|
Thanks for sharing this page with your friends...
... for each person you send this page to you'll get a free ticket into our March prize draw for an hour of telecoaching with Nick Williams. So the more friends you tell, the more chances you'll have to win!
Please type YOUR name and e-mail address below...
... and now, please tell us which friends you'd like to share this page with -
|
Working for Love, Money and Meaning (from O Magazine South Africa)
Articles > Working for Love, Money and Meaning (O Magazine SA - PDF Version).
By Nick Williams
In 1988, at my desk in London, I harboured a deep curiosity about what I could
become. I was bored stiff in my well-paid and prestigious job in an IT company
selling expensive computers to corporate clients. Some greater force seemed to
be operating within me calling me to risk blossoming.
I felt I had potential that
was unrealised. But the greater part of me was terrified I would commit emotional
suicide if I followed my heart and stepped off the conventional career path. Growing
up with the hard work ethic, I’d buried any fancy ideas about doing something
I loved. I believed work shouldn’t be enjoyable, but a necessity to earning
a living.
Three years of this inner conflict later, I mustered the courage to quit, gradually
creating my dream of writing, speaking and teaching, inspiring others to follow
their hearts. But first I had to become an example myself! Today I am living
the work I was born to do, life is bigger, more meaningful and inspiring. I’ve
written five books, one a best seller, have given talks in dozens of cities
around the world, hardly able to believe that I get paid for it, too.
A NEW WORK ETHIC AND VISION FOR WORK
It seems ingrained in us to either sacrifice our dreams and our deeper self
in return for a regular salary, or follow our heart and do something that inspires
us and is meaningful, but holds no hope of financial success or security. The
dilemma? Do you go for the money or the love and meaning? You can have both,
but you need to move beyond the idea that work is something negative, and must
involve sacrifice, pain, or boredom. Too few of us truly understand the vocational
dimension of work – that it can be a blessing that we love, and which
allows our unique gifts and talents to flow out and serve others. This is the
work ethic of joy, and the highest view of work is wonderfully expressed by
Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet, “Your work is your love made visible.”
When your work is the canvas onto which you express your soul it is the job
you were born to do, and is moving beyond sacrifice to inspiration, beyond dilemma
to authenticity and leading to a life of meaning and success.
HOW YOU DISCOVER THE WORK YOU WERE BORN TO DO
Your desire to discover the work you were born to do is not a selfish act
but a spiritual impulse, and is actually one of the most generous things you
can do for yourself. The question most people ask is how do I find mine? Over
the past 15 years I have found nine particular ways that people come to find
what they’d love to do. Sometimes the answers are on the surface, other
times they are buried, needing excavation.
1. Through your inspiration, joy and a sense of calling
It is the work that would inspire you, you feel called to and your heart
calls you to. It is what you are naturally drawn to and curious about. It
is what you would most love to do. Many South Africans want their work to
be a source of inspiration to them.
2. Behind your greatest resistance
The twin soul of inspiration is resistance, and often the work you’d
most love to do is what you spend most time and energy procrastinating about,
avoiding, making excuses why you haven’t done it and talking yourself
out of. Many South Africans are beaten by their resistance and never reach
their full potential.
3. In your shadow life
The talents you have disowned become your unlived life, which you can only
see in others. You can be close to the work you’d love, but you are
more comfortable seeing other people’s creativity and talent –
afraid to acknowledge your own. Begin to put own your talents out there and
move them towards the centre of your life. Your playing small doesn’t
serve the world.
4. Under the statement “I don’t know”
Often we genuinely don’t know, but with good questions and coaching,
we can reach clarity. I don’t know also masks I am afraid to know because
then I’d have to change, and that scares me even more. We can confuse
I don’t know what with I don’t know how. Don’t deny what
you know you’d love to do because you don’t know how you could
do it and succeed with it. You can learn.
5. Through your naturalness, seen in the eyes of others
A great blind spot most of us have is to our natural abilities and talents.
We value struggle, not ease, so don’t value or even see what comes easily
to us, and can easily dismiss it, missing our own unique brilliance. Notice
how others acknowledge and appreciate you.
6. Behind the words if only someone would pay me to do it
We believe we can pursue our dreams once we have been successful and have
made our money, and don’t realise that we can support ourselves financially
by pursuing our dreams. It stems from the belief that we either work for love
or money, but not both. There is practically nothing today that you can’t
get paid for. Think about what you would most like to be paid for doing or
being.
7. In your lost dreams and your underutilised talent
Often, as children, we do know what we’d love to do, but we can be
actively discouraged from it, criticised for it or somehow abandon our passions
to join the grown up world of working for money. You can go back and reconnect
with what you loved, and sometimes this can be painful but poignant.
8. Behind a wake up call or even a crisis
A refusal to listen to our intuition and deeper self could precipitate a
full-blown crisis. Things fall apart and we can feel awful, but so many people
speak in retrospect about their illness/redundancy/bankruptcy being the best
thing that ever happened to them. It got them back on track to a greater and
more authentic life, but they needed to be broken open, allowing the phoenix
to rise from the ashes.
9. In a greater sense of yourself and an expanded sense of your identity
You have probably experienced a comprehensive conditioning in littleness
– being told you are nothing special and that you shouldn’t think
too highly of yourself, or at worst you are flawed or bad. Your spirit is
limitless, and your inspired dreams may seem too big, but you are called to
grow, not shrink away.
OVERCOMING YOUR RESISTANCE
If it were as easy as that, we’d all be doing it, but the more important
something is to you the more likely you are to experience resistance and not
move forward.
So here are some tips for overcoming your resistance.
- Commitment to turn up and take some action, even baby steps – the
tiniest of steps build your momentum and bring your dreams to life
- Develop your courage – feel the fear, guilt, doubt or unworthiness
but act in the face of them; don’t wait for them to subside. Engage
with your fear to grow bigger than it.
- Learn the how to information and strategies – educate yourself and
learn what you don’t know so you can move forward.
- Don’t try and solve problems you don’t have yet – you can
waste so much energy worrying about what might happen in the future. Act now,
and deal with the future when you are there.
- Get higher quality problems – we all have problems so focus on problems
you’d love to have, like “I have too many clients to be able to
service!”.
- Surround yourself with positive people – isolation is the biggest
dream killer, and the belief, love and encouragement of others helps you bust
through.
Step into your greater power, keep your focus on contribution; you have unique
gifts and the world needs what you have, so give us what you’ve got.
[Taken from the March issue of O
Magazine in South Africa]
|