Alright, this post is blatant rip off from Brazen Careerist. I read Penelope Trunk’s blog regularly, not because I’m always looking for business advice, but because I like her. She’s someone with just enough neurosis-and personality-to fit well in my own quirky family of renegade thinkers. For instance, she’s always telling us that to do well in business, you just have to be likable, not skilled. And because of her, I’ve decided that I’m not particularly likable. Though I am highly skilled.
Anyway, she posted recently about how to find your life’s work. Now, this is coming from a woman who’s written for yahoo business, and other fancy big-name sites. Penelope has also worked for corporations-as have I. She’s had start-ups. So have I. And she’s got young kids in the midst of it all. So do I. So I was curious to see her advice, and after I read it, I thought, Gee, what would I say?”
I think most of us have wandered into our careers, rather than chosen them. Few of us set a goal, got a job, and worked our way in our selected field until we found that perfect niche, that ultimate job, that showcases all our talents, and makes us happy and rich.
Instead, we’ve taken what’s offered-the best we can find-in any area we think we might have a talent for. We always keep a burning thought in our mind of what we want or could be doing, but getting from A to Z is too much work amid just keeping it all afloat in our lives. So, I would say this to the question of “What should be doing with my life?”
First, recognize that you may never find that “ultimate” career. Your life may be more like a buffet, where you sample many pleasurable-and some awful-dishes. You’re moving from one experience to the next, “interviewing” each passage or phase of your life to see what it can offer to you. Change will come (it always does), and the good phases will drop away, along with the bad.
The idea of continuity in our lives is made up. Few people “become something” like a doctor or lawyer and stay that way all their lives. Even doctors and lawyers change their minds. Last week, a woman in a conference I was moderating told me she was in finance (a lawyer), and had just decided to get out. She had no idea where to go next. She just knew she had to end this phase.
A person who understands this-that what we “do” in our lives is always in the making-learns to be especially artful in the Flow. We see ourselves as riding a track, skating along, pausing sometimes for long intervals as we explore something (a teaching career, raising kids, selling real estate, working in the factory), then moving on once the experience is over. We learn that our lives are more like a quilt, with every patch of experience sewn into place-some poorly and haphazardly, while others are crafted with love. But at the end of the day, the quilt is our masterpiece, because we lived it. And every square brings memories to our minds.
When I think about my perfect career, or what I should be doing with my life, I never find the “right” job for me. Sometimes I think spreading the word about the Flow is my ultimate calling-because the Flow found me and often seems to use me for its own ends. And at other times, I think raising my kids is my calling. Sometimes, I look at my talents in my current job, and think, I’m pretty damn good at this. Maybe this is It. And sometimes, I let my mind wander and turn up all kinds of crazy ideas, unrelated to anything I’m doing in my life at all.
My point is that you will be many things. You are here to have many experiences. You won’t go in a straight line. That’s boring. You’ll go in zigzags and backtrack and sometimes even repeat yourself. The only thing you need to do is focus on what makes you feel good. Balance that with what pays your bills. Eventually, those two desires WILL come into alignment, like two roads merging to meet another.
So stop looking. Instead, Flow feelings of joy, appreciation, stability, and creativity when you think of your work or unknown life purpose-whatever it is that flicks your Bic. Pre-act these feelings, and allow your Flow to bring you the next most interesting thing it can find for you. Then explore that for awhile, suck the juice from it . . . and move on toward the next ripe fruit.
