March 17, 2009
May 7, 2009
“You have to do whatever scares you the most. It’s the only thing that will save you.” ~ Dodger (China Beach)
Finding work you love most often involves assessing what you love to begin with. This is a great place to start, but I also want you to consider what you fear doing.
Take a couple of minutes to write a list of everything you fear doing and when you come back I’ll tell you how you can use this information.
The premise of that exercise is that you are likely to find a great deal of satisfaction in what you resist doing! So, take a look at your list. Some of the items may not have relevance to career – but they are still useful so don’t discard them.
Let’s say our hypothetical list includes the following:
Now, we sort our list into 2 lists – career-related and not.
Career-related:
Not career-related:
This is useful, since I highly doubt our fear of spiders will lead us to a career path of spider-wrangling! 
So, what can we determine from our fears of public speaking and unemployment? Why are we resisting these activities? What benefit could we get from doing these activities?
Taking public speaking as an example, how could you benefit from sharing your thoughts and ideas with many people? How would these people benefit from hearing your thoughts and ideas? What’s holding you back from doing this? After all, public speaking may not only be satisfactory, but even thrilling!
For the fear of being unemployed or losing your job, ask yourself the above questions. Can you see how this fear could lead you to consider starting your own business? For one thing – you’d never be unemployed! The fear may also motivate you to succeed in your new business.
If both of these are on your list, could you envision a career as a motivational speaker? How would this change your life?
Basing a career solely on your fears may not be the best option as resistance to it may cause you to avoid it altogether. However, adding that element as an activity in a career based on what you love may inject yet another element of excitement – taking you above and beyond what you would ordinarily consider doing.
In anything we do, stepping outside of our comfort zone has a great deal to do with our level of success. Facing our fears requires us to step out of our comfort zones and expand our concept of who we are and what we are capable of. Whether or not you embrace incorporating a fear into your ideal work, addressing the fears on your list will expand you and your capabilities.
Take one of the fears on your list and commit to taking a step towards addressing it this week!
Success and joy,
Keena
PS: If you are ready to find the most direct way to your soul-fulfilling career, please visit Career Realignment.
Photo: Sheila Allen, Flickr, Creative Commons Lic.
April 20, 2009
The other day I read a blog post by Tom Volkar (Delightful Work - link below) in which he wrote that doing work you want was possibly preferable to doing work you love, and that these two concepts were separate. He went on to suggest that work that you love was overrated and too high a bar to set for yourself, whereas working at something you want to still allowed for failure. In addition, he wrote that he thought that you could make more money doing what you want, because doing what you love often didn’t pay well.
The danger of picking work based on it being simply something you are convinced you want to do is that it may not be in your future best interest. A job you “want” could be something you just convince yourself you want for more money or to make others happy. You may tell yourself it is temporary but then the next thing you know 20 years have gone by. Now you’re stuck. You may have lost touch with your authentic self and your passions. You have no inspiration, and honestly, life is becoming a drag. Or maybe you try to live your entire life after work and on the weekends. This is exhausting!
If you make your choices from the vantage point of “want” you may be led away from a soul-fulfilling career. If you make your choices from the vantage point of love (especially as opposed to fear), you will be led in the right direction (for you), always. When you choose work you love you are inspired and passionate. Pay attention to how you feel – if you are excited and inspired you are on the right track.
What we love to do is an entire “sphere” or realm of possibilities, and there can be many spheres and overlaps between them. Our ideal career for this point in our lives is often found in a small area of the sphere, especially in areas of sphere overlap. Imagine a Venn diagram.
If we listen to our hearts, we will find that what we truly want to do is nearly always a subset of what we love. For instance, many artists, painters in this case, are convinced that since they love art and they love painting, that this would be the perfect career for them. And for some it is, but for many it’s not. The pressure of having to produce a consistent “product”, which galleries want because it makes it easier to market, may take all the joy out of painting because the artist really values creativity and experimentation. Maybe the work they like to do is very politically provocative and thus cannot be marketed to the point of making a living. However, maybe that artist also loves teaching. That then becomes a career that they want and is a subset of what they love, and is in alignment with their authentic soul-self. Sometimes we have to get out of our tunnel and see lateral possibilities.
ONE
The biggest issue I see with the whole issue of doing work you love, is that people think that they have ONE true calling, ONE true love, ONE thing to do in this world that will make them happy or complete them. Baloney! Says who? Where does this idea even come from? Fairy tales?
People have many true callings, many passions and inspirations, not just one. They could be consecutive or they can be concurrent – often both, but there’s definitely more than one! Some passions or callings are suited to careers and some are not, as in our artist example above.
People think that if they find a true calling it will last forever. But the thing is that love is never stagnant. It is continuously growing, expanding, evolving! When the hermit crab outgrows her shell, she must find another one or risk dying – but that does not mean that she no longer loves her beautiful old shell! She just outgrew it and must move on.
The point is that you change, your interests change, your passions change – so if you need your career to change as a result – do it! Who says you have to have one “perfect” career, forever? That’s way too much pressure!
So, please come to terms with the fact that there are many perfect soul-fulfilling career choices for you. And since you can’t do everything at once, the hardest part sometimes is choosing!
As far as the comment about a career you love not paying, well, perhaps you’re not going about it right! But that’s another topic – otherwise this will get WAY too long! LOL!
Blessings,
Keena
PS: If you would like to get a jump start in your search for your (current!) ideal career, as well as clearing any soul-level obstacles standing in your way, please check my Career Realignment consultation at www.CareerRealignment.com. We have a huge Grand-Opening special going on right now! Regularly $175, now for $100, for a limited time only.
PPS: If you would like to read Tom Volkar’s post and my reply, click here.
