastly different from those ideals. But more of us will be faced with seeing the incongruence between what we believe in and what the organization requires us to believe in. And, there is a reality of survival that keeps many of us frozen in our tracks, unable to consider a change for many important reasons. Even if Duerr’s teachings don’t allow us to break away, perhaps they can help us become stealth ethicists in a world that now desperately needs some.