Light My Fire

Typically, the first thing I do when I get through the front door at the end of another work day (after greeting my two cats) is drop my stuff on the floor and change into shorts and a tee-shirt or sweatpants (if the weather is chillier). Usually, I’m pretty beat—and being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), somewhat over-stimulated by being both around and engaged with people & information all day. All I want to do is (quietly) eat dinner, catch up on the Sunday NY Times, look at shoes on eBay (I find it relaxing—really!) or watch whatever Netflix is waiting for me.

My day job takes it out of me, but I can remind myself it really is only a job—in other words, it’s something I’m doing (for now) from 9-5 to float my life, pay my bills, keep a roof over my head and the kitties in kibble & treats. And it’s something I’ll continue to do until the thing I most love doing—the thing that fires me up, feeds my soul, stokes my curiosity and energizes me—the thing I was meant to do with my life, my “right livelihood”—moves from the realm of part-time work to full-time work.

I’m a Life Coach. I’ve been, in some way, shape or form, a Life Coach pretty much all my life. I was the friend everyone came to for advice who apparently had “TELL ME” emblazoned across my forehead, the one who listened with great patience, empathy and compassion and offered a shoulder to cry on and wisdom probably beyond my years, the one who heard about boyfriends, careers, cross-country moves, families of origin, college, weight loss (and gain), dying pets, physical ailments, and just about anything else life drummed up (and it was a LOT, and varied). The one who preferred long conversations and hearing other people’s stories to just about any other time-filler (except live theater, which is ALSO the unfolding of “other people’s stories” and the reason I got an MFA in playwriting).

Why am I sharing all this? Because when we are practicing our “right livelihood”—when we do what we are meant to do, which also means honoring our Higher Power by tapping into and sharing our true, innate, God-Given gifts/talents with the world around us, as I do when I am coaching—we are, in those moments, truly alive.

As I mentioned, at the end of the day when I return home from my day job, I’m pretty beat. I’ve been up (vertical, yes, though not necessarily awake) since about 6:30 AM and including my commute time, have invested about 12 hours into it, all told. My brain may feel fuzzy, my body fatigued—yet, when I prepare to coach someone for an hour at the end of a long day, either via phone or face-to-face, the day job and the exhaustion magically dissipates and the day and its stressors slip completely away…..and when the coaching hour is up, I am, for all practical purposes and for lack of a better word, high. Just totally, utterly, naturally high. When I am done with a client, I feel happy, re-energized, sure of my path and identity as a Life Coach, empowered, and thrilled that I found my heart’s calling, my alignment, my absolute bliss. Thrilled that I can be paid for doing something I love, and that I get to participate, in a very real sense, in “other people’s stories.”

And when we do what we love, when we’re truly aligned with our work, when we are doing what, on a cellular level, we know we are meant to be doing, when our work fits us like a glove—when it’s a “no-brainer” to be turning our passions or hobbies into our livelihoods (what a concept!), when it feeds us like the amazing feast it can be, we are energized beyond belief—and in turn, we send that positive energy right back out into a hungry and broken world, into the universe at large where it is so desperately needed. By our very satisfied, focused, contented natures, we become “change-makers,” an army of positive thinkers.

So we owe it to ourselves and to the world to find work that charges us up, lights our inner fire, stokes our passion, feeds our deepest values. The exploration it sometimes takes to find out what that may be for each of us, what our true callings may be, is worth the time, energy, journey, and possibly money we spend on our becoming.

As Confucius said, “Find a job you love, and never work a day in your life.”

In what ways does your work feed you?