Fire Your Boss: Interview with Aaron McHugh - Ep 12

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Welcome to the Soma SoulWorks Podcast! This podcast serves to help people, particularly those who may label themselves as "creatives," to seek wholeness and calling so they are ready to embrace the mission God has for them. Consider this podcast a rogue harmony of professional development and self-care, hosted by John Bergquist and Chris Skaggs.

What’s covered in this episode:

• In this interview with Aaron McHugh, author of Fire Your Boss, we look into the workplace and how we can change our mindsets to help improve our role in them.
• The idea that every employee is an interchangeable cog is prevalent in the workplace. There is an emphasis on the service and resources an employee brings, rather than on the human being themselves; this is expected and normalized in the workplace. “We’ve outsourced our happiness and contentment to other people,” Aaron says. “It’s a fundamentally flawed system...There is a spirit of slavery over the workplace.”
• Aaron describes watching his grandfather work at Disneyland in its early years. Seeing the joy his grandfather had there helped him articulate something he wanted in his own work-life: Work is supposed to matter, make a difference, and be purposeful.
• The fundamental question Aaron asks here and in his book, Fire Your Boss, is, “What would it look like to bring all of yourself in an honoring and godly way to your work environment? How do I move from fear, being compartmentalized, and being complicit as a victim to living out freedom, wholeheartedness, and being empowered enough to hold myself responsible and accountable wherever I am?”
• Like in the serenity prayer, Aaron puts an emphasis that we should be seeking God’s input to understand what we can change internally and externally—that we can discern when we need to be adaptable vs. when we need to remove ourselves from a situation that’s causing us suffering.
• The good change comes with a shift in your mindset. Rather than waiting for an ideal opportunity to do your work well, you should be bringing patience, dignity, honor, spirituality, forgiveness, grace, and love to whatever job you’re doing. That’s the way you get promoted. “That’s the way of the kingdom.” Aaron says, “Wherever you are, you can become the kind of person who learns to thrive.”
• “Always believe that you are uniquely qualified to make a lasting contribution to the future of work.” - Aaron McHugh

Resources mentioned:

• Fire Your Boss: A Manifesto to Rethink How You Think About Work by Aaron McHugh
• Work, Life, Play Podcast
• Aaron’s Blog
• Serenity Prayer
• Sign up for the Tempus Divum newsletter

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