What Does “Doing the Work” Actually Mean?

“You need to do the work.”

If you’ve spent any time around personal development, wellbeing or spirituality, there’s a good chance you’ve heard this phrase. Perhaps you’ve even said it yourself.

But what does it actually mean?

Despite how it sounds, there’s no clearly defined piece of work that we’re all somehow supposed to know how to do. We can be told we need to do the work; sometimes we arrive at that realisation ourselves. Often, though, we’re completely unaware that there’s something we need to look at until life smacks us in the face and we suddenly realise, “Oh. Something is happening here. I need to do something about this.” And even when we reach that point, knowing we need to do the work doesn’t necessarily tell us what the work actually is. I know that feeling. I understand what people mean when they talk about “doing the work”, but I’ve still found myself thinking, “Yes, but what exactly is the work I need to do here?”

And I think that’s because “doing the work” isn’t a defined set of activities. You can complete a meditation, a journalling session, a self-development book, a bit of shadow work - but that’s not necessarily the same as doing the work. It’s not the act itself; it’s what you bring to it. Meditating isn’t the work. Meditating on 'the thing' is.

“Doing the work” isn’t a checklist

We’re often sold an image of what personal development is supposed to look like: meditation, incense, journalling, affirmations, manifestation, shadow work, a beautifully decorated notebook full of insightful observations. And somewhere along the way, that image becomes the standard - as if there’s a right way to sit, a right way to journal, a right way to feel while you do it.

That image of perfection is its own kind of trap. When we strive for it, we can spend our energy making the process look and feel a particular way before we’ve actually stepped into doing anything. By the time everything looks right, we’ve sometimes burned through the very feeling - the trigger - that got us started in the first place. We end up polishing the ritual instead of doing the work.

What we actually need isn’t perfection. It’s a willingness to roll our sleeves up and get into it, imperfectly, messily, in whatever way is actually available to us that day.

For example, I’m not particularly good at traditional meditation. Sitting cross-legged, trying to empty my mind while incense burns around me isn’t something I can easily do. But sitting in the garden with a cup of tea, without my phone or anything else demanding my attention, and simply being there for a while? That works for me. It creates space. I notice the things I think and feel. Sometimes I don’t think or feel anything in particular, and that’s okay too. It gives me space to notice what’s happening in my body, not just chase an answer in my head.

The same is true of journalling. For years I didn’t journal at all, because I didn’t think I was doing it “right”. But it isn’t about the notebook or the perfect prompt - it’s a conversation with yourself, your subconscious, your higher self, with the Universe, with whatever you want to call it. It’s what helps you get curious.

You don’t need to know what you’re going to say before you start. If anything, it’s better to let go of what you think you’re going to say and just write. The same goes for turning on a voice note or a video, just to hear what comes out. Often we already know more than our conscious mind has been willing or able to articulate, and giving ourselves somewhere to speak freely can help us find it.

The tools don’t do the work for us. They create ways into it.

So, what is the work?

At its simplest, I think doing the work is the process of becoming more conscious of ourselves. It’s noticing our patterns, understanding our behaviour, taking responsibility for our choices, exploring where our patterns - and the wounds underneath them - came from, challenging beliefs that no longer serve us, learning our boundaries, sitting with uncomfortable emotions, healing what needs healing and, ultimately, becoming able to choose differently.

It doesn’t happen in any specific order, and it certainly isn’t a straight line.

We can’t consciously change something we aren’t conscious of. And noticing a problem isn’t the same as knowing what to do about it - it doesn’t have to be. That’s simply where the work begins.

First, we become curious

Curiosity helps us dig deeper: what is actually happening here? What keeps happening? What happens just before it? How do I respond? What am I feeling? What am I doing? What am I avoiding?

We start noticing patterns.

Perhaps you keep finding yourself in relationships where you feel responsible for the other person’s happiness. Or you repeatedly say yes when you desperately want to say no. Maybe you become defensive whenever somebody offers criticism. Perhaps you avoid difficult conversations until resentment builds up. Or you continually undermine yourself just as things start going well.

The pattern holds the clue. But once we recognise a pattern, there is another question to ask: what is my part in this?

Not “what have I done wrong?” - it’s not about whose fault it is. It’s about looking in the mirror. What am I choosing? What am I tolerating? What am I avoiding? What am I doing in response to what is happening?

Taking responsibility isn’t the same as taking blame. There are things that happen to us that aren’t our fault. Other people make their own choices, and circumstances occur that we cannot control. But we can become curious about our own participation in what is happening.

Understanding where our patterns came from

Once we recognise our behaviour, we need to look back and consider where it came from. When did I first start behaving this way? What did this behaviour give me? What was it protecting me from? Was there a time when this response made sense?

So many of the ways we behave aren’t fundamental parts of who we are. They’re things we learned or adapted in order to survive - wounds we picked up along the way, and then built a whole way of being around.

Doing the work is, in large part, getting back down to the fundamental parts of ourselves, underneath all the patterns and layers and learned responses we’ve pulled on top of them to cope.

Perhaps being useful kept you feeling valued. Keeping everyone happy helped you avoid conflict. Staying quiet felt safer than saying what you really thought. Perhaps being completely self-reliant meant you didn’t have to risk asking someone for help.

Understanding where a pattern came from means we get to choose whether we keep it or not. Realising that something is a learned response, rather than an unchangeable part of our personality, can change everything. We can have compassion for the version of ourselves who developed that response while also deciding we don’t need to live by it forever.

Doing the work is difficult

We often develop patterns because they give us something - protection, comfort, a way of feeling safe, a way to avoid something we don’t want to feel. That means changing them can feel uncomfortable even when the change is good for us.

I’ve experienced this myself with food. I know the pattern. I know I can use food as comfort, as a crutch, as a way of numbing rather than feeling whatever’s underneath. I know what happens afterwards. I know I don’t feel good when I eat in a way that doesn’t support me. I know all of that - and it doesn’t stop me doing it at all.

Awareness isn’t the same as change. Intellectual understanding isn’t the same as changing a behaviour. Sometimes we know exactly what we’re doing and still aren’t ready to do something differently.

But awareness creates the possibility of change. It creates a little more space between the trigger and the response, and sometimes that space is enough for something to begin shifting.

The process isn’t about getting everything right immediately. It’s about becoming increasingly conscious, and increasingly able to choose.

Sometimes doing the work means sitting with something

We can fall into the trap of thinking doing the work means constantly doing something. It doesn’t.

Sometimes the work is sitting with an emotion rather than immediately trying to get rid of it - allowing yourself to feel anger long enough to understand what it’s telling you, allowing yourself to grieve rather than rushing towards feeling better, sitting with disappointment, uncertainty or fear without distracting yourself from it.

And sometimes the work is tolerating the discomfort that comes with making a different choice. If you’ve spent years saying yes to keep everyone happy, saying no can feel impossible the first few times. You haven’t made the wrong decision just because somebody else is disappointed - you’re simply experiencing the discomfort of stepping outside an old pattern.

You don’t always have to do it alone

Often, what we do for ourselves is enough. Sitting in the garden, journalling, noticing a pattern as it happens - these things matter, and they add up.

But there are times when we need more than that. Sometimes we need accountability, or a container - a space held by someone else, so we can get beyond the point at which our own self-preservation takes over. That’s not a failing. It’s simply a recognition that there are places we may not be able, or willing, to reach alone.

Having someone else hold that space with you - in a session, a circle, whatever form it takes - can sometimes take your understanding of yourself further than you’re able to reach alone.

That doesn’t mean everybody needs it, or needs it all the time. But it’s worth knowing the option is there.

The trap of spiritual bypassing

There’s something else worth watching out for as we do this kind of work.

Spiritual bypassing happens when we use the language, tools or beliefs of personal development - meditation, energy work, positive thinking, “good vibes only” - to skip past something rather than actually feel it. We reach for a phrase instead of doing the work the phrase was supposed to point us towards.

“Everything happens for a reason” is a good example. I believe there’s truth in it, to a degree. But it’s so often said by someone in order to end a conversation rather than open one.

The same thing can happen with the tools themselves. We can journal about a pattern, meditate on it, read about it and talk about it, but still avoid actually meeting the thing underneath it.

Sometimes the question isn’t whether we’re using the right tool. It’s whether we’re willing to go deep enough with whatever the tool has brought to the surface.

Shadow work is part of the work

Shadow work is one particular form of inner work. It involves becoming willing to look at the parts of ourselves that we tend to reject, hide, deny or find uncomfortable.

That might be anger, jealousy, resentment, control, shame, fear, our need for approval, people-pleasing or the ways we sometimes sabotage ourselves.

The important thing is that we aren’t looking at these parts so that we can judge ourselves for having them. We’re looking at them so that we can understand them.

That makes shadow work part of doing the work, but the two aren’t interchangeable.

Doing the work is the bigger picture. It encompasses becoming more self-aware, understanding our patterns, healing old wounds, examining our beliefs, changing unhealthy habits, learning boundaries, developing healthier ways of relating and learning to respond rather than simply react.

Shadow work is one part of that process.

Doing the work means making different choices

Eventually, understanding has to meet action. Not because action is always the answer, but because awareness alone doesn’t change a pattern.

If you discover that you people-please because you’ve learned that being “good” means being useful and accommodating, the work will eventually involve actually saying no. If you realise you avoid difficult conversations because conflict feels unsafe, the work will involve learning to have those conversations. If you notice you constantly override your own needs to keep somebody else comfortable, the work will involve learning to recognise your own needs and giving them some weight.

This is where we begin to respond rather than react.

There may still be fear. There may still be discomfort. You may still get it wrong. But there is a moment in which you have a choice, and that choice is often where the work becomes visible in our lives.

The hermit crab

One of the biggest misconceptions about personal growth is that eventually we’ll have “done the work” and arrive at some wonderfully evolved version of ourselves who no longer has problems. I’m not sure that’s how being human works.

I’d liken it more to a hermit crab.

A hermit crab doesn’t grow its own shell - it lives in one left behind by another creature, and moves house as it outgrows each one. We do something similar. As life happens to us, we adapt. We find ways of protecting ourselves, ways of coping, ways of being in the world that help us navigate whatever we’re experiencing.

That’s not a flaw. We need some protection to get by. The shells aren’t the problem. It’s what happens when we’re still wearing one that’s become too small.

Eventually, the hermit crab has to leave its shell. And there’s a moment of genuine vulnerability: out of the old shell and not yet settled into the next one.

We know this moment too.

A belief, a relationship, a coping mechanism that once protected us can become restrictive, and leaving it means sitting in that in-between, not yet knowing who we are without it. Vulnerability is a huge part of the work.

And when we do find more room - a new response, a boundary, a way of trusting ourselves - that’s not the finish line either. One day that shell may become too small as well.

That’s not failure. That’s growth.

So, what does “doing the work” actually mean?

There isn’t one neat definition, because the work will be different for each of us. But if you’ve ever been told that you need to “do the work” and wondered what on earth that actually means, I hope this gives you somewhere to begin.

Doing the work means becoming conscious of what is happening within us. It means becoming curious about our patterns rather than simply judging them, taking responsibility for our choices without turning responsibility into blame, and being willing to understand where our behaviours - and the wounds behind them - came from.

It means learning to sit with what is uncomfortable rather than automatically escaping it. It means recognising that understanding something intellectually isn’t the same as changing it. It means noticing when a tool has become an escape instead of a way in. And ultimately, it means becoming increasingly able to choose how we want to respond.

You will never become someone who never struggles. You will not become perfectly healed. You don’t have to know exactly what the work is before you begin - you simply need to become willing to look, willing to become curious, whatever that looks like for you.

It isn’t about becoming a different person. It’s about becoming more fully, more authentically, yourself.

And when you find yourself standing outside an old shell, vulnerable and uncertain about what comes next, remember that you haven’t lost your way. You have simply outgrown the space you were living in.

The work is learning what you need in order to grow.

If you’re recognising yourself somewhere in this and you’re ready to explore what might be underneath the pattern, this is the kind of work I love helping people with.

You don’t have to have it all figured out. Sometimes the first step is simply having somewhere safe to start looking. If you’re not sure where to start, you can start here.