The other week, while the child was at school, me and my wife decided—completely on a whim—to ditch work and go for coffee and pastries in town.
This was quite the event (it’s not the sort of thing we generally do – look, I even put on a nice shirt and everything!) and as we were sat there, doing something completely different in nice surroundings, noshing on the most delicious pain au raisin I have ever eaten, I observed…
“I’m so grateful neither of us has a boss, and that we can just down tools and do this sort of thing. Living the dream, baby!”
My wife agreed, we both nodded, felt smug together for about 5 seconds and then both started laughing, simultaneously, at the ridiculousness of what I’d just said.
‘No boss’ - are you kidding me?!?!
We both run our own businesses, and so the ‘boss’ is us.
We’re the boss.
We both put in waaaay more hours than we ever used to when we had job-jobs and ‘the boss’ is never satisfied.
😂
But this is helpful, isn’t it, because it helps to reveal who the true ‘boss’ is, in these situations.
It’s easy to see, that in both my wife’s and my case that:
(The clue is even in the title: ‘self’-employed 😂)
There’s no actual boss here, determining what should be done – we’re making it up as we go along!
It’s the mind that comes up with any rules that we might feel like we have to follow, and in terms of the experience we’re having, we are either just cracking on with things happily enough (in spite of all of the things that need doing), or we’re being tormented by the mind’s endless demands.
There’s always more to be done on a business you’re running yourself, so the need to be in tune with this simple fact, is crucial.
Now, you may have a job-job, and you may have a boss, but here’s the curious thing about the inside-out nature of experience:
It’s slightly less easy to see, but just like me and my wife, you only get to experience the mind, and what it says about work and your boss: 100% of your felt experience comes from within!
(Which explains why some days other people really bother you, and other days, those same people don’t.)
For you too, when it comes to the actual experience you’re having, the only ‘boss’ you have to worry about, is the mind.
And I can heartily recommend not worrying about that.
💟
Giles
p.s. Doesn’t seem right, does it, when written down? Especially if your boss is an a***. But this is the beauty of the inside-out understanding – it gives us a different perspective on everything.
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