What Feeds You?
Dec 25, 2020
Do you feel frustration and irritation with your work or your career? Does every new job that you’ve had tend to circle back around to the same place that you were just at in your career? Does it feel that you’ll never get any closer to living in the expression of what you really enjoy? Some type of work that would align with your values. Something that you’d really love, that you’ve been seeking, yet it feels just beyond your reach.
Maybe your experience is that you always get deferred, it doesn’t quite happen. A perpetual sense of lack or reaching yet just can’t quite grasp it. Almost there but not quite there. Maybe you start to feel a bit paralyzed, even helpless or hopeless that it’s going to even be possible to experience what you really want. What you would like, what you are able to do, maybe you are paralyzed in that it seems like the chance is there, and the opportunity is here, and you go to step up… and you freeze. It’s feels impossible to do what you said you wanted to do. How is that possible?
So, the mindset, the thinking behind that, it’s something like, “I’m just stuck. Nothing will ever change.” It’s like you send out this S.O.S. signal, “RESCUE ME! I’m stuck! Nothing’s going to change!”
There is a learned helplessness in that. Well, I’ve been there. I remember moving places and thinking, “When I move there, now things will be different.” And, I’d find myself right back there. So, I moved again – and, I found myself right back there. So, I moved again – and you know the story now – I’d find myself right back there – AGAIN! I’d think, “Oh my goodness – nothing ever will change!”
You know it might not have, except, I found a new path. On that path it was the path to new possibilities. And, what’s possible? You can let go of the strategies to control and try to make it happen. You can begin to recognize there is no such thing as a perfect job or a perfect career, because there are all different flavors of experiencing in life.
Whether you are at work, or you are at home, or you are playing, whatever it may be, there are always going to be different experiences. What is perfection after all? It is possible to live a perfectly imperfect life and feel satisfied with it. You can explore what you actually like with an open heart and an open mind. You can follow what you notice you enjoy one step at a time and actually be present in your experience. Notice how your body responds to that.
When you develop curiosity about yourself, you begin to get to know yourself in a whole new way, and you rediscover some old loves that you had. That helps you to remember who you really are and why you are here! That is a lovely thing.
So how would that look, to put on that cloak, to put on that way of believing about yourself. It would be something like, “Wow, I’m really gaining clarity around my own needs and values and my loves. When I have this clarity, I am empowered to move forward in a direction that feeds me. That nurtures me. That sustains me. There is some satisfaction right there.
A practice I invite you to explore, if you are willing, is to set aside some time to reflect on what did you enjoy as a child? What delighted you? What was just delectable? What did you look forward to? If you are willing, write it down, then time-travel forward a little bit from there; as a youth, what did you like then? What was it that you spent your time with? Note it down, and then fast forward again a little bit; to when you were a teenager, moving into the high school years, what did you enjoy then? If you could do anything you wanted, what was it?
Allow yourself to remember and feel it, actually revisit those memories with your full sense of self. You know now where we are going; so, then as a young adult what did you enjoy then? Also, notice, what is the continuous thread through your life? What is it that keeps calling you? Connect those dots and follow your heart.