This week in our private Facebook Community we’re talking about following your bliss to create passionate and purposeful work. If you’re unsatisfied with your work, I encourage you to join the page and connect with real women, who despite life’s challenges, have found a way to be paid for their passion while offering real value to others.
Many believe that work and the things they love to do cannot intersect. Whether this belief comes from family and peers, or society’s backward message that work is a necessary evil. This mistaken belief stops us from building careers connected to our natural gifts and talents.
The most gratifying work combines your strengths and passions with service to others.
Here are a few points and some excerpts from my personal LIFEbook (a collection of notes I keep on hand to right me when I go a little sideways and forget that I’m the most powerful person in my life). They’ll help you gain clarity.
1) You are where you are now. You would like to have made better choices in the past, but here you are. Accept that. Take all the responsibility and move on. You take responsibility because if you are responsible for what has gone wrong, then you have the power to make the future right. Feeling guilty or self-loathing is not part of taking responsibility. It is part of self-harm. Do no harm. I learned this as I tackled getting off of welfare as a teen dropout mom. What’s done is done. Let go and love yourself.
2) You have gifts and talents. You may not know what they are or give them any value because you HAVE them already. They seem normal to you. Sit down and commit to writing 50 things you do well, are interested in, or positively describe you. Look that list over and ask does anyone make money doing this. Open your mind, release fear, worry, and doubt.
3) When it comes to getting on your feet, survival comes first. Take a job, any non-harmful job, to get started. Be grateful for it and know that it’s temporary. Then look to your bliss. Survival first.
4) I have a law degree, but when my world fell apart I didn’t use it; I needed a job that would be more flexible. If you are interested in real estate, you can get a license in 90 days and for the cost of the course and testing fee. You can get wherever you need to go in a relatively short amount of time if you start from that premise.
5) Don’t believe the hype. As a 9th grade dropout, I thought that people who went to graduate school were somehow different from everyone else. They had something special, were a superior breed. On the other side, I can tell you with all confidence that a degree does not make one successful. Success is born of persistence. Calvin Coolidge comes to mind:
“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
6) One step beyond Coolidge’s tribute to persistence is faith and trust. Choose what you believe and the universe will prove you right. Now I get a little irritated with people and guru’s alike who think this means that you can transcend natural laws, reason, and defy the structure of the universe with this idea. Don’t check your common sense at the door.
Believe that success is imminent, you’ll be right.
Believe that the universe conspires to help you when you help yourself, you’ll be right.
7) You do not need to know how everything will unfold in your success. What you need to know is WHAT you want, and take consistent (DAILY) and intelligent action toward it. You do not need to know the HOW. Forces greater that you will work to bring it about. Show up. Believe. Don’t quit.
~ Cynthia
