“The secret to success is making your vocation your vacation.” (Mark Twain)
“In work, do what you enjoy.” (Tao te Ching)
When we are deeply involved in expressing our life purpose, oftentimes we choose to embrace it as a calling. Buddhists call this “right livelihood”. When we embrace our life purpose as a calling or vocation, we find that the joy we experience when engaging with our life purpose expanded to all parts of our lives.
“When you work, you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, and in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life. And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.” (Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet)
Kahlil Gibran’s vision of work is a far cry from what the vast majority of people experience in their work today. Over 60% of people dislike their jobs, dread Mondays and make “TGIF” their mantra. This is not how work is supposed to be. And because work takes up so much of your time, dissatisfaction with work spills over into every other facet of your life and even negatively affects your health. This is not how you are supposed to live your life!
“If you are in the wrong career, then 85% of your waking life sucks.” (Unknown)
The ideal is to live an integrated, holistic life, where there is no separation between life and making a living, work and play, success and fulfillment. A life of joy comes from embracing what you love to do, what is easy for you and what is natural. It comes from BEING, not just DOING.
“Work that is an authentic vocation emanates from one’s essential self and allows [you] to be who [you] truly are, while doing what [you] most love and feel passionate about, and provides [you] with the most meaning.” (Marcia Bench)
The foundation of discovering and creating the ideal career for you is knowing your life purpose. Life purpose filters down into every facet of our lives, but has an enormous impact on our work.
Imagine what your life would be like if you enjoyed your work. Imagine what it would feel like to make money while having playing. If you are feeling any dissatisfaction with your work, consider discovering what your ideal work would be. If you hate Mondays and live your life in the evenings and weekends, don’t delay on discovering your soul-fulfilling career.
To your joy and success!
Blessings,
Keena
PS If you are considering no longer suffering in your work, please start here.
PPS I have “been there and done that”. I have had a really good concept of my life purpose since I was a child, yet I still fell into our society’s cultural work trap! My mission is to help people live more joyful and fulfilling lives, and a soul-fulfilling career is part of that. If you want a hand to get out of the career trap, please let me know!
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