Tag: life’s calling
I want to quit my job…two years from now
I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who tell me they want to quit their jobs, but not right now. They want to quit in two years. The most common reason is that people want to stop doing their current work and do something else…but they don’t know what that is. For some reason they think that in two years they will have figured that out.
However, when you’re working a ton of hours in a stressful position, you don’t have much mental space or energy to determine what your next best job is. Plus, your free time is spent recovering or distracting yourself from your unhappy situation.
I feel your pain.
It wasn’t until I made up my mind that I was going to quit my job that I began to have ideas about what my future might look like. There was a definitive moment, a changing of my mindset, when I set my intention to quit. I turned my focus away from trying to make my current job situation better and focused on creating a better life. Like magic, I started getting inspired and followed my interests as far as they would go.
Here are a few examples of the actions I took and what they led to:
- After eight years without any creative writing, I started filling notebooks again. The ideas for stories, poems and lyrics popped into my head without even trying. I decided that after I quit my job I would spend a month at Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program. Once there, I wrote the outline for my self-help book for people who want to quit their jobs. I started this blog. I also kept writing creatively, joined writing groups, and volunteered with a literary magazine.
- I began researching and visiting animal sanctuaries. I documented their best practices and what they needed to improve. I have no idea if this will lead to any paid work in my future, but it was meaningful to me. The current outcome is that I have three favorite animal non-profits: Best Friends Animal Society, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest and The Wild Animal Sanctuary.
- I realized that my love of research, analysis, report-writing and justice could lead to a career in private investigation. I got certified, built a marketing plan and decided this would be my next job. In case you haven’t been following my blog – I did not become a P.I. But planning to be a P.I. gave me the courage to quit my job and continue pursuing my interests until I ultimately began my consulting business.
Which leads me to this point: you don’t have to figure out your next job right now. All you have to do is follow your interests. Two years from now, your ideal job may be completely different – and better – than anything you can dream of now.
Happily, I’m not a data point of one. Many people who I spoke with followed a winding path to a satisfying career. If you need more convincing, read Martha Beck’s Finding Your Way in a Wild New World.
If you’re convinced but are thinking “what do I do now, I don’t even know what I’m interested in”, just experiment with one small, easy thing that you will enjoy doing. Make something with your hands. Revisit an old hobby. Do something you liked doing as a kid. Talk to a friend in a career that you may be interested in. Take a class or an evening workshop in a subject you are curious about. Read.
If you’re on the right track, more and more opportunities will open up to you, just as starting to write poetry again led to a month of writing classes and my book-in-progress.
When you’re not on the right track, you’ll lose interest or life will throw signs at you that it is time to change direction. For example, as I neared the date when I planned to quit my job, I began to doubt that a formal career in investigation was the right choice even though I enjoyed the process leading up to it. At the same time, a former coworker and I came up with a business idea and created an LLC in a blink. Several months later I realized our company wasn’t going to generate a salary and I moved onto my backup plan of consulting, which turned out to be a perfect career for me.
I didn’t cling to my initial idea out of stubbornness or misplaced determination. I was open to each new opportunity and was willing to move forward or change my plans as I went along. I like the metaphor of walking on a path with a lantern that only illuminates the step you’re at and where to place your feet next.
For example, if you are interested in making elaborate, one-of-a kind cakes, you don’t have to buy a bakery or launch a catering business. Have a friend or two commission desserts from you and if you enjoy it, do more. You might find that you only want to bake cakes for your loved one’s birthdays because it is a creative outlet and you feed off of their gratitude. Maybe you’ll realize you don’t want to make cakes for strangers, you don’t want to bake at all in the summer, and you really don’t want to produce a customer’s requested design if it isn’t a style you’re interested in.
When you pay attention, the universe will give you nudges in the right direction. What matters is that you are taking action. You are signaling that you are open to discovering a new path, one step at a time. If it leads you to another step forward– great! If you dislike it, or the choice generates negative results, then pursue your other interests.
If you’re one of those people who want to quit their jobs in two years, be clear about your intention. Then take one small action and you’re on your way.
Finding Your Passion is Overrated
The whole “finding your passion” blitz is getting on my nerves. There’s an onslaught of books, classes, blogs and life coaches all telling us that there is a specific reason we’re on this Earth and we should be spending time and money figuring out what that is. In fact, if we’re not able to articulate our life’s passion in a mission statement format there’s something lacking in our lives and we’ll never be happy until we figure out what it is.
I met a life coach at a networking event a few weeks ago who seemed annoyed when I shared my thoughts on this topic. She informed me that her job was to help people find their passion whether it was their work or a hobby. “If you talk to someone long enough, you eventually find what lights them up,” she said.
OK, well that’s great if some people need helping figuring out what they’re interested in at $90 an hour. But I don’t need a coach to know that I light up talking about animal welfare issues. I’ll talk to you for a half-hour about what makes a good or bad sanctuary and then I want to stop talking about it and go on with my day. I like to visit sanctuaries and donate money to them and sign online petitions but I’m not compelled to do anything else about it. Maybe someday. Or maybe not.
When I conducted interviews for my book, I met people who are living their passion after quitting their corporate jobs. One woman’s most important hobby was scuba diving. She bought into an existing scuba business and now spends her work and leisure time on her favorite activity. I love those stories and think people who have a clear conviction about what they want to do with their time are fortunate to have a singular focus.
But I’d like to reassure the rest of us that there’s nothing wrong with our lives if we don’t have a specific calling. Maybe it’s more important to be happy, satisfied and at peace with our daily lives.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been an avid consumer of the “find your passion” type of book and class and coaching for years. Life coaches are a great resource for gaining clarity and taking action to increase satisfaction with our lives and I think that is more important than pursuing a validation for your life that you might never find.
Coaches are also helpful to overcome blocks. My sister, Kristen Sutich, is gifted at coaching me to feel at peace during difficult times and helps me make plans that sustain my goals. (She specializes in grief issues and helping moms send their kids to kindergarten, but I recommend her for general life coaching, too.)
I also took a tele-class this fall called “Find Your Calling Now”. It was led by Martha Beck who is my author-idol and whose books have inspired me for years. In the class, Beck talked about the Hero’s Journey, which the geeky writer in me loved, but in the end, I was nowhere closer to finding my life’s calling than before.
During the time period when I took the class, I was writing my book, working on a small startup company and spending a LOT of time wondering what the hell I was doing with my life. Even though I believed in the value of my projects and still do, they are not my life’s burning passion. I don’t jump out of bed at 5AM every morning because I’m filled with excitement to revise my book. My book is important to me but it isn’t magic. It takes energy and focus and discipline to work on it. It is similar with the startup business. The business model is compelling, but it doesn’t drive me.
At the present, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been with my work life. My main consulting gig provides interesting work that pays the bills, my clients are nice and I work from my home office. The freedom of doing my work in my own space is a huge part of my happiness. I make a healthy breakfast and lunch every day and can take a break to go for a walk from my own front door. I drive to the office for meetings and make a point of checking in with people when I’m there instead of taking for granted that I’ll see them each day. This arrangement also gives me the time and energy to work on my other projects outside of business hours.
It took trial and error to get to this point. In some ways, my life resembles the one I had a year ago. I’m doing marketing for the same company that I left last June. I’m even in the same office complex – how weird is that?! But now I’m billing my hours from my home office as the owner of my own consulting company and that is a world of difference.
It is a satisfying feeling to look back at the week with gratitude because every day was a great day. Am I living my life’s passion? No. But I’m deeply happy. And that’s more than enough for me.
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