I’ve been thinking about what it means to be our own cheerleaders at work. No one else is going to advocate for us with the same persistence or clarity. When we learn to cheer ourselves on, we stop waiting for others to validate us and start building our own foundation of confidence.

But here’s where it gets tricky: many of us carry old life patterns into our jobs without even realizing it. If recognition was something we craved in childhood, it’s easy to look for it from our managers or colleagues. The problem is, that’s not their responsibility. Workplaces aren’t designed to heal our past dynamics and when we forget that, disappointment follows. Similarly, we continue to seek out people and places that feel familiar, rather than authentically aligned.

At its core, work is a means to an end. Yes, most of us spend more time working than we do in our personal lives, but that doesn’t make work a relationship. When we treat it like one, the boundaries blur and we end up more entangled than we need to be. Clear-headedness reminds us that work is just what it is: a space for contribution, growth, and earning a living. Nothing more, nothing less.

Even the way we talk about strengths and weaknesses could use a reframe thanks to Marcus Buckingham. Strengths are simply the things we know we’re good at and would like to do more of. Weaknesses are not flaws in our character they’re just the things that drain us and therefore what we would like to do less of. That’s it. Naming them for what they are allows us to align our energy better, so we can pour ourselves into what sustains us instead of what empties us.

During a recent meditation, this message came through: the meaning of life is to simply be. To live with aliveness. And when we carry that into our work, something shifts. We stop over-identifying with our roles or outcomes, and we start showing up more fully: present, grounded, alive in the moment.