Weaving our lives into a meaningful whole
This summer LeaderWise’s staff are sharing a framework developed by psychologist and career counseling researcher, Dr. Sunny Hansen, and her colleagues that takes a holistic approach to "planning one's life course." While career counseling often focuses on choosing a job or advancing one's career, Hansen’s book Integrative Life Planning identifies six critical life tasks that help people think more broadly about building a meaningful life. Originally published in 1996, it’s guidance for the ages.
What does it mean to live and work with wholeness?
In her Integrative Life Planning model, Sunny Hansen outlines our second critical task: to acquire a holistic self-view that guides our career-decision making and the balance of our life roles, work and otherwise. In my work with career counseling clients in the past few years, I have observed that the concept of wholeness feels very elusive in our current time and place. My clients sincerely want their work roles to align with their core values and to do work that needs doing in the world. When it comes to implementing that plan, they are met with dissonance and barriers. In trying to resolve this dissonance, they ask questions that don’t have ready answers.
Do I water down my altruistic values so I can keep working here and have the chance of changing a harmful system?
How do I balance my passion for intellectual challenge at work with my desire to be present and active as a parent, a partner, a friend, a citizen and neighbor?
I know just what I need to do for work. Why am I not being hired, or hired at a liveable wage?
Why does it feel like I am wearing a mask at work? What emotional labor am I taking on just to maintain my integrity?
I am doing exactly what I want to be doing. Why am I so burned out?
In facing these questions, we often rely on zero-sum assumptions of “either or” and “yes, but.” I can meet this need, but at the expense of balance in this area of my life. Or, there is no way to do this job and feel whole and balanced. Following our dreams in one area of our lives involves sacrifice in another area. Moreover, the world of work is not an inherently just or fair system. How can we possibly achieve wholeness?
Here’s where Sunny Hansen reminds us of the nature of our task. Wholeness comes from weaving the strands of our lives together. Wholeness is about complementarity, process, and interdependence rather than achievement and completion. In addition, we can look to a number of weaving traditions where the inclusion of flaws and imperfections is intentional. In Pueblo and Navajo weaving tradition, Persian rug-making, and the broader Japanese wabi-sabi philosophy, imperfection signifies humility, deference to a greater power, and a connection to the universe. We can only assume that dissonance and paradox are part of the process.
As Parker Palmer states in his book A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life,
“wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness—mine, yours, ours—need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.” (pg. 5).
So how can we transform brokenness and dissonance into an opportunity?
We need to move beyond our own limited insights and wisdom. Palmer urges us to cultivate an intentional community that serves as a “circle of trust,” with which we can grapple with these questions and connect with our innate wholeness bolstered by the support of those who truly see us.
During these quieter summer months, let’s take a moment to ask ourselves these questions:
Who am I connecting with to better understand what really matters to me in balancing life and work, and the many roles and identities I hold dear?
What insights might these trusted others have on the present questions and challenges I’m facing in the balancing act? How can I lean on that community in new and different ways?
Can I view wholeness as an ongoing tapestry rather than a completed masterpiece?
LeaderWise is uniquely gifted at accompanying leaders as they discern wholeness and transform brokenness and dissonance. It’s what we do as therapists, spiritual directors, pastoral supervisors, and coaches. We dive into these questions with you knowing that the answers lie within you, supporting you in noticing and wondering and realizing.
Your next most faithful step lies in simply reaching out. We’re here for you.
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