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.

Gary Vaynerchuk seems to know a thing or two about passion. His book - “Crush It” - details the application of his passion, and how he built his family wine business into a multimillion dollar empire. In a talk tonight at Changing Hands bookstore in Phoenix, AZ, Gary thought that finding one’s passion lies in what they consume. In response to an audience member’s question, Gary said that to find one’s passion for work, he might try looking to what he was already consuming - t.v., media, hobbies. What was he already doing?

I think that says a lot, because when work isn’t work, it’s flow. Time seems to take a backseat, and one’s passion and creativity get unleashed. The passion begins to flow, and the line between work and play seems to blur.

I’m interested in two things: finding what you love to do, and then figuring out how you stop that forward progress. What negative messages and roadblocks do you experience on your way to meeting that love?

Sometimes the “I’m not good enoughs” or “Someone is already doing that - I can’t do what they’re doing” get in the way. “Time is limited” or “I need more training” or any number of other folkish aphorisms get in the way. An invisible ruler starts to dictate behavior, comparing yourself to this and that.

Passion is there, where you listen to it or not. Passion for the work you do, or for the people you help. Passion for the play that you invest in, or in the relationships you built. Passion for the new ideas that germinate in your brain, or passion for the way you do seemingly trivial or mundane tasks.

A lot of counseling clients that I talk with have difficulties knowing how to take care of themselves. They are so busy taking care of work, family, money and other life stressors that they don’t have the time or the know-how to develop and practice good self-care techniques.

One of the most important ideas to understand is your personal threshold point. At what point do you start to show wear and cracks? Can you recognize when you get to that point? More importantly, how can you remedy those issues before they really start to affect your mind and body wellness?

That personal threshold point is different for every person. Developing an understanding and clear self-awareness about when that point arises is the first step in practicing self-care. Some people have a very high threshold for stress; others start to show wear earlier.

For men and women alike, the concept of saying “no” is one contributing factor to practicing better self-care. We live in a very demanding culture — one that expects constant multitasking and perfectionism. Being able to say “no”– even when our environment beckons that we say “yes” - is a practice in honoring and respecting yourself. It’s knowing your limits, and it’s not giving out more than you can give, which erodes one’s ability to give anything at all.

Another way to understand self-care is to know what blocks or barriers come between you and the healthy image of you in your mind. We can all agree that eating well, exercising, practicing spirituality or contemplation, and the like, are all positive pursuits on the road to self-care. But, what’s more interesting is how we limit ourselves from the inside with negative self-talk.

What negative messages or beliefs keep you in a state of procrastination or lack of motivation? How do you undermine your own efforts, and keep yourself from the ideal healthy you in your mind? I think those questions are much more relevant, because we need only to listen to our culture which tells us to eat better, exercise daily, be happy… we know all this, and yet sometimes we don’t always do what we know is best for us in the long run.

Practicing good self-care is very important, but understanding our motivations and intentions, as well as the roadblocks and barriers to our own success, is even more important. If we create the right motivations and intentions, we are laying a solid foundation for the continued practice of good self-care over the course of a lifetime.

I like to identify universal themes in the work that I do with men in counseling, so this blog post is no different. I find that guys tend to operate in relationships the same way that they do on the job - with linear, solution-focused mentalities. Although it’s these very tools that make them so successful at what they do professionally, often times inappropriately utilized when creating relationship success.

When shopping for a car or house, when crunching baseball statistics or weighing the pros and cons of a decision to be made, the there are certain left-brain skills that are employed. Reasoning and critical thinking skills are necessary. Weighing costs-benefits is surely a solid solution to use. But, when it comes to relationships, men often fumble because they don’t realize that they’re trying to solve a situation that can’t often be solved with those left-brain skills. The matters of the heart require more attention to the powers of emotional intelligence.

Employing emotional intelligence (simply, to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one’s self or of others) is a skillset that is often deperately needed in men, yet deficient. Being able to “solve” relationship problems (interpersonal, relationship or self) with one’s emotions is something really hard for men to do.

A couple of factors come into play here. Historically, men will mimic the lessons of emotional intelligence (or lack thereof) from their fathers. If there is a lack of emotional intelligence from father to son, and, more likely, that learning has been supplanted with criticism, shame, and education in avoidance, then men will continue to carry on in their adult lives and relationships stunted and emotionally unaware. They will bring those deficiencies to their intimate relationships.

Cuturally, it is reinforced that men invest a lot of their energy in building up their identities from their professional lives. Men get so used to using these left-brain heavy skill sets in careers that predominate their time and attention, they forget to turn them off when they leave work and have a hard time navigating in their intimate relationships and their marriages.

So, it’s not that men aren’t capable of developing emotional intelligence, because they can. I don’t belive in the “old dog, new tricks” cliche, which is tired and antiquated to me. Men have the ability to develop emotionally. Whether they want to or not is another matter.

The silver lining to the recession is that I keep reading about stories of people, like you and me, who are forced into questioning what they do for work, and if it still has meaning for them after all.

I am reading about people who have used their layoff to re-examine their values and beliefs, and challenge the forces that brought them to choose the current work that they are doing. Maybe they are unfulfilled. Maybe their job never brought them their fantasy that they had pinned on this employer, or their field. Maybe they’ve burned out a while ago, and the recession is exposing them to that reality just now.

The idea of re-examination is fascinating to me. Rather, the forces at work that come together to create that re-examination are even more interesting. Why do people suddenly decide to do something different? Or maybe, it’s been a long-winded process, and the door just got kicked open to make a change.

Is this you? Are you happy doing what you for for work? Have you taken a status check with yourself and re-examined your level of happiness with your work?

I’ve been in jobs and a career or two that suck, that didn’t make me happy, and that forced me into a sustained daydreaming state. I don’t want to go back to that mental state anymore. I want to be afforded the continued opportunity to really savor my work and wake up in the morning enjoying what I am doing and feel proud of the work that I do. And I do have that now.

Our life energy is limited. We only have so much on this Earth. We work simply to earn income. And income is simply and expression of life energy. So, we trade our life energy in exchange for income. So, how can we start to maximize our experiences for the life energy that we trade away for - the most precious commodity that we have on this planet.

Maybe the recession is allowing you to re-examine these things. If you’re not in a position to leave your job, or your field, maybe you’ve begun to re-examine the things that you can change in your life so that you start to do more that is aligned with your values. If you value people and family, you might start to spend more time with family and prioritize them over other commitments. If you value music and art, maybe you dedicate more time to playing music or creating or viewing art. If you value sports, maybe this becomes the time to spend more energy and time playing them more.

In times of crisis, such as now, the quality of hope and transformation is always latent. I’m not talking about a Barack Obama-type movement, but I’m thinking smaller and more personal. Crisis always creates opportunity and re-examination, so this is a fine time to do just that. I know I am right now.

I have been struck by how many men use their work or careers to avoid certain problems in their life, or, more specifically, in their marriage. Does this characterize you? Do you find yourself investing too much in your work, and have others close to you told you that this is a problem for them?

It makes sense: in our culture, work is prized over all else. We ask strangers when we meet them, “So, what do you do?” Men are especially guilty of this. We overidentify ourselves with what we do for a living, so it becomes that much easier to escape our everyday problems when we have the safety of our careers to fall into.

So what are we avoiding? Stress at home, marital tension, financial distress, conflicts with wives, girlfriends, or partners, our own anger, guilt, dissatisfaction with family life, boredom, our own fears about connecting with others, and the list goes on.

I work with a lot of men that look back on their lives and regret the time that they spent at work, and regret that they didn’t spend that time getting to know themselves (outside of their careers) or the ones that they love. It’s sad and disheartening to me to see that, and one of the reasons that I enjoy working with guys in their 20’s through 40’s is that I enjoy seeing that process of avoidance get easier, before it’s too late.

- Jason

In celebration of Labor Day Weekend, I was reminded that relationships take a lot of work to succeed. My reaction was “Of course I know this,” and then I thought a little about it, and about what constitutes that work. What are the elements that define that often nebulous statement?

It’s safe to say that for men, these three things are the most important keys to a happy relationship. They are what will make or break a relationship - absolutely, hands-down and no qualms about it. Other than healthy communication, if your wife or girlfriend is not feeling loved, wanted or seen, you’re doomed, brother. You should some in so we can talk and fix the situation.

On being loved, wanted and seen: They have to know it from you. You have to show them regularly that they are well loved. I get this feedback regularly from Leanne, my own partner (Welcome, Leanne, to the blog!). She tells me that girls need to know those things through these ways (take notes, guys):

• complimenting her/validating her on her looks, body, charm, etc.
• telling her that she is beautiful and/or sexy; communicating sexual desire of her
• Initiation of sex (yes, fellows, believe it or not)
• telling her that she is good at something in her life, smart, etc.
• Simply telling her (genuinely) that “I love you.”
• generous supply of meaningful hugs
• planning events or date nights out, and then following through on them
• spontaneously doing things for her that communicate “I’m thinking about you.”
• watching the criticisms/judgments or her or her behavior