I’m still figuring out my thing. In the meantime, I continue reading your site daily nodding in agreement, laughing, trying some of your techniques. I want to be a part of your programs and talk with the amazing people that seem to congregate here. Until I decide my purpose, I will humbly loiter in the background, feeling safe in the haven you have created.

Keep up the great work, Havi!

Sherris last blog post..Photo Friday: Peaceful Garden

When in fact, even when your job is full of awesomeness, there are always going to be parts that are challenging or stuck or don’t work. And you’re always going to be working on how to make parts of it better or less horrible.

Sorry to hear about your awful job! Ugh to being a literary agent in LA and double-ugh to letting outside forces put pressure on us to be happy when sometimes what we need most is to acknowledge the UNhappy and spend a little time with it giving it attention and comfort.

That’s where I think Neil’s distinction is really sweet and beautiful (even if, as I said, not all of us are going to be ready for it in the moment) … because it’s about redirecting attention to the moments when it’s possible to choose some love, choose some comfort, choose some positive.

And when you’ve sat with the pain a little and you’re ready to receive some help, it’s so so wonderful to know that hey, it’s right there waiting for you.

At the same time, I feel moved to point out that when you’re in the stuckness, sometimes knowing that — even if it is true, which it mayh be — is not necessarily always helpful. It could be, for some people, and it won’t be for a lot of people.

When I was in the situation I described, I also thought about that particular angle of the “you are what you do” thing. And had long talks about it with my yoga teacher. At that point in my life, I wasn’t able to receive comfort from that thought.

Even though I was sometimes able to say “yes, here I am smiling and this is also me being what I do, here I am breathing and this is also what I do …”, I knew I was still miserable, and not being able to apply this concept was just a source of yet more guilt and frustration.

When you get on a bus to go to work — and in Israel you don’t get on a bus without some part of your brain reminding you that this might be the last bus you ever take — and your first thought is “Well, if the bus explodes and I die, at least I won’t have to go to work!” and your second thought is “Well, if the bus explodes and I don’t die, at least I’ll be on disability and won’t have to go to work!” … that’s a sign that you need a bigger change than an attitude shift.

Because sometimes you’re in so deep that you can’t work the attitude shift, and if you think you should be able to, you just get more stuck, you know?

Although…I have to disagree with you on one point.

“You are what you do”

I totally agree with the statement.

However, not in the terms that you disagree with it. We ARE what we do, in the terms of we are defined by the total of our ACTIONS, the way we speak, make tea, sew on buttons, cut vegetables, order our to do lists etc.

If we wish to be beautiful then all our actions must add up to being beautiful and we will fail to BE beautiful until we always DO beautiful.

We can create who we are in every moment…if only we choose to do so.

But

This doesnt mean that we are our JOB, although it is part of us, like everything else however, we can choose to be how we want in that situation.

Thank you for helping make life easier and adding positive stuff to my life.

Best regards

Neil

One specific step that really helped me, was doing some aptitude testing (emphasis on ‘aptitude’ and contrasting from ‘interest’–I personally found interest assessments to have a really bad influence on my state of mind). The Johnson O’Connor group and also Rockport are two places that provide this.

Five of the worst words that can be strung together … and five easy words to believe.

One of the hardest lessons in my life involved moving past this (and some days, it’s still not easy).

Fight the good fight :-)

Moral of this little story: the best way to screw up doing what you love is to start doing the parts that you don’t love.”

Exactly. I am so happy that I have found at least one other person that believes this. So much of the unhappiness in this world is the result of people thinking that doing work you love is an unreasonable objective.

And then there are the people I work with who are usually in jobs where they have lots of autonomy and at least part of the work is work they love and they are not finding the time to do the parts they love AND telling themselves stories about how those parts are really about doing things they have to do for others. Which is where I come in.

JoVEs last blog post..other things going on