What is your real job in life?
Your Universal Job Description:
To live your life in a way that makes sense to you, not to anybody else.
To find a way to exchange your time and life energy for happiness, satisfaction and contentment.
To connect to your soul and find meaning and purpose that is right for you
Your Challenge:
Start a project, one you have been thinking about for a long time, that will fulfill you and satisfy your universal job description.
Make it huge and kind of crazy and ridiculously overreach what you think you are capable of.
Or make it kind of small and intimate and just what you can comfortably live with.
Or something in-between.
I've been experimenting with this idea lately and it's led me to some interesting places... It doesn't even have to be related to your "Job Job" but it might be.
You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness.
You were born with ideals and dreams.
You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings, which are your unique gifts and once you learn what they are and start to utilize them, you begin to fly.
What keeps us from reaching flight?
I would say there are three types of gravity that constantly try to pull us back down to earth.
We never begin
We give up too soon
We live in the excuse, not the possibility
Some part of us does not feel good enough, smart enough, or we make wonderful excuses like we don't have the right education or we don't have the connections or we don't have the time, or we don't have the _______________.
You name the excuse, fill it in with some details and then watch the walls and barriers go up.
I remember when I was making my feature film back in early 2000. I was up against insurmountable odds, and things just never quite worked out. We always got so close, and then something would knock us back down again. It was one of the most difficult periods of my life, and it shook me to my core in so many ways.
It took me a long time, almost a decade but I never gave up on the dream. It ebbed and flowed and many times I tried to walk away from it, but it kept calling my name, and I did the one thing my teacher continually repeated to me; I never gave up on it.
And in 2006 my dream was realized. Was it perfect? Of course not. But it taught me a great lesson and helped me unlock one of the special gifts that I use today in my coaching and mentoring. I know what it is like to have a dream and see it through, and I help other people do that because of the experiences I went through. You can't make that stuff up. You have to live it.
Never give up on yourself
When you go through a tough time...when everything seems to oppose you as you are trying to create something new... please don’t give up because this is the exact time and place that the course will change.
Your own personal courage and getting support through a meaningful coaching relationship is what will help you achieve your goals.
In my own journey I have been lucky to have a spiritual practice and access to coaching partnerships that has sustained me through many major life changes but I recognize for many people this is not part of their current reality.
When embarking on a new path it’s hard to stay sane in this crazy fast-paced world without a support system in place. Family and friends are sometimes the last people you want to talk to when making changes that may upset the apple cart.
There are still many times in my own life when I ask...why does it have to be so hard? But I still dance on, stumble and fall with regularity and turn my stumbles into a new kind of dance.
Dance when you get broken open. Dance when the bandage gets ripped off. Dance in the light & shadows
Grace - that magical and mysterious presence that allows you to keep building fulfillment, in the shadows and the sunlight.
Find some support for yourself, and find a way to facilitate the change you would like to see in yourself.
Everyone has been made for some particular purpose in this world, and everybody has some deep desire to achieve something.
So...
What do you want to do with this one precious life of yours? There isn't a moment to waste, and it doesn't have to be some huge big thing. In fact you can change your world just by taking one small step in the direction of your dreams.
Your job is to find something that satisfies the deepest longings of your heart and work towards it.