Trying to block out or push back chronic negative thinking about our jobs usually means one thing: we’re not listening to ourselves. Although it’s tough to talk about “do what you love” in the worst economy since forever, it’s another thing to live under a blanket of justifications and reasons to stay inactive and hating our jobs.

Like emotions, which need airing, pushing away that what makes us light up professionally will always be lurking if you choose to not attend to it. As we push our emotions away, they come right back to haunt us, usually with much greater power. Emotions don’t like to be pushed away. Neither does one’s true vocational inspirations. We can push them away, sweep them under the rug, and put up with things as status quo. Our grandfathers and ancestry did this, often toiling away in industrial settings for hours on end.

Symptomatically, we create a world of stress and conflict within our own bodies, our families and our relationships – not just with ourselves, but with those we love most. Our wives and girlfriends know we’re unhappy, but they’re not sure why. They want to help, but feel helpless to change, as do we. We grudgingly paint on our morning smile, and show up to work like a good trooper, masking the discontent we really experience inside. We’re angry, depressed and hiding from ourselves and the world. Is this sensical?

If you’re unhappy in your current work or job, what keeps you there? Again, acknowledging current financial realities, what would happen if the economy were o.k., and you were o.k.? Would you look for a change then? Would you take a step off the plank and seek greater fulfillment and happiness for your worklife then?

It’s a fine line between the current economic realities and using those realities to justify our fear and lack of movement in the world and in our lives. The line is so fine that it takes close introspection to discern one from the other, and only you can do that.

I spoke today at Paradise Valley Community College about the effects of culture on men, and, specifically, how as men, we are driven my the messages that culture brands into us. 

Being a “real” man in our culture means to “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” and take care of things on your own. You “shouldn’t need to seek out help,” even when you’re depressed.

Could you see how this could create more suffering? By not asking for help, men will spiral deeper into the problems that they should be asking for help for.

Our culture doesn’t permit men to be depressed, sad, or even non-productive. It doesn’t allow for men to be emotional, and yet the same culture that tells us that also says that men should be emotional beings, especially within the context of an intimate relationship. It’s cultural schizophrenia.

6 million men a year are diagnosed with depression, and who’s to say how many are undiagnosed. Depression can only get worse without the right help, which would include counseling and psychiatry.

To “be a man” means a lot of things in our culture, and leaves little room for experiences that are not consistent with its definition of being a man. Weakness, sadness, fear – all are emotions and experienced that are sidelined when it comes to being a man in our culture, and that’s unfortunate. To integrate the whole experience of being a human being – both the feminine and masculine – is to be whole. To integrate the feminine is to be be female; rather, feminine feature, such as emotional expression, empathy, kindness, are things that are lacking in today’s modern man.

So, to lop off one side of our humanity and to accept the culturally-driven messages about what it means to be a man is missing a lot. It’s missing exactly one-half of the story.

- Jason