The pure delight of knowing your soul is better off

The distinction between awards and rewards is a powerful one.

An award is the external compensation bestowed because of a formal performance. It’s public. Someone will receive it because they compete against other candidates and won.

A reward is the internal compensation earned because of an informal service. It’s personal. Someone will receive it without any comparison to another’s labor.

Which one are you pursuing?

This distinction between award and reward reminds me of the first ten years of my career, when I was actively involved with my industry association.

First as an apprentice, then as a member, and eventually as a board member. Like all professional societies, our association offered a variety of certifications and titles. Our members could earn designatory letters to be put after their names to indicate position, accreditation and honor.

Now, when you’re new to the field, and you’re young, scrappy and hungry, these titles are deeply alluring.

Wow, the association prints you a different colored nametag at the annual conference once you’ve been certified? Count me in.

Naturally, the parent organization made constant claims how earning this designation would prove to potential clients that we were among the top echelon of industry professionals. The certification would be the skill validation we needed to take our careers to the next level. Having these coveted three initials after our name would help us stand out from the crowd on paper and in person.

My rebellious, individualistic and antiauthoritarian ethos wanted nothing to do with these pointless acronyms. They never appealed to my value system. Industry designations always felt like an incestuous, paltry racket to me.

Because as much as the organization advertised its support of my career, the bottom line is, they were still a company trying to make money. They might have used dot org in their website address, but lest we forget, nonprofit is a tax code, not a business goal.

Another thing was, who certifies the certifiers? Where did this designation come from? With what authority is this association approving and bestowing these acronyms for an entire industry?

The answer is, nobody, nowhere and nothing. They made the whole damn thing up back in the seventies. It’s a product they’re selling.

The certification industrial complex is alive and well, and it typically benefits the parent organization far more than the members.

Here’s another problem I had with the program. Their certification requirements were exhaustive and expensive and absurd. They included an ongoing membership to the parent organization, continuing education credits, a three hundred dollar application fee, your employer verification letter, a five year client spreadsheet, video submissions, testimony before multiple review panels, first born child, plus you had to renew your designation every five years.

Are we applying to an ivy league graduate school? Nobel laureates don’t work this hard.

It’s funny, my apathy about the awards bewildered all of my colleagues.

But why wouldn’t you want to earn the highest designation in your field? Don’t you want other people to take you seriously? Getting these three letters after your name opens the door to further education and networking opportunities with fellow achievers!

Incorrect. Awards are just a way for people who don’t count to keep score.

If you need validation from externally driven designations, then you probably don’t have any meaningful belief in your own work in the first place.

My motivation comes from the reward, not the award. It’s internal compensation earned through personal service.

The real wining isn’t getting the high score, it’s staying in the game. Showing up to play every single day. Doing the work that makes me proud because I’m a junkie for the process.

Winning is rejecting standard badges of success and embracing the pure delight of knowing that my soul and the world better off for having created something today that didn’t exist before.

I work for my own necessity, for the fuel of my mind and spirit, for my existential survival.

My quest is for inward gains, rather than the need to impress. I am not as great as the number of people on a committee who tell me so, but because I believe it and prove it to myself through our efforts.

Are you spending more time telling your peers how good you are, or creating real value in the world?