What Does It Mean To "Do The Work"
And Is The Rising Popularity of "Do the Work" Just An Extension of Hustle Culture?
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“This idea of ‘doing the work,’ is just the latest manifestation of the kind of self-improvement culture that has long permeated American society and that is closely linked to America’s obsessively individualistic bent.”
This is a quote from a recent New York Times opinion piece titled "‘Doing the Work’ and the Obsession with Superficial Self-Improvement. Pause and read it if you can, but if you are pay-walled, I would say the title summarizes Jessica Grouse’s (the author) point well. I’ve read this article several times and a few things stand out to me now that did not upon first read.
This article is not about recovery work. Recovery is never even mentioned. Which is disappointing if you ask me because the piece would be far more substantial if the writer spoke on the term “do the work” and its historical ties to AA and recovery.
Then again, I’m glad she left out recovery work because I don’t think she would be the right person to add that perspective (some clarity on this later) but it does leave this piece with a huge gaping hole of missing information.
The writers argument seems more focused on the words “work” than anything. And her ambivalence to adding yet another piece of work to her already exhaustive list is what she’s essentially built her entire argument on.
I shared this article in a sober meeting recently, not because I agree with it but because I found it thought provoking and worth diving deeper on. It’s worth considering and understanding what “the work” even means because it means something far different for someone in recovery than how it’s being used by the mainstream population in recent days.
If I had to define it, I would say that “doing the work” both in recovery and in life overall means choosing myself every day. It means putting myself first, like I’m parenting the little girl inside of me the same way I love and parent my own children. It’s living life in Shreya, a yoga philosophy. As opposed to Preya, which refers to seeking instant gratification, Becky Vollmer describes Shreya in her book You Are Not Stuck as “long-term fulfillment. Preya is what’s good and easy and pleasing; Shreya is beneficial and takes the long view.”
Is it work? Yes, a lot of it is work. But that’s such a simplified way to describe it, it’s a disservice to what we are even doing. Would you call someone saving a life “work?” I can’t imagine someone heroically saving a stranger downing the ocean and shrugging it off as “work.” Or watching a caterpillar transform into a butterfly. Miraculous? Yes. Sublime. Absolutely. Work? (*crickets chirping*) And in this same way, doing the work is so much bigger, harder, intense, profound and deeply satisfying.
So how do we do it?
When I was 17 in therapy for an eating disorder, my therapist asked me to look at myself in the 3rd person… as a newborn baby. “What would you feed her? How would you hold her,” my therapist pressed. I imagined loving a baby, holding her, feeding her the best, most nourishing milk. I imagined humming to her when she looked in my eyes and gently rocking her when she cried. It was a far cry from the way I cared for myself at the time. The therapist asked me to imagine then doing to the baby what I was doing to my own body. I was horrified. Disgusted. While it’s worth noting this exercise did not stop my actions, it planted a seed. Of all the years I’ve been in therapy, there are few moments that remained so etched in my brain as that exercise from 27 years ago.
I think of doing the work as treating my body, my heart and myself like that baby I envisioned from the exercise. Learning how to care for her in an unconditionally loving way. In recovery, that means learning how to stop ingesting harmful substances. But for me it also means learning how to work through my tendency to self-sabotage, my people pleasing drive to control others’ opinions of me, and my disdain and disregard for my life as something worth protecting, nourishing, even loving.
In Grouse’s article she makes little mention of what she considers “the work,” tossing out meditation and therapy as examples. But she did make clear that she saw it at face value. Doing the work means labor in it’s most basic of definitions. Grinding. Expending energy.
When I read this article, my first thoughts were: what a privilege it must be to be able to shade “doing the work” as just another self-aggrandizing trend and not something my entire life is dependent on. But on further thought, I think there is merit to questioning the meaning behind something when it reaches mainstream popularity. We see this a lot with people using clinical psychology terms to express themselves in inappropriate ways, like saying they are “OCD” about something or casually calling someone a narcissist.
Using the expression “doing the work” to minimize or Band-Aid a mistake you made can feel especially ick if there’s no clarification of what that even means. And I think anyone outside of recovery probably means something a little different when they say it at all. It’s like the term ‘self care’; it’s meaning can differ entirely for each individual.
I could probably write an entire book on this topic. There’s so much to discuss and understand. But in the meantime, I have identified various ways to do the work in recovery, shared by various sources.
In Alcoholics Anonymous, doing the work is taken from another popular expression of “working the program” and a common slogan they use: “It works if you work it.” The program is the 12-step program and is the most commonly used recovery programs in the world.
In
’s book, Push Off From Here, Laura dedicates a whole chapter on what it means to do the work, which she breaks down into five core practices: acceptance, honesty, connection, embodiment, and service.In Dr. Nicole LePera’s book, aptly titled How To Do The Work, Dr. LePera describes the work as “the pursuit of insight into the Self and our place in our community.” While LePera’s book is not recovery specific it does identify its audience as someone on a healing journey. I would wager this book plays a role in the growing use of the expression “do the work” in the mainstream.
Doing the work means learning how to connect our bodies and inner knowing to our actions. It’s big thinking, like spirituality and striving for a greater good, and it’s smaller actions like gratitude work and going to recovery meetings. It’s planting seeds and reaping fruit. It’s hard work and it’s a gift. It’s living life with intention and finding grace and healing for all the mistakes we’ve made along the way.
Maybe, what it all comes down to is this: in recovery, doing the work means saving your own life, one day at a time.
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