DailyJim: Loving my work when many people might never imagine that someone could love their work

Hello everyone, welcome to another DailyJim. This is Tuesday, June 24th, 2025. Today I want to talk about loving my work when many people might never imagine that someone could love their work.

I was thinking recently about this time when I was in Germany. I was working on this project with friends of mine. It was a train-the-trainers event. It was the first one that we did and I was so happy to be with the team of trainers. Some were old friends, some were new friends, and I just felt so grateful to be able to spend time with them. And on the project, I met a girl and fell pretty quickly for her, and I was so grateful to spend time with her as well. And conflicted between spending time with my friends the trainers) and with her. And I also loved the workshops that I ran. I was so excited to wake up in the morning and go do these workshops and to plan them and to make it all happen. And so I was, you could say, balancing all three, but really enjoying all three and loving that if I had to leave one, I got to go to the other.

And I talk about this because I've been thinking a lot about how much I love what I do. I was fixing up the website yesterday, working on the podcast, working on making these audiograms for these DailyJim  episodes where I can automate them so it can happen. I love kind of the system side of it, trying to make it automatic, trying to get these things out. I love thinking about these episodes. I love talking with people about conflict resolution, talking with people about culture and how it impacts us, talking with people about emotions, coming up with new exercises to practice to get better at dealing with all this emotional combat. I love it. I love it. I've loved it since at least 2012. So that's 13 years. But even in 2007, after I finished university, after I finished college, I wanted to go into conflict resolution. I wrote a paper in 2005 about emotions and languages and first and second languages. I've loved this stuff for a long time. And I feel so lucky that I can work in it. And I've realized that over the last, you know, I don't know, a lot of times I get into romantic relationships and I love the person so much that I'm with. And then I don't focus as much on doing the work.

And even lately, I think I've been trying to figure out how can I make money in the most efficient way possible with the work? How can I do one hour a day of the work so I can get the money the most efficiently so that I can hang out with the woman that I'm dating and also hang out with friends?

Because I love people. I love my friends. I love the people that I date. I love family. I like hanging out with these people, like spending time with them. I like being there for them. But I also love doing the work. because doing the work is being there for other people that I see as friends. I see the work as being there for people, building the tools, building the experiences, building the relationships with people. I see that as the work. And I love doing it. And I think a lot of people in my life don't love their work so much.

Maybe they like it. maybe they even at times love it but I  think a lot of people really  don't, a lot of people tolerate their jobs. I  think a lot of people sacrifice and do the job even though they don't want to do it  because they'd much rather spend their time with their friends and family. And I  can get it right, I  have a job, you know, I  have work that I  love doing, and I still often choose to spend time with friends and family, and, I wonder what this world would be like if more people had work that they loved. That they had something to do during the day or during the night or whenever time they wanted to do it. That they loved doing. The act of doing it. Spending, using the time, putting the attention to the work. Just loving it.

And, I don't know. I think maybe this is why sometimes we think about something like universal basic income and we say, "Oh, people are just going to be lazy, you give them money all they're going to do is just sit around, maybe maybe people love playing video games more than they love doing other types of work; maybe they're, maybe that's not work right; maybe people like hanging out with their friends or going out for drinks more than they like doing other types  of work, we could say.

But I don't know. I think there are things that we actually love doing. For me, it's talking with people about deep emotional stuff, helping people resolve conflicts, helping people learn tools on how to improve their body, to improve their relationships, to improve their outlook on life, on the faith in humanity, the faith in themselves. I love this stuff. Coming up with drills and ways to train on how to get better at dealing with rejection and betrayal and all sorts of challenges.

But I think one of the things that's hard for me is...Loving my work so much that people are like, "Well, why would you do it if it's not giving you that much money right now? It's because I love it. And then they're like, "Well, but you're not doing it that much. If you love it so much, why aren't you doing it? That's a really, it's a fair question. I think sometimes the challenge is people are like, "Well, if it's not giving you money, why are you doing it? And then I even ask myself, "Well...or if I start doing it, people are like, "No, but hang out with me." Whether that's, again, in a romantic relationship or friends or family. People tell me they want me to go just get a job, but then they don't realize that if I just go get some other job, I won't be able to hang out with them. And they say that's okay with them, but I don't fully believe it. I don't know. Just kind of rambling a little bit here, but this idea is like.

I love what I do, and I love my friends, and I love my girlfriend and I love my family. And there's only one me. I can only spend so much time in so many different places. If I'm spending time with friends, I'm not necessarily working. If I'm spending time with my girlfriend, I'm not necessarily working. If I'm spending time with my family, I'm not necessarily working. If I'm working, I'm not necessarily spending time with my girlfriend or my friends or my family or friends. But this is kind of the balance, this is kind of the dynamic I have been hoping and dreaming for.

And I think maybe one of the conflicts is interacting with other people who don't have that love for what they're doing. They don't have that work or hobby or passion that they say, "Listen, I love spending time with you, and I'm going to go do this because I love doing this too."

I think a lot of people go to work and they just dread it. Or worse, it causes them a lot of trauma because they have to transgress some of their moral values because maybe their work is stealing. Maybe their work is selling drugs.

And these things can really harm people, but I  mean, maybe it's not so extreme maybe it's just, they have a passion that they love and then but they can't afford to do it so they have to go do something on the side so their actual work that pays the money is something that they dread but it gives them money and so they're just trying to figure out how to finish it as fast as they can. And so when people have that perspective of, "Hey, you're supposed to hate your job. Your job only exists  to give you money," which a lot of people have told me this. They say they work to live, not live to work.

And so their job, "Hey, you know, my job sucks, but it gives me money, and so then I can do the things that I really want to do." It sounds kind of miserable, but maybe this is coming from a privileged place where, "Oh, you have enough money, you don't need to work these hard jobs, and you're lucky that you have the support."

I don't know. I'm rambling a bit, but I think it's just been me trying to reflect a little bit on, what happens when we actually love our job, we love what we do, we love the work that we do? So much so that we're willing to do it for free or not even, more than free, so much so we're willing to do it and pay other people? There's a guy I  helped the other day, he's going through a lot of stuff, I  said, "Bro, come over to my place, I  will buy pizza, let's talk. "I don't know, and like maybe your professional counseling service." "No, we just, can we just have a conversation? And I paid, because I  care about this guy. You  say, "Oh, but you that's not how you do a business." No, this is how I do life. This is how I do work. For me, it's the same. And I care so much about this stuff.

And yes, the more time I spend on work, the more it might help me financially because people will say, "Oh, he actually cares about this stuff. He's not just going to go spend time with his friends and girlfriend and family. He's going to actually do this work."

But also just doing the work makes me feel so alive. If I just spend time with friends and family and  I don't, and  I don't talk about this stuff, I don't talk about politics, I don't talk about culture, I don't talk about emotions and conflict and how we're getting into wars because people are maybe trying to beat their chest and show their strength and avoid the real conflicts that are happening underneath in their lives because it has very little to do with Iran or has to do with Israel or Gaza or whatever. It's most people have conflicts in their life in their personal lives and we don't deal with them and we project this stuff all over the place. I  love talking about this stuff and it drives me, it excites me and when I  don't talk about it when, I  don't do this work, I  go crazy because imagine finding something you love so much and you just don't do it or someone you love so much and you don't see them. It's a very similar thing.

And so I'm excited to kind of challenge people and do what I love, even if it makes other people angry, even if it makes other people sad that we're not spending as much time together, again, romantically or friends or family. So yeah kind of excited to be honest, eh  yeah.

So, we'll see where this goes. I'm excited to go to the cafe, fix the audiogram software so that I can get this automatically up right after I upload the episode and share some of the highlights, tidbits with you and maybe the full episode with the video.

And yeah, hear your experience. Do you love what you do? Does loving what you do cause problems in your relationship or in your family because other people don't love it or love what they do? Because you love what you do so much that it doesn't bring money and then people are like, "Why are you spending so much time doing something that doesn't bring money? Hey, if I had a nickel for every time somebody said that to me, I would have money. I would have a lot of  money.

So, just something to think about whether you love what you do and if you love what you do, how that impacts the relationships in your life based on whether those people love what they do and whether they think it's even possible to love what somebody does for work, for life. So, I'll  end there because I'm past 10 minutes and talk to you tomorrow. Talk to y'all tomorrow. Bye. .