Karma Yoga is a powerful purification of the mind. We are all intellectually involved with the mind and our identity is defined by the way we think. The main challenge for any spiritual aspirant is that your awareness is unable to be independent from the mental activity of thinking. You are emotionally involved with your thoughts and overwhelmed by the emotions. This causes you to believe that your emotions and intellectual thinking is the true reality. Awareness can be aware without any emotional involvement. You can still be aware of what is happening without having to be emotionally involved. Your spiritual identity can be experienced in a pure awareness. A pure awareness is a witness, the knower of all that exists. There is only one existence and that is awareness. Everything that you think is real and individually existing is only a mirage of consciousness. Just like the shimmering heat of a dessert creates an illusion of something in the distance consciousness creates an illusion by thinking. That illusion seems more real because of the emotional energy created when awareness becomes emotionally involved.
The solution is Karma Yoga. Action in action with awareness of the action. Inaction in action meaning there is no desire or expectation of the outcome. Please understand that whatever you do physically if you do it well then your efforts will definitely result in an outcome. You will discover that the outcome will always have merit and inherently for the wellbeing and goodness of every situation. You can have absolute faith in that.
Work is not your enemy. Work is your greatest opportunity. If you apply yourself to your work with the full concentration of awareness there is no room for gossip or internal mental chatter.
Once you begin to enjoy the intensity of a concentrated experience you become fit in that effort. Aerobic exercise gives you a fitness of recovery from the increased heart rate and the muscular effort. The activity of work with a focused concentrated awareness creates a fitness where there is no tiring or fatigue created by doubt, worry or fear etc. Even when you are simply sitting in a concentrated effort with awareness of breathing and maintaining stillness is considered a work of merit. This is what we call meditation.
The mind needs structure and direction. Work is the structure and the direction is the natural achievement or outcome of work (karma)
Those who have not realized the possibility of improving and increasing the potential of consciousness are limited by misconstrued thoughts. They who try to avoid work are self-destructive. They always feel as if their suffering and inability to achieve anything is because of someone or something else. They avoid discipline and will blame others for taking advantage and abusing the unfortunate. However those who apply themselves and appreciate the value of self discipline can always manage the mind. They know that discipline is an empowerment.
Every action is an action of effort and this is work. It does not matter if you are performing the duties and responsibilities of your paid work, in the kitchen or driving a car. It is all an action of effort. When you are fully engaged in the effort with a concentrated awareness you are not thinking of the outcome nor are you thinking of the possibility of failure. You are simply concentrated in your awareness and liberated from any distraction or deviation. You are liberated from the cause of your mental fatigue and suffering.