Are you trying to fit a square peg in a round hole with your Career?

The second most common question I am getting from clients and from readers of my blog is about career.  Wanting to have a job that you like, where you resonate with the people you work with, and can make enough money at the same time.

I want you to ask yourself something.  Especially if you feel like you don’t know what path to take, or if you think you are on the wrong path in your life.

Are you trying to fit into other people’s expectations, or are you allowing yourself to go where you feel guided to go?

Really ponder that question.  So many of you that are reading this are being guided to use your gifts.  To be happy, to flourish, to share what you know and what you feel.  You want to connect with people who feel the way you do.  You want to fit in, you feel like there is more to life, but you feel so stuck.

I want you to try something.  I want you to get a piece of paper, and with blue ink, write down what your ideal life (or career, or calling, or job) would look like.

Don’t limit yourself to just what you know is lucrative financially, or what your parents did, or what you think is ‘secure’.  You need to just allow yourself to write down all the things that would (or do), make you happy in work.

You may not even know what type of job would look like that.  That part doesn’t matter yet.  Just write down all the feelings you’d like to have, the general type of work you would like to do.  Do you like to work with your hands?  Be outside?  Analyze data?  Research?  Read?  Learn?  Teach?  Talk to people?  Help people?  Be an activist?  Work with numbers?

Its okay if you start with the general idea of what you think you’d like to do for work.  Many of you place way too much value on what your parents did, or what your professor told you to do, or what society says is ‘the thing to do’.

That is why you start feeling so stuck.  You don’t want to conform to what ‘society’ says is right, but you just can’t stop thinking “I should…..”.  More and more of us on this planet feel the need to do many different jobs.  I talk to a lot of people (parents as well), where the message is “You (or your child), are an experiencer.  You would perish doing the same thing forever, its okay to change jobs and learn new things”.

So many of you reading this fall into that category.  You know you were born to experience life and to try different things.  I have done that myself, I have been a dog groomer, flag person, a Supervisor in a Government office, taught horseback riding lessons, a Manager, a psychic, a data entry person, secretary for civil engineers, shoveled horse poop, done facilities management, been a part-owner in a construction company, worked in a personnel department…. the list goes on and on.  Each of these things was an experience and all brought me to where I am today.

Some of them I made more money, and some of them I didn’t.  It doesn’t matter that much, I experienced all of them.  I am now doing my writing and my readings as my main ‘job’ and I love it.  It took me doing a lot of different things to get here though, and I am constantly growing, expanding and changing things that I do.

Don’t try and fit yourself where you don’t want to be.  It is perfectly okay to ‘work for money’, there is nothing wrong with that.  Some of you may be in a really good paying job that you don’t want to leave, and you don’t have to.  You can stay in a job for the money and find a ‘calling’ or a ‘potential career for later’, somewhere else.  You can pay off debt, save up money, cut your expenses (over time), and change careers if that is what you want to do.

You can do what ever you want to do.  Follow your heart, not the “masses”.  Don’t try and squeeze yourself into a round hole if you are a square peg ~ its way too uncomfortable and you won’t fit.