Five Emotional Signals That You Need to Find More Purpose at Work
The five emotional signals you need to find more purpose at work are boredom, disinterest, apathy, envy and resentment. By understanding why you’re feeling these emotions, you can start to change your thoughts and behaviours so that you find more meaning in your career.
In this article you’re going to learn:
Why you should be paying attention to your feelings when trying to find more purpose
The difference between data from your mind, gut, and heart
How each of these five emotional signals manifests
Why each one is an important sign that you shouldn’t ignore when it comes to finding more purpose at work
And you’re going to engage your critical thinking skills so you can actually do something about how you’re feeling - not just feel unhappy about it
So let’s get into it!
Quick Links
Why Your Feelings Are So Useful When Finding Purpose
There are plenty of external signs that indicate your career is stagnating or you've fallen into a career rut, but the best indicator that you need to find more purpose at work is how you feel. Our emotions do an incredible job of telling us more than we can just pick up with our mind; often, what seems like a ‘great idea’ actually feels awful when we really sit with it.
I like to think of our emotions as one of our three 'data centres': our mind, our gut, and our heart.
The Mind Data Centre: Finding Meaning Through Thinking 🧠
Our mind helps us understand the world through cognition, taking in information and logically or rationally attempting to untangle it. Our mind is incredibly powerful, often to the point of overriding our other data centres. This is why tools like meditation and journaling are so helpful in understanding the data that’s being processed in our mind and how it conflicts with (or is trying to override) the more sensitive data we are taking in and analysing in our heart and our gut.
The Gut Data Centre: Finding Meaning Through Sensing 🕷️
Our gut helps us understand the world through instinct. These are the primal experiences of life – our ability to fight, fly, freeze, or fawn. Our awareness of our gut intelligence helps us to navigate situations of crisis or conflict, as well as being our driver for acting spontaneously or in a joyful, carefree way. Like our mind, our gut is sensitive and intuitive, and is easily overridden by the mind or external factors like diet or stress.
The Heart Data Centre: Finding Meaning Through Feeling 💓
The third and final data centre is the heart, the home of emotions. When we take in information from the world and have an emotional response to it, we are processing and trying to make sense of that information in our ‘heart centre’. We may not understand why or how emotions arise, or be able to predict our emotional response to situations, but our emotional landscape at any given point in our life is an excellent indicator to understand where we are happy with the circumstances of our life - or where they need to change.
So while your mind might be telling you that everything's fine in your job, that you should feel lucky to have a career like the one you do, that staying in a job you don't really enjoy is the best way to build up savings or make a deposit for your future …
… your heart and the data that's being processed there might be telling a completely different story.
By understanding these emotional signals emanating from your heart data centre, you can start to balance out your heart, mind, and gut so that rather than ignoring how you feel, you can use it to help you find more purpose at work.
Signal #1 You Need To Find More Purpose at Work: Boredom
The first emotional signal that indicates you’re not doing meaningful work is boredom. Boredom is the feeling of being worn out by dullness or tedious repetition, and it's a feeling that all of us know very well.
Why do I keep feeling bored?
As we get older and more established in our lives and careers, boredom can seem to become a more frequently felt emotion compared to when we were children. As kids, everything is new and different and we rarely have a day that is the same as the previous one, so we barely have a chance to get bored. But when we’re doing the same job day in and day out, perhaps for decades, and all of the problems of your life seem to have been for the most part fixed - you have a steady job, a partner that you quite like, and there doesn't seem to be much risk on the horizon - suddenly boredom seems to become normal.
And we are very intolerant of it - to the point where we have created lots of devices to help distract us from the boredom we feel. The invention and proliferation of short-form media is a really good example of something that simultaneously distracts us from boredom and creates the conditions where we are more likely to get bored when faced with stretches of time when nothing seems to be happening!
I actually used to teach about the psychology of this phenomenon when I was a lecturer; the compulsive behavioural design of social media that keeps us coming back because we don't know what we're going to get, and how that ‘hook’ helps stave off our boredom.
And if you are a neurodiverse person, you may also have additional struggles with boredom. As someone with ADHD, I know I have a particularly low tolerance for feeling bored and will seek dopamine more quickly than someone who doesn’t have the particular brain chemistry that I do. Alternatively, some neurodiverse people might take great pleasure in repeated routines that others could find boring (causing tensions in professional and personal relationships).
Why boredom is an important sign you lack purpose
I could probably write a whole separate article about boredom as an emotion, its relationship to dopamine, and how or when it is a problem vs when it’s actually a healthy thing to be experiencing. What’s important is that it is a very human thing to dislike boredom: our brains are in part driven by a desire to feel pleasure and ‘rewards’ for our behaviour, to seek the dopamine that is released after certain experiences. We don’t want to stay the same - we want to change, grow and (literally) evolve! And that’s why feeling bored at work is such an important sign.
Boredom is a signal that you need to find more purpose in your career because it tells you there is not enough change, growth or evolution happening for you to feel satisfied. When you do have purpose and meaning to your work, no single day will feel boring. Of course there will always be moments and tasks which you don't necessarily want to do - even though I have a lot of purpose in my work, I still don't like doing my accounts nor do I find email admin thrilling or exciting 🥱 But we can tolerate small doses of boredom when your life and work feels novel and interesting. Boredom is the indicator that you have untapped curiosity, and that curiosity is itching to be let out to play.
For more examples of what boredom might look like day to day in your career, check out my article Feeling Stuck? The Signs of Career Stagnation.
Signal #2 You Need To Find More Purpose at Work: Disinterest
The second emotional signal that indicates you need to find more purpose at work is disinterest. This is a feeling of preoccupation, inattentiveness, and the incapability of behaving or reacting in a way that feels healthy to you.
After you've suffered with boredom for a while, it tends to mutate into disinterest. I see this as a natural protective mechanism for your mind's data centre: it's not had enough stimulation and its curiosity hasn’t been satiated, so it starts to act like a moody teenager. It manifests as disinterest - you really don't care about what you're doing or why you're doing it, you have no skin in the game, and any results you get (including your salary or social kudos) similarly feel irrelevant.
You’re most likely to identify this emotional signal when you realise you’re distracted aka more interested in something else, other than work. There will be another force pulling you ‘away’ from your current job and ‘towards’ itself. This doesn't mean that you’re fully aware of what that other thing is, nor does it mean that the interest elsewhere is necessarily positive; for example, you could be finding it hard to concentrate at work because of something that's happening in the news, even if that manifests as a non-specific, subtle unease. But this feeling is useful because it indicates whatever you’re doing in your career is not sufficiently engaging to maintain your attention. It's more than simply boredom with what you're doing - it's no longer entertaining or interesting you in any form.
How disinterest, distraction and dissociation are connected
It's important to note that feelings of disinterest, preoccupation, or inattentiveness may also signal some level of dissociation. This is a phenomenon where your mind briefly goes somewhere else, or 'detaches' from what is happening around you. This can be very mild - for example, if you’ve ever been driving and had a feeling of 'waking up' without really realising what's been going on for the last 5 minutes 😬 - or can be extreme in moments of trauma and stress.
Think of your body like a hotel; in moments of dissociation, your mind acts like a guest, checks out, and leaves the body to run itself. While this happening occasionally is not necessarily damaging, if it becomes a chronic occurrence you may start to feel those three data centres of heart, gut and mind become disconnected - and when they become disconnected you may start to notice health problems. Identifying and acting on the causes of your disinterest early can help prevent something annoying becoming something unhealthy.
Why disinterest is an important sign you lack purpose
Disinterest is a signal that you need to find more purpose at work because it shows you that what you’re doing is not capturing your attention - not just in terms of being entertaining or interesting, but it's actually not engaging your full faculties. If you are able to think about 10 different things while also doing the work in front of you, then the work that is in front of you is not fully using your abilities.
And while it might seem tempting to have a job where you only really need to give 30% to be able to get by, as human beings we want to do things which captivate us - which hold our attention and our interest. We want to be fully immersed in an experience, whether that's a delicious meal, a film that makes us cry with laughter, or a task at work that feels deeply satisfying when we complete it. Disinterest is the signal that your career is no longer that hearty meal or side-splitting film; instead, it’s the fast food stuffed with empty calories, and the made-for-TV movie you watch when there's nothing else on.
Signal #3 You Need To Find More Purpose at Work: Apathy
The third emotional signal that indicates you need to find more purpose at work is apathy. Apathy is the absence or suppression of passion, excitement, or in fact any strong emotion. And if you’ve been feeling bored or disinterested at work, and haven't taken any action to resolve this emotional experience, it's very likely you will end up feeling apathetic.
Apathy is an incredibly difficult emotion to work with because it is literally the absence of any strong feeling. It can feel like all of the zest that you once had has been drained out of you - and for no discernible reason. It's almost like trying to drive a car that's stuck in neutral; you can't go really fast, you can't make your way up a hill, you can't do anything. You just stay neutral.
How apathy can hide big emotions
I've noticed that sometimes people who naturally have strong emotions and feel in a big way can end up feeling apathetic almost by choice. This tends to be because they’ve been chastised or punished for having strong emotions, possibly when they were younger. They decide it's easier to feel nothing than to feel everything, and so apathy becomes a standard state of being. They might even do really good impressions of having feelings, but underneath they are disconnected from their heart and gut data centres. This can result in troublesome conditions including digestive discomfort.
And the reason I know this is because I was one of those people. I am a deep feeler: my whole life has been characterised by feeling and sensing emotions incredibly strongly. It's what makes me so good as a career coach and gives me my ability to name and explain emotions.
However, there were large periods of my life where instead of embracing my deep feeling ability, I chose to feel less and instead feel apathetic. It was a protection mechanism to help me deal with the traumas I had experienced, including lifelong comments from others that I was too emotional, or too sensitive. It wasn’t until I accepted the strength of my emotions - and my fascination with them - that I was able to truly embody my life’s purpose.
Why apathy is an important sign you lack purpose
Similarly to disinterest, we might think that not caring or not having strong feelings about the work that we are doing could be a good or normal thing - I actually had a manager tell me once that I should care less about the outcomes of the projects I was working on 🙄 Maybe we shouldn't care if we are in a job that doesn't care about us, right?
To some extent I would agree; if our passion and excitement is not reciprocal - if we are dedicated to what we are doing but our employer doesn't give a hoot about us - then something needs to change. But I don't think it should be us repressing our natural deep emotional states just so we can get by!
Apathy is a signal that you need to find more purpose at work because it tells you that you are someone who has a deep devotion and passion for something in this life - and right at this moment it isn’t being expressed or maximised in the work that you’re doing. If you can feel apathy that 'strongly', then you can also feel passion, fun, and excitement as strongly too. But the longer you stay in an environment where you think you have to be apathetic to be able to survive, the harder it will be to conjure up your passion again when you are finally in a space where it is valued.
Sometimes apathy can also be a nervous system response to overwhelming pressure, particularly prevalent in the corporate world. If you think you might have been burnt out and are looking to find more purpose without repeating those behaviours, you might like my article Time For A Break: 5 Hustle Culture Alternatives To Stop The Grind.
Signal #4 You Need To Find More Purpose at Work: Envy
The fourth emotional signal that indicates you need to find more purpose in work is envy: the feeling of discontent created by coveting what someone else has.
This might seem like a surprising emotion to include in this list, but I truly believe that envy and its cousin jealousy can tell us a lot about ourselves and the life we want to live - as long as we're able to listen to this feeling and interpret it correctly.
While boredom, disinterest, and apathy are all emotions of detachment, envy is the opposite: it is an emotion of attachment. Feeling envious means feeling deeply wedded to someone, something, or some experience you wish to have - and that you're currently not having. When it comes to your career, envy is an excellent signal which tells you exactly where you want to be placing your energy, but currently you're not able to do so.
My personal experience with envy
For example, in the past I’ve often felt envious of people who are landing big public speaking gigs; in front of hundreds or thousands of people, for famous brands, or impressive names like TEDx. Whenever I saw people in my professional network achieving goals like this, I felt myself become very envious. I would ask myself, "Why haven't I done that yet?" and "What have they done that's so important that they can speak on that stage?" It wasn't a pleasant sensation, and I didn't feel like a great person for thinking this way.
But when I was able to listen to my heart's data centre and interpret it through my mind's understanding, I was able to see why I felt like this.
It wasn't necessarily that I wanted their exact experience - that would come under jealousy, when you are coveting what someone else has, wishing it was you there instead of them. Rather, I felt these people were enjoying something through their experiences that was missing from my life; a feeling, a wisdom, an awareness of their success. I couldn't see all the hard work and mistakes that went on behind the scenes - unlike in my own life where that was all too obvious 🤦🏼♀️ - I only saw their results: a captive audience, a clear message, and the opportunity to put those two things together.
I realised those were the sorts of results I wanted to have, that would help me feel more purposeful in my work, and so I set out to do that with this blog, my social media and the other ways in which I share my ideas.
Why envy is an important sign you lack purpose
Envy is a signal you need more purpose at work because it shows you that what you are currently doing is not satisfying enough for you. There's something missing in what you are experiencing, and if you can identify what that missing piece is, you'll be able to seek out opportunities that fit that piece into place and bring you more purpose.
By interrogating your feelings of envy, you can start to see what you truly desire. You could be envious of:
A friend’s blossoming career
A colleague who got the promotion you think you should’ve got
Family members who seem perfectly contented with their work
Or even some random person on Instagram whose life looks amazing
… but whoever it is, by examining why you’re envious you can understand what you really want - and then you can start taking action to achieve that. It's not about copying what someone else is doing, or trying to take something away from their success. Rather, it's about identifying what lies at the heart of envy so you can seek that in your own unique way.
When envy becomes unhealthy
For some people, envy becomes such a normal emotion that their whole life becomes about striving for more and more. This isn't sustainable, just as it isn't sustainable to be motivated by fear or by external forces when it comes to finding purpose in your life.
Constantly feeling envious of other people's achievements is tiring, as you end up comparing their highlights reel with your lived reality - and there's no way that those two can match up. Remember, just like me, you will only be seeing a tiny snapshot of their success; one that looks desirable and promising and perhaps even easy compared to all of the nitty-gritty of your everyday working life.
I believe envy is healthy in small doses, and only when we use our mind and heart data centres as a team to really understand what envy is pointing us to. Envy can point us to a life of dissatisfaction, or it can point to the places where we know there is more for us to experience; more for us to learn, more ways to grow, and greater opportunities for us to find purpose in life.
Signal #5 You Need To Find More Purpose at Work: Resentment
The fifth and final emotional signal that you need to find more purpose at work is resentment. Resentment is displeasure or indignation at some act, remark or person that you believe has caused you harm or injury.
I’ve done a lot of work with career coaching clients over the years around resentment, and it’s an emotion I think many people feel a lot of the time but do not acknowledge it or understand its complexity. It's particularly prevalent in relationships where there is a lack of communication about emotions and expectations - and guess where those relationships can spring up? Spoiler: it’s at work 🙄
Just like envy, resentment is an emotion of attachment: we’re attached to some aspect of ourselves which we believe is being harmed through the actions, words, or events of our life - often by someone or something else. It’s because we are attached to, or care about, that aspect of ourselves that we feel annoyed when that part is injured or harmed.
How does resentment happen?
An example you’ll recognise is the friend that only ever gets in touch with you when he wants to moan about something. You pick up the phone every time, because you believe you're a good friend, and find yourself in the same situation: listening to him complain and grumble, and wondering when you can get back to what you were doing. After a while, it's very likely you'll start to feel resentment towards your friend. You’ll feel annoyed that he only ever calls when he has a problem; you will feel frustrated that he seems to be wasting your time; and you'll feel disrespected because he's not there for you in the same way.
It might never occur to you that you could just … not pick up the phone 🤷🏽♀️ Or that this situation has been created by both you and your friend. Your attachment to ‘being a good friend’ is so strong that it is overriding your boundaries around time, respect and reciprocity. The resentment emerges because you feel you're being taken advantage of even though you continue to choose to behave in a way that maintains the situation. Your solution is to balance out the aspects of yourself you care about so that one (being a good friend) is not damaging the other (your time and energy) - which can be very tricky.
In a workplace environment, this balancing act can feel even harder. You might feel like you have to get on with your colleagues; have to stay late because everyone's doing it; even have to apply for the promotion you don't really want because that's what's expected of you. You are attached to some element of your job - the security, the salary, the social kudos - and that is overriding your other needs and desires.
But every time you say ‘yes’ when you truly, in your heart, mean ‘no’, resentment breeds. The parts of you that are being unheard get louder and louder, until one day it all comes pouring out and you say something you later regret. That’s because at its heart, resentment is an emotion about boundaries; specifically, the boundaries between desires and needs we are willing to ignore and the attachment we have to some aspect of ourselves, or our lives, that we believe is important.
Interestingly, resentment can also emerge in a way that is less specific; more like a general resentment towards the world, or your workplace, or even your past self. If you recognise this 'flavour' of resentment you might want to read my article Why Hitting Your Career Goals Still Feels Empty to understand what's been motivating you and what 'rewards' you've been expecting to receive ... from something that you didn't really want to do in the first place 😬
Why resentment is an important sign you lack purpose
Resentment is a signal you need to find more purpose at work because it indicates that you are currently negotiating on behaviour and boundaries that are secretly very important to you. And when you are living and working with purpose, you don't have to negotiate on those behaviours or boundaries.
In a life of purpose, you being you is cherished; your unique contributions are valued; your desire to get home to your family, or take time off, or not make work your whole darn life is respected. You have a career and an existence in which you do not do things you hate for the sake of someone you think you should be. You do not say ‘yes’ when you secretly mean ‘no’.
Because finding purpose at work is not just about what work you are doing, but about how you do it. If you leave a corporate career to work for an ethical company, and you replicate all of the problems that you faced in that corporate career - the toxic environment, pulling all-nighters, the obsession with material gain - then you have not found purpose, even if you are working for the hottest new B Corp in town. If you quit a decade-long corporate career to set up your own business, and you become the worst boss you’ve ever had, then you have not found purpose - you've just exchanged resenting other people for resenting yourself.
If you want to find purpose in work, it needs to encompass every facet of your relationship to work, from what you do to why you do it to how you do it - and most importantly, how it fits into your rich and varied existence.
Here’s How You Know You Need to Find More Purpose at Work
There are five emotional signals that indicate you need to find more purpose at work:
Boredom
Disinterest
Apathy
Envy
Resentment
The first three of these emotional signals - boredom, disinterest and apathy - are about detaching from your work, and indicate you're no longer invested in either the work you're doing or the results of your contribution.
The final two emotional signals - envy and resentment - are attachment emotions. They indicate there is some part of yourself that is not being expressed or respected, but instead is in conflict with the parts you are most attached to.
By making yourself aware of these five emotional signals, you can start to understand where in your work you feel lacking in purpose. This article will have started engaging that mind data centre to examine your emotional states, but the next step is to do something about it.
What Can I Do About Feeling Bored At Work?
I have plenty of resources to help you start finding more purpose at work and beat the boredom, and the one I want to highlight is The Curiosity Journal. It is the perfect medicine for those ‘detached’ emotions of boredom, disinterest and apathy.
The Curiosity Journal is a workbook of journal prompts and space for diary entries, taking you on a seven-day journey to reignite your passions and connect them to your greater purpose in life (and work).
Click below to learn more and download the digital journal 👇🏼
And if you are ready to find more purposeful work - whatever that will look like to you as a unique soul - then you'll be interested in our career development workshops or even 1:1 career coaching with me. Both are a great way to take time out of your regular schedule and focus entirely on what you want, and how to create the most fulfilling and meaningful life imaginable.
About The Author
Astra is an inspirational speaker, career coach and writer leading experienced professionals to wild, untamed success.
Astra's unique insight is based on 10,000+ hours studying purpose, meaning and the human condition. Their study has led to over 2,000 hours teaching, coaching and facilitating, plus published writing, keynotes and conferences, peer-reviewed research, digital content and working with 60+ brands as a communication professional - as well as living on a commune, in a warehouse, and with the Hare Krishna monks.
Through their Wild Success methodology, Astra teaches talented professionals how to find their purpose, take consistent action, and finally start experiencing the wild success they are destined for: not 'next year', not 'some day', but now.
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