Introduction from the book It's All About The Journey Finding Peace, Success and Fulfillment in the Corporate World by John F. Williams and Paula Gamonal

There are many people who are refugees of the corporate world. They view the business environment as a chaotic, unnatural, unhealthy place that they escape from every weekend, or when they retire to a peaceful island in the Bahamas.

John bought a Harley Davidson Heritage Softtail and had it customized, the way John had always dreamed of, and we put several thousand miles on it within the first few months of owning it. One of the unintended (but pleasant) side effects of riding the Harley is that we meet a great many other people that ride motorcycles in national parks, across back roads through rural areas, and other places that we find peace and beauty. Many of the people we meet are doctors, lawyers, engineers and other professional people who are looking for an escape from their 80-hour weeks and the office backstabbing. They want to feel something real, like the roar of the engine, the smell of gasoline, and the simple challenge of the road.

My father was a systems analyst who couldn’t wait to retire from a major utility company. He was tired of the work, the travel, the phone calls late at night. He moved to the middle of New Mexico, near the Continental Divide, to live on a beautiful but rustic piece of property where he couldn’t see his nearest neighbors, the phone and the doorbell would only announce family or friends. He didn’t even have a computer for several years. It was great to get away from the politics, the paperwork, and the compulsive demands on time and energy.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Variety in life is one thing, escape is quite another. I’m a strong advocate of spending your “spare time” doing something very different from your career. John has his Harley and a number of projects using his hands. I have Tae Kwon Do, and we both love traveling and photography—being tourists in the big, beautiful world. And there have been times when it felt like a necessary escape. But most of the time we enjoy getting back to work. We enjoy our careers, and we enjoy “moonlighting” projects. We stay up late most nights, because we get involved in work, study, and different projects with family or friends.

Needless to say, we don’t watch much television. But we see this as an expansion of our work, not as an escape from it. I think it is almost a moral imperative to enjoy what you do for a living.

To feel like you’re really contributing something to the world, to your customers and co-workers, and to your organization. Human beings are social creatures by nature. They are also goal-driven creatures by nature.

The “secrets,” if there any, are alignment between your personal and work life, and enjoyment of the journey and challenges you meet along the way.

Lack of alignment is an issue for many professional people. Often there is a huge gulf between their work life and their personal life. They are different people if you meet them in a business meeting than if you meet them at home on a Saturday morning. They have one set of values and goals while they’re at work, and during their daily commute they exchange them for a different set of values and goals at home. To shift gears like that puts an unbelievable amount of stress on a person.

They feel that they have to rush around like crazy, be ruthless with everyone (including themselves) and frantically drive from one objective to the next. They create enemies that they then have to expend energy defending against. They make unrealistic promises out of fear for their positions, and have to work frantically (and drive their staff frantically) to “cash the checks they’ve written.” They find themselves burned out, they feel abused by their company, their co-workers and their clients, their blood pressure goes up, and they find themselves involuntary or voluntary refugees of the corporate world.

It is important to find an organization, and a place within it, where you can exercise and expand your skills. Your own personal motives and values have to be expanded and amplified by the motives and values of the organization. If you have that “line of sight” between your own personal goals, and your team or department’s goals, and the goals of the organization, then everything you do seems to be magnified.

You get a satisfying synergy that exponentially expands beyond your personal power.

You also have to enjoy the journey and the process of meeting the opportunities and challenges along the way. You have to see your current project as an end in itself, rather than a means to an end. I’ll illustrate with yet another motorcycle metaphor. Many people go on vacation with the intention of arriving at a destination and engaging in specific activities there, expecting the end result to be a refreshed, reenergized self. We enjoy the journey—the chance encounters at gas stations and small restaurants and coffee shops. The scenery, sounds and smells of the countryside or small towns we ride through. We’ve taken some of the same trips between the same two cities by car or airplane and it’s a decidedly different experience. We like to motor along back roads at about 40 to 50 miles per hour, enjoying the smell of new cut grass or fallen leaves, the wind in our faces, the differences in temperature from the bottom of a hill to the top as the thermals rise, the rumble of the engine, and the vivid 360 degree visual experience. We enjoy the journey.

Alignment and enjoyment are not new concepts. This is not a squishy new-age philosophy. Nor is it exclusively an American philosophy. It was embraced by a number of thinkers very different from each other in time and place.

• Your work is to discover your work, and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.—Buddha
• Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.—Theodore Roosevelt
• It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.—Pablo Picasso
• Work is love made visible.—Kahlil Gibran

You might be reading this so far and saying to yourself, “Yeah, that’s great and all, but these people have NO IDEA how HARD my job is!”

That is true. We wouldn’t pretend to know your unique experience, and have no intention of trivializing it or simplifying it. The reason we wrote every one of these articles is because one of us, or someone we know, or someone who asked us for help, was experiencing a problem in and needed real-world, nuts and bolts, practical HELP.

Nobody knows what experiences will befall them on any journey. Bilbo Baggins told his nephew Frodo in JRR Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring that “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door…You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.” Of course this advice kept neither of them at home, otherwise the world would not have seen four volumes of great literature.

The following articles illustrate ways to resolve different problems.

Each article starts with an “opportunity” which otherwise might be called a “problem.” Starting by seeing the problem in a positive light, it discusses a possible solution or way to meet the opportunity. These articles are meant as tools to help you bring sanity, humanity, peace and prosperity to your work life, and each may be of some value in and of itself. But the maximum benefit from any of them is to approach the situation as an opportunity to align your own motives and values with those of your organization, and to enjoy the journey.

I really enjoy the tagline of the Wall Street Journal—“Adventures in Capitalism,” for just that reason. If you approach each day as an opportunity to face some challenges and enjoy the process of unraveling a problem and chasing down a solution, you will be successful. And not just in the material sense, although that naturally follows doing what you’re good at. With thoughtful application, you will also find peace and fulfillment from each individual opportunity, from your current job, and from your whole journey through the corporate world.

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