|
Guidepost 9: Cultivating Meaningful Work, Letting Go of Self-Doubt and Supposed-Tos
Meaningful work doesn’t necessarily refer to how you earn money. Brown says meaningful work refers to using our gifts and talents. When we don’t use them, we feel distressed, because we know we’re capable of something more.
Don’t care what you feel like you should do. Only care about what you want to do.
“Supposed-to” is a way of deferring to external sources. It's a style of camouflage.
Start practicing:
Reflect on what your unique gifts are, and start sharing them with the world. As Howard Thurman instructs: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
When you notice that you’re should-ing on yourself, pause and switch directions. Drop “should” and “supposed-to” from your vocabulary and replace it with “want.” (So “I should do X” becomes “I want to do X/Y/Z.”)
-------------
This is more vague for me since I retired from work for pay. That work drew everything I could gift to it and more. I'm happy about it, but I can't go back to that type and intensity of service.
On the other side, I keep gifting in flashes. For example, I just sent a comment about my working methods using AI for proofreading to a publisher. I was advised not to by my partner because AI is a controversial issue with editors and writers. But, why pass over it? I sent it as I meant to and I'm ready to deal with push back.
Another way I'm finding interesting is responding with Yes if asked for use of my services (for small projects).
|