Finding Work You Love, Part 3
In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, you’ve worked to identify a sense of purpose. Your next step is to use this life purpose statement to help find work that you love. How do you do that?
If you followed the previous exercises to the letter, you should have spent at least 7 days with your life purpose statement and your visual close at hand. This should have grounded the statement in your mind and probably led to all kinds of stimulating thoughts.
Does your statement lead to a clear career? If your purpose was to communicate your deepest dreams and desires via song, then it would be pretty clear what kind of career you’d what to work towards. You could be a singer, musician, songwriter, poet and you’d easily be doing work that you loved to do.
If your purpose statement doesn’t lead to an obvious career path, then you should complete this next step. Using the example from Part 2, someone with a purpose to connect from the soul to create peace and learning, could work in many different fields. Like the example above, this person could communicate via singing. But this person could also be a psychologist, a rabbi, a drug abuse counselor, a divorce mediator, an English professor.
How then does one transfer the purpose statement to a career? Using the example of the person whose purpose was to connect from the soul to create peace and learning, that person could choose any of the above careers and be pretty happy with the choice. In my experience as a coach, one or two careers usually jump out from the purpose statement. Usually, the process of creating the purpose statement, connecting a visual image to anchor it, and letting the statement percolate, leads clients to a clear career path.
If however, your statement doesn’t lead you to a clear path, then do some visioning exercises. Take the couple of possibilities that your statement has brought to mind and envision yourself doing those activities. See yourself being the teacher or the counselor or the investment banker or whatever else came up. When you envision these activities, ask yourself:
How does it feel to be…?
When you imagine a career path that feels good, that makes you tingle when you think about it- you’ve found work that you love.
Tags: career, life purpose, success, growth
