My yoga class this week is about how to be happier at work. Click here to take it.
Julie, one of my favorite yoga teachers, taught a memorable class last October. She said “work gives off drama like smoke from a fire.” And suggested four questions to ask yourself to be happier at work:
1. What am I best at?
2. What do I enjoy?
3. What can I make money at?
4. What does the world need?
Three out of four Americans are unhappy at work, so Julie’s are important questions. I love the honesty of the movie Office Space, and the scene in the header. You can watch it here.
Depending on our privilege level, it’s an open secret that many of us only do a very small amount of actual work in our jobs. That doesn’t mean we’re happier. But the paycheck gives us a superficial feeling of security. I often have days where I wish I was the mailman. Deliver the letters. Job done. Less guilt. I was speaking this week with a guy my age who earns $12.50 an hour to process tenderloins in a chicken factory and honestly, I felt like he was teaching me a lot just by entertaining the idea of a conversation.
There’s an awful lot of injustice in the world.
Yoga gives us the opportunity to focus our effort for an hour, and a deeper feeling of security than getting paid. I love the idea that it’s revolutionary to be able to focus for 25 minutes at a time these days. It says a lot about how toxic many workplaces are. The successful investor Warren Buffett encourages people to focus on just five goals after crossing 20 more off a list of 25. It’s an interesting idea, but what if you threw away the whole list altogether? Then what?
Since finding a daily yoga practice, I’ve found myself able to focus more on what’s important. I don’t even have specific goals, these days. I’m just more attuned to trying to live each day by certain values such as nonviolence and honesty. If there are results that come from that? Cool. 😎
Let’s work it out on the mat.
Love from,
Matt
P.S. It’s This Week’s Vegetarian Recipes!
Yoga is based on nonviolence, or “ahimsa”, in Sanskrit, which means no killing animals. I didn’t like the idea at first (and I still have the odd relapse) but have been trying vegetarianism on, and enjoying the subtle effects on my mood and body.
It’s peak greens season and I’m getting the old salad anxiety—the fear of not being able to eat everything in the fridge before it goes off! So my recipes this week are for pickled napa cabbage from The Momofuku Cookbook by David Chang and Peter Meehan, and for garlic scape pesto, which I got by scouring the internet. Both are straightforward recipes to use up delicious greens in a storable way, just in case simple deep breathing isn’t enough to get you comfortable with the contents of your fridge.
Pickled Napa Cabbage
1 cup hot water
½ cup rice wine vinegar
6 tbsps sugar
2 ¼ tsp kosher salt
A napa cabbage
Remove the greener outer layer leaves from the head of cabbage and discard them. Use the next couple of layers—16 to 20 of the bigger leaves—for this pickle. Make a triangular incision into each of the cabbage leaves to cut out the large, tough white rib and discard it. Combine the water, vinegar, sugar, and salt in a pickling container, stir until the sugar dissolves, and gently pack the leaves into the container. Cover and refrigerate, then serve after four or five days.
Garlic Scape pesto
¼ cup nuts
¾ cup coarsely chopped garlic scapes
Juice and zest of ½ a lemon
½ tsp salt
Ground black pepper
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup grated parmesan cheese
Toast the nuts for a few minutes in a frying pan over low heat until they’re just starting to brown. Combine the scapes, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a blender and pulse it until everything is mixed together. Then add the olive oil in a stream with the motor running. Add the cheese and serve with pasta. This has quite a punchy taste, and lasts well in the freezer, where it may even benefit slightly from calming down a bit. Just like those of us who are workaholics.
Dessert suggestion: Strawberries with balsamic vinegar. This is a classic in Modena, Italy, where they’ll add a tbsp of their local black vinegar to half a pound of strawberries, along with a light sprinkling of sugar and some black pepper. It sounds counterintuitive, but the combination of flavors works a treat.
I hope you have a great week. Let me know if you’d like to connect to discuss your practice, or anything else, frankly.
